Snowboarding
Plodding through final essays before Christmas...reminds me of 'slouching towards Bethlehem.' I hope to be done by Friday! Maybe sooner. The last week I've done nothing but vacate, and it was sorely needed. Yesterday, in fact, I snowboarded. In keeping with a typical post for me, my story is as much about the animal Fear as it is about the sport itself, but it's a tale I'd like to tell.
I never skiied. (Is that the past tense of ski?). Well, once. Growing up my parents didn't have money and neither of them ever imagining skiing as far as I know. I was never on snow at all until college when I went with Ironsulfide and Scooter. You know the stuff people tell you when you don't ski or have any gear: yeah, just scotch guard some jeans, wear my old gloves, you can rent in town for cheaper, you don't need a lesson.
You don't need a lesson.
It was actually later than college when I went because I was seeing Robert and I'm sure I wasn't living with Estella; hence, I must have been separated. I'm guessing this was 1993 then, before I was prodded (yes, prodded) into a relationship with my rebound girl, mi loca chica. I guess I wanted to take new risks, try something else (skiing was much safer than loca). How I came up with any money to ski at all is a good question, but I found enough. We went at night, the snow was frozen, and I didn't take a lesson. I guess that did cut my costs. Plus we went to ski hole hell, the lowest resort in the San Gabriels.
You know, as an aside, those mountains aren't these mountains.
The thing that caught me off guard about skiing that night was the ski lifts. I found myself terrified riding the bunny lift, sitting there, afraid of heights as I was, forty or fifty feet in the air, humming over the pullies on the support poles. I couldn't believe people did this calmly. The skiing itself wasn't much better. I tried. I'd get on the lift, often alone, pray it wouldn't get stuck with me dangling, then try to tear, scrape, and fall my way down. I remember calling Robert (I called his voice mail all the time and left messages, probably in part because I couldn't really get close to him in session) and leaving a message about my terror on the lift right from the ski resort. When I saw him later he harped on the same trick pony he always did: 'get angry, I'd be angry if I was experiencing that, really angry.' Nice. Not effective in phobia treatment as far as I know, but then I think by this time he'd lost interest, or that ability, to help me though he himself didn't know it. Dating a man's estranged wife, also your client, tends to impede therapy.
That wasn't a good first ski experience. Eight years later (feels like eighty) I moved to the Sierra. Now I live, friends, thirty minutes from a Tahoe resort. About three years ago I went up with Mikey's school and took a snowboard lesson; the next year I took a ski lesson. These lessons only got me on the lift a few times, and I was terrified each time. I did pretty well skiing, I guess, but trying to snowboard is like, oh, learning to box by getting in the ring with a boxer. I was hammered. Dehydrated. Starved. Probably delirious before I straggled down for water and food. Snowboarding is so different from learning to snowboard I don't know what compares.
Because of the lift height and the difficulty and cost of learning I've never been back. I took up sailing this year, of all things. But yesterday a good friend was going and S encouraged me so I went. It is expensive, still, unless I own my own gear and bought the season pass. The thing I learned is that no lesson is bad, but group lessons aren't much better for snowboarding. My buddy stayed with me and actually taught me to ride the heel edge down the bunny slope. Again and again. I ran into two teenage girls S and I know from our karate days and they went with us on a couple of runs.
How was it?
Well, I almost titled this post Brokenback Mountain. I'm okay, sure, but sore as heck and in places I didn't know I had muscles. No wonder so many snowboarders are in their teens and twenties. Still, I'm proud of how well I did, falling often, but actually doing some boarding. Not bad for my second day. Private lessons made the difference.
At one point the three of them asked if I wanted to take the lift to the top of the mountain and take easy runs down. I was doing okay on the bunny lift, maybe forty feet off the ground. I asked my friend what the lift was like that goes to the top and he said, 'oh, just like this, but in some parts twice as high; there is a bar though.' I didn't do it. Damn. Partly because of the lift, mostly because of that, but also because I was leg-burn tired by then and didn't know how I'd feel when I made it all the way down the mountain (one way or another). As soon as they took off and I went back to my beginner lift the self-critique started, the feeling of being a bad person, of failing and not being strong...I tried then and am trying now, with some success, to focus on the positive: I rode the bunny lift probably twenty times! I even quit putting the bar down! I persisted learning to snowboard at the age of 41 while being slammed into the snow like a puppet.
