What I Have To Put Up With....

Let me tell you a story. The year was 1988, and I was an exchange student in Germany. My host family took me on a ski trip to the Italian Alps. I confidently said I knew how to ski. But really my experience consisted mainly of visiting a land fill. (I didn't know any better, really.) There I was, on top on the mountain. MOUNTAIN, people. Not land fill. And right on the other side was a cliff. A cliff ... on the mountain. I did what most people would do. I stood on top and cried. And I slid down on my bottom. And my host family decided pretty much on the spot to put me in ski school for a week. Well, if I do say so myself, by the end of that week, I wasn't half bad. When I came back from my year abroad, I was in college. I didn't get a lot of chances to go skiing. And then, my junior year, I decided to switch over to snowboarding. So I snowboarded for about ten years (a lot more than the years spent on skies). Then we bought a house. And got married. And had kids. And we just didn't hit the slopes very much. So last year, I decided to switch back over to skies. My body is thanking me for that (although, I'm tempted to bring out the board just once more to try it out again -- I really love it), but here's the point. I'm not a very confident skier. I can get down pretty much any hill. But I'm not very daring. This is a little video of me. I'm the one in the middle of the hill cautiously contemplating my next move. And the rest is what I have to put up with pretty much on a daily basis. You feel sorry for me, don't you.