...that should have come long, long ago.
I HATE SKIING.
With a passion.
This probably won't come as much of a shock to most of you. Particularly my immediate family. Yeah, you people who read my journal and comment anonymously, and to whom this entry is particularly addressed. I stopped liking skiing YEARS ago. I would vastly prefer to hang around the room or the lodge and catch up on my reading/conlanging. Or stomp around in the snow making sculptures and forts, and all the other awesome things you can do with snow that DON'T involve hurling yourself down steep inclines at insane speeds.
There's a couple main reasons why I don't like skiing.
>One, it's scary as hell, especially because my family are all better than me and drag me over to the black diamonds with the rocks and the trees and the ice and the overhangs and the chutes and the AAAAAAAAAGGH. This scares the shit out of me and worsens my technique (I tend to be more tentative, leaning back all the time, etc), while they all get better, and the vicious cycle goes on. I think this started about ten years ago.
>Two, I don't see the fun in it. I get that people are thrilled by the speed and the flying feeling you get, and to be honest sometimes I get that feeling too. But I mostly get it from roller coasters. Like I said, there are plenty of other fun things to do in cold, snowy, picturesque places.
>Three, it's very physically uncomfortable. Obviously it's bloody cold most of the time. When it's not, it's uncomfortably hot and the snow is melty and shitty. Sweat gathers in unusual, unnatural places. Hair gets disarranged and pulled and fucked with. (I should just cut it short already.)
Extremities get numb. Nose runs. Uncomfortable temperature gradients develop, and are impossible to correct. Freezing cold air (and snow if it's falling) attack neck and wrists. Legs get sore, as do butt and shoulders (from sitting on the lift). Boots are invariably too tight, and bruise my shins (thus making me lean back even more, and see above re: technique).* Oh, and in the long term, skiing can severely fuck up your knees. I like my knees.
Looking over that list, I don't see one little bloody thing I enjoy about skiing, and a whole raft of things I don't enjoy. What's the point? Save the lift-ticket money (which is very nontrivial) (not to consider the ski-lodge-food money, also nontrivial) and leave me at the hotel or wherever; I'll be perfectly happy by myself. There is plenty of precedence for me enjoying myself in Tahoe or ski locales without skiing. I'll stomp around outside and make snow sculptures. I'll play with icicles and pelt trees with snowballs. I'll make silly snow forts from diagrams I saw in the U.S. Army Survival Manual and try to sit in them even though they're too small. I'll try to make shave ice, and I'll fail, but I'll eat the whole thing and have a good laugh all the while.
Oh, and Mom? Listen good. You can't argue that I'm not getting my cardiovascular exercise. Tromping around in snow is legitimate exertion. In fact, if left to my own devices I'd probably get more exercise than if I got dragged to the slopes, cause I wouldn't spend so much time (a) in lift lines, (b) on the lift, or (c) stopped 1/n of the way down the slope to make sure I'm going the right way, to keep from getting up too much speed, or all the myriad other reasons.
What in the name of Yavanna is wrong with that?
*Many of the same physical-discomfort arguments could be made against scuba diving. But I enjoy scuba diving, which renders all the myriad little annoyances eminently bearable. Scuba diving: the shit. Skiing: not the shit.
Additional disclaimer: These are the reasons that I, myself, personally, hate skiing; don't let me put you off skiing if you've never tried it or if it's something you enjoy.