What a great night; after school today, I took my son Ryan and my best friend's son Justin to ski at the local ski hill. If you're unfamiliar, I must tell you that Chicopee in Kitchener is not the most mountainous of mountains (I hear some avid skiers out there chuckling at my even calling it a "mountain"). But "ski hill" it is, and being within a 20-minute drive of just about anywhere in Kitchener-Waterloo, it's a great place to skip over to for a nice bit of outdoor time, even if just for a few hours on a weekday evening.
The temperatures were warm and some (real) snow was lightly falling; the snow being quite the rarity this season. Fantastic for skiing without freezing our chins off, and having Justin with us was the catalyst for Ryan and I both trying some hills we likely wouldn't have tried on our own. At fourteen years old and having skied regularly at Big White in Kelowna, British Columbia for the last five years, you might even say that Justin was a good sport for even bothering to come with us to a comparatively teensy hill like Chicopee. But he had a great time too, and convinced Ryan and I (without tooooo much coaxing) to even get on some Blacks tonight. AND we did a handful of jumps in the mini-park off the side of Little Foot. Me! Doing (little) ski jumps! Who'da thunk it.
There was a time when I myself would never have thunk it, being the girl who skied for the first time at age fourteen on a week-long French Immersion ski trip to St. Donat in Quebec. There, the kind French ski instructor even came up to me personally and took me aside out of our group lesson to ask me privately, in her broken English, if I understood what she was saying when she gave her instructions in French. "Yes", I told her, "I understand you, I just can't SKI." Another school ski trip (in English) to Chicopee saw me barrelling down North, a blue run, wobbling uncontrollably and completely out of my element. It's a wonder I didn't hurt myself, or someone else.
But there I was, skiing Blacks and doing little jumps (granted, Chicopee "Blacks" are....well, the Black classification is, let's say, questionable by those more avid skiers than I). I told Justin that I was really glad he'd decided to come with us; it was good to have him there for that extra little push Ryan and I needed to stretch ourselves. We didn't get so comfortable as to get on Sugar Bowl tonight - though I have done that one, just a couple of years ago and never since - but besides that one, we did go on every other run. Except for Bear Foot and Rabbit's Foot, the two itty-bitty green runs that have no lift but instead, a magic carpet. So those don't count.
But what a great way to spend a night with a couple of fantastic kids. The winter sees us all spending a lot more time inside, and in our house that tends to mean (at least for the kids) a lot more TV and/or computer and/or video game time. So to have a fun night out getting some fresh air and exercise was a double-bonus.
So much fun that I didn't even mind terribly when, as we were loading our gear back in the car when we finished, Ryan piped up and said "Justin, that was way more fun since you came along". I knew that day would come when hanging out just with me wasn't going to quite cut it anymore for my ten-year-old son, but dang, jab me right where it hurts, why don't ya? Actually, we had such a great time that I had to agree with him, and a good part of the fun was from stretching ourselves and going just outside our comfort zone. Try it and see what you're really capable of. You just might surprise yourself.
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