Skiing down a slope or two, miles and miles away from you
On Saturday, I had a lovely day sliding down hills on long flat sticks. The very kind friends who invited us to their holiday home in Austria last year to go skiing invited us again. To everyone's great surprise ChrisC and I turned out not to have forgotten all that much, and picked up pretty much where we left off in the ski-learning process last February.
We briefly tackled the Baby slope, which hadn't become Steep And Scary again while I wasn't looking. We took the chair lift up the mountain to a longer blue run and swooshed down that. Our friends went off to play in grown up snow while ChrisC and I had a lesson, which culminated in us coming down part of a red run. (I say coming down: it was very much an exercise in getting down a steeper slope than you can really manage, rather than skiing with style.)
All in all, I was feeling relatively pleased with my skiing as I took the long, winding blue run back down the mountