It is ski week in Germany. So, naturally, we are skiing. And I love it. At least that's what I keep telling myself, like a mantra, as I observe with considerable cognitive dissonance the happy faces all around me as we suffer through this odd ritualistic self mutilation called skiing.
But it becomes clear when one considers where skiing is popular: Puritan New England, Mormon Utah, Calvinist Northern Europe. These locations have two important things in common. First, a religious cultural inheritance that is skeptical of too much enjoyment and full of guilt. Second, current and long standing relative economic comfort. Put these two things together and you get societies desperate for self-torture opportunities to ease the guilt of so much comfort. Enter skiing.
The equipment and lift tickets are so expensive as to give one the impression that purveyors are deliberately trying to price literally everyone out of the market. There is no cost-benefit analysis that justifies the price. Until you realize it is a cost-suffering analysis. All these users of new Atomic parabolic skis and Oakley goggles and Spyder snow pants are really making a public declaration that they were willing to inflict more economic suffering upon themselves than I was, as evidenced by my selfish insistence on using 12-year old black ski pants that are too big and that I have rigged with the plastic strap removed from my kid's swim goggles as a make-shift suspender to prevent them falling down to my knees. You see, I'm just not willing to suffer that much. I'm not a good Calvinist like these other folks.
Then there is the process of getting to the mountain. Packing everything into the car and driving to the mountain. Driving back to the hotel because someone forgot their gloves. Returning to the mountain and checking in at the locker room. Again, being a not-quite-pious zealot, I have purchased tokens for only two lockers even though we really need four. So when I open our lockers, helmets and poles and boots come tumbling out in a heaping mess. I remove the skis and place them against the adjacent lockers. The skis fall over. I place them again and remove remaining items from the locker. The skis fall over. I place them again. I call for the kids to come get their boots. The skis fall over. I place them again. The kids get their boots. The skis fall over. They have the wrong boots. I place the skis. They get the right boots but have the wrong socks. How did that even happen? The skis fall over.
You know, I could handle the stinky, claustrophobic locker room if they could just design skis that don't fall over when you lean them against a wall. That's always the thing that bursts my bubble of feigned self-loathing Puritanism and causes me to openly express that I am unhappy with the ski experience. Such an expression, of course, is highly inappropriate as it reminds others of their own discomfort and tempts them to similarly express their true feelings.
At length, we are fitted with too many layers, and are on our way to the lift line. The "walking to the lift line while carrying skis over your shoulder" is another bit of ski suffering that forces me to conclude that the whole thing must be designed, on purpose, to suck. Walking in ski boots (which even when you buy the "comfortable" ones never feel like they were designed for human feet) is already terrible. But you have to do it with these ill-balanced sticks on your back. Truly we are reenacting the Via Dolorosa.
The lift line, once there, is a mad scrum characterized by being cut off by 6-year-olds who you just know are way better skiers than you. The lift ride itself is a serene reward amidst the insanity. A calm before the storm. It's almost worth all the hassle just to feel the pleasant contrast of riding in the gondola. The peace is short-lived, however, for once on the mountain, you are faced with a hill too steep and intense psychological pressure from individuals who only moments earlier were pretending to be your friends but who are now yelling at you to "Do it! Just do it! Don't be a loser!" This thing that causes me so much stress and anxiety (because I am equally likely to descend on my face as on my skis) is now the thing that I must do lest I be inadequate in the eyes of those who, allegedly, love me. But then I remember, it is not to be enjoyed. This is not supposed to be fun. This is penance for all the joy and comfort I have in life. And so I ski.
