Ski vacation

I went on this new vacation with CC when I was back on the other continent. This was a ski vacation. When CC said "ski vacation," I imagined myself, lying on a fluffy rug in front of a roaring fire in a ski lodge, wearing long under ware, drinking hot chocolate and looking comely. Day 1 goal was "teach YSA to ski." (Cross country ski.) This actually went pretty well. I felt happy and capable, especially when I went down this one hill and CC said, 'Wow, you are the first person I've ever taught to ski who went down that hill on the first day. Most people take their skis of and walk down. One person cried."

(When she said that I tried to seem casual and to hide my surprise at the fact that apparently taking off one's skis was possible and, unbeknownst to me until that moment, an option for hill descent.)

Then, on Day 2, we drove and drove up into the wild back lands of Quebec and went on a 10 kilometer, double black diamond trail. 'Cause Day 1 "teach YSA to ski" seemed to have gone so well. But actually, I did not know how to ski very well. This was hard for me to understand because I am so butch and hot. Hot, butchy girls can do all kinds of athletic things and impress their girlfriends. This is just the way it is.

(We skied to this cabin thing in the middle of the woods. This was my favorite part because I butchly took over supervision of the wood stove.)

The problem is that they have all these new sports in Canada that maybe you are not so good at. These sports are not "new" to the people in Canada, who live in igloos and ski 50 Km every day to school as infants and wrestle polar bears.

Did I mention that it was 5 degrees below zero? In Canada they use this other temperature scale that makes you feel like, 'aw, that's not so cold.' 'Cause when it's not so cold out, Canadians will be like, "It's 20 below!" So you soon learn to disregard the temperature as reported in Celsius.

But actually, it was -5 F and I thought I was going to die. I really thought I had frost bite on one of my toes. It turned bright white. I thought of the Jack London story about the guy freezing to death in the snow. I prepared for the worst. I showed CC the toe. But she laughed. "Ha ha! That happens all the time."

Like, bright white toes are funny for some reason in Canada.

Cross country skiing is hard and you fall over a lot, mostly on your face so that your head is buried in snow. Then you can't get up because the blasted skis are attached to your feet and you need your girlfriend to pull your head out of the snow. This is neither butch nor hot.

The third day, CC went skiing by herself on the black diamond alone and climbed up a mountain in her skis, wrestled a polar bear, skied off a precept etc., was quite joyful. I staggered along an 'easy/intermediate' trail, falling many times, certain that my fingers were turning black and blue at that moment, imaging life sans fingers, trying with a jaunty "allo!" to seem to passers-by that despite my own conviction, I was not in a winter emergency situation, and cursing cross country skiing (occasionally, out loud, with head buried in snow). When we met up in the forest CC was like, "isn't this great??!" and I was thinking like, wow, I sure love CC, but I sure do not want to ski anymore.

Then, finally, we went to a spa.