No Snow Can't Stop Me From Skiing!

Hey, Alex W here!

Over Winter Break, my usual routine consists of an absurd amount of sleep, chores and TV show marathons  (making me extremely anxious to come back to school after having done nothing but sit on my butt for a month).

This break I tried to schedule trips with my friends so that I would at least have something to talk about when I returned from NH.  In addition to spending a day in NYC (first time ever going to The City!!) and getting back in running shape, I also went on a ski trip to Vermont with some of my closest friends.  One of my good friends, Vinay, has a time-share that his parents were gracious enough to let him use, so we were able to stay for a three days at a ski lodge near Okemo Mountain Resort.

I used to love skiing when I was in high school and would get a season pass at local mountains (even went with a friend to Breckenridge in Colorado for a week), but pretty much stopped when I came to UConn due to time restraints.  Since I hadn’t put on a pair of skis in nearly three years, I was slightly apprehensive about going down the mountain. I spent the first half hour on the bunny slope practicing my ‘pizza style’ skiing, it finally came back to me.  Guess you never forget it, kind of like riding a bike.

Of course, this was an invitation for the remainder of the group to take me to the top of the mountain and take me down a black diamond (which is always a good idea after you have just gotten the hang of skiing on the bunny slopes at the bottom of the mountain, right?).  Since Vermont also hasn’t had any natural snow at this point in the year, the mountain only had about 20 trails open with man-made snow (which made the slopes pretty icy).  After having my life flash before my eyes twice because I accidently became air born on the Black Diamond trail, I ended up sliding down the rest of the slope on my butt because one of my skis popped off and shot down the mountain.  I am still extremely grateful that this mishap allowed me to chicken out the rest of the way down.

After this incident, I decided to stick to the Green slopes (even though they bored everyone else) because they were less traveled and therefore less icy.  The remainder of the day on the mountain was enjoyable since I didn’t need to sled my way down, and it made me realize how much I miss skiing!  I might end up going on one of the ski trips offered through UConn – here’s to not bruising myself for no reason!  That is if we ever get enough snow that sticks around long enough.