These are impressive things. The entire day I was facing fear.
I wanted to go to the top bad because I thought I should be able to. I didn't know these girls well enough to start really panicking in front of them, though, and Fear, phobic Fear, is a fucking animal in the heart. It has the force of a living being in the body itself. I cannot describe it to those who do not know it. I'd like to make it to the top of the mountain (getting down will be a different matter!) before summer; I'd like to fly, much more, before summer also, or at least before summer is over. But even now I can feel the terror, the overwhelming sweat-terror, moving in me.
The good news is that exposure, done right, works. I've seen it a little in myself and fully in others. I know guys who have taken up flying or rock climbing because they were afraid of heights and they're now avid about the sport. I think about the bunny lift sitting here now and I don't have any more fear, maybe, than a normal person would. Maybe there is some kind of intermediate lift I can take before I go to the top. Maybe I'll just breathe deep and close my eyes! I know now I can go into tall buildings when before I wouldn't even do that. I'm growing, but it's hard. There are so many things I'm not afraid of...many that I am. But the true phobia...it's a river that pulls me into its stream apart from any rational argument.
I've had fear all my life.
So I guess I'm proud of 'boarding' yesterday. It's fun. It didn't grab me the way sailing did but then my first sails involved me sitting around doing almost nothing, cruising on SF Bay in sunny weather. Who wounldn't love that? I haven't had the true snowboarder's experience.
I will say the cardio workout involved in learning to snowboard is incredible. I must have lost a pound.
Special thanks to my friend M who took me up, and who probably would have been more patient with my fear than I imagined. This may not be 'the' year for me and the snowboard, partly because I spent so much dough learning to sail, but that year may well come. Or maybe I'll decide skiing is better. Either way I'll experience personal growth: sure, this sport is cool, sit on this dangling, rocking bench which hauls you 80 feet off the ground to the top of a mountain and then rocket down on this slippery thing at high speeds...geez.
To part of me, I admit it does sound like fun. But there's so much fear between me and that place. May God lead me through it.
I never skiied. (Is that the past tense of ski?). Well, once. Growing up my parents didn't have money and neither of them ever imagining skiing as far as I know. I was never on snow at all until college when I went with Ironsulfide and Scooter. You know the stuff people tell you when you don't ski or have any gear: yeah, just scotch guard some jeans, wear my old gloves, you can rent in town for cheaper, you don't need a lesson.
You don't need a lesson.
It was actually later than college when I went because I was seeing Robert and I'm sure I wasn't living with Estella; hence, I must have been separated. I'm guessing this was 1993 then, before I was prodded (yes, prodded) into a relationship with my rebound girl, mi loca chica. I guess I wanted to take new risks, try something else (skiing was much safer than loca). How I came up with any money to ski at all is a good question, but I found enough. We went at night, the snow was frozen, and I didn't take a lesson. I guess that did cut my costs. Plus we went to ski hole hell, the lowest resort in the San Gabriels.
You know, as an aside, those mountains aren't these mountains.
The thing that caught me off guard about skiing that night was the ski lifts. I found myself terrified riding the bunny lift, sitting there, afraid of heights as I was, forty or fifty feet in the air, humming over the pullies on the support poles. I couldn't believe people did this calmly. The skiing itself wasn't much better. I tried. I'd get on the lift, often alone, pray it wouldn't get stuck with me dangling, then try to tear, scrape, and fall my way down. I remember calling Robert (I called his voice mail all the time and left messages, probably in part because I couldn't really get close to him in session) and leaving a message about my terror on the lift right from the ski resort. When I saw him later he harped on the same trick pony he always did: 'get angry, I'd be angry if I was experiencing that, really angry.' Nice. Not effective in phobia treatment as far as I know, but then I think by this time he'd lost interest, or that ability, to help me though he himself didn't know it. Dating a man's estranged wife, also your client, tends to impede therapy.
