My school throws a Winter Carnival every year, where
students get discounts on lift tickets for Winter Park, meal vouchers, and
things like that. A friend of my invited me to pitch in for a house someone
found for only $60 each and overall it was a great weekend.
As a Colorado native, I have been skiing since I was a
child, but because of how expensive it is to go now, I rarely get the
opportunity to go. Therefore I was really excited—so much so that I was
bouncing off the walls on the drive up.
The house we stayed in was HUGE. It was only about ten
minutes away from the Winter Park ski resort. It slept nineteen people in beds
and there were three pullout couches, and we had twenty-two people staying
there. My friend Bailey and I, in our excitement, ran up to the very top and
claimed a bed, deeming this room (the entire fourth floor) “the party room,” a
choice we would regret after skiing and then having to climb three flights of
stairs to get to bed. Also, drinking and stairs don’t go great together either.
Friday we managed to get out of the house by nine or ten and
we hit the slopes. I had never been skiing with my friends before (I typically
go with my dad) and it was exciting. I really tried to do my best and go fast
and ski well, by keeping my skis in “French fry” mode when I turned instead of
“pizza” mode and things like that. I even tried skiing backwards for the first
time which was really fun in a sort of terrifying way.
Because of how hard I was trying I ended up exhausting
myself, but because this was one of the few times I actually paid for my own
ticket, I really wanted to get the most out of it and kept skiing until the lifts
closed at 4pm. It started to snow, and visibility was super low, which makes
the terrain really hard to distinguish.
I was going down a blue square (medium level) for my last
run down, and with the low visibility and how weak my legs were from being tired,
I was asking for disaster. All of a sudden, a patch of very steep moguls comes
into view about ten feet in front of me, and I knew I would did not have the
time or strength to stop. My skis hit the side of a mogul and I biffed it and
hit my head, and it hurt.
About a hundred people asked if I was okay, and while I was
touched at their concern I was also really embarrassed.
That night we went to a concert that was put on by our
school. It was a DJ called “3lau,” which I assume is the German word “blau”
meaning the color blue. I really like techno, but I didn't love his techno.
Techno usually has that slow build up that keeps building and building until it
drops and you get all worked up and dance like crazy and it’s super fun.
However, sometimes the drop is low and bass-y and sexy and facilitates dancing,
and sometimes the drop goes up and it’s sparkly and happy and the chord
progression just makes you so goddamn optimistic you feel like you’re in the
opening sequence of an anime.
3lau, unfortunately for me, almost exclusively used this
“sparkly” drop and it kept psyching me out because I wanted that deep drop so
badly. On a different note, the light show was fantastic and I did have a
lot of fun.
I was up until around 3AM Friday night, and after going
skiing that whole day and the concert I was so
tired.
Waking up Saturday morning was pretty hard, and at first I insisted
I was too tired to go skiing again and that I didn’t want to go. Luckily my
friend was like, “Nope. You’re going,” and I dragged myself out of bed,
rationalizing that I had already paid for the ticket so I had better not waste
that money. Plus how often do I get to go skiing?
After another fantastic day of skiing, (during which I didn't fall!) and once we were back at the house I took a nap. When I woke up
there was already partying going on and I quickly learned that I really suck at beer pong even when I’m
sober.
Overall it was a really fantastic weekend, and I was quite
sad to go. It was like a magical land where I could just have fun all the time
and go skiing and socialize with friends every day. It was so depressing to
think about going back to school where work, homework, classes, and stress were
waiting for me.