That wasn't a good first ski experience. Eight years later (feels like eighty) I moved to the Sierra. Now I live, friends, thirty minutes from a Tahoe resort. About three years ago I went up with Mikey's school and took a snowboard lesson; the next year I took a ski lesson. These lessons only got me on the lift a few times, and I was terrified each time. I did pretty well skiing, I guess, but trying to snowboard is like, oh, learning to box by getting in the ring with a boxer. I was hammered. Dehydrated. Starved. Probably delirious before I straggled down for water and food. Snowboarding is so different from learning to snowboard I don't know what compares.
Because of the lift height and the difficulty and cost of learning I've never been back. I took up sailing this year, of all things. But yesterday a good friend was going and S encouraged me so I went. It is expensive, still, unless I own my own gear and bought the season pass. The thing I learned is that no lesson is bad, but group lessons aren't much better for snowboarding. My buddy stayed with me and actually taught me to ride the heel edge down the bunny slope. Again and again. I ran into two teenage girls S and I know from our karate days and they went with us on a couple of runs.
How was it?
Well, I almost titled this post Brokenback Mountain. I'm okay, sure, but sore as heck and in places I didn't know I had muscles. No wonder so many snowboarders are in their teens and twenties. Still, I'm proud of how well I did, falling often, but actually doing some boarding. Not bad for my second day. Private lessons made the difference.
At one point the three of them asked if I wanted to take the lift to the top of the mountain and take easy runs down. I was doing okay on the bunny lift, maybe forty feet off the ground. I asked my friend what the lift was like that goes to the top and he said, 'oh, just like this, but in some parts twice as high; there is a bar though.' I didn't do it. Damn. Partly because of the lift, mostly because of that, but also because I was leg-burn tired by then and didn't know how I'd feel when I made it all the way down the mountain (one way or another). As soon as they took off and I went back to my beginner lift the self-critique started, the feeling of being a bad person, of failing and not being strong...I tried then and am trying now, with some success, to focus on the positive: I rode the bunny lift probably twenty times! I even quit putting the bar down! I persisted learning to snowboard at the age of 41 while being slammed into the snow like a puppet.
These are impressive things. The entire day I was facing fear.
I wanted to go to the top bad because I thought I should be able to. I didn't know these girls well enough to start really panicking in front of them, though, and Fear, phobic Fear, is a fucking animal in the heart. It has the force of a living being in the body itself. I cannot describe it to those who do not know it. I'd like to make it to the top of the mountain (getting down will be a different matter!) before summer; I'd like to fly, much more, before summer also, or at least before summer is over. But even now I can feel the terror, the overwhelming sweat-terror, moving in me.
The good news is that exposure, done right, works. I've seen it a little in myself and fully in others. I know guys who have taken up flying or rock climbing because they were afraid of heights and they're now avid about the sport. I think about the bunny lift sitting here now and I don't have any more fear, maybe, than a normal person would. Maybe there is some kind of intermediate lift I can take before I go to the top. Maybe I'll just breathe deep and close my eyes! I know now I can go into tall buildings when before I wouldn't even do that. I'm growing, but it's hard. There are so many things I'm not afraid of...many that I am. But the true phobia...it's a river that pulls me into its stream apart from any rational argument.
I've had fear all my life.
So I guess I'm proud of 'boarding' yesterday. It's fun. It didn't grab me the way sailing did but then my first sails involved me sitting around doing almost nothing, cruising on SF Bay in sunny weather. Who wounldn't love that? I haven't had the true snowboarder's experience.
I will say the cardio workout involved in learning to snowboard is incredible. I must have lost a pound.
Special thanks to my friend M who took me up, and who probably would have been more patient with my fear than I imagined. This may not be 'the' year for me and the snowboard, partly because I spent so much dough learning to sail, but that year may well come. Or maybe I'll decide skiing is better. Either way I'll experience personal growth: sure, this sport is cool, sit on this dangling, rocking bench which hauls you 80 feet off the ground to the top of a mountain and then rocket down on this slippery thing at high speeds...geez.
To part of me, I admit it does sound like fun. But there's so much fear between me and that place. May God lead me through it.
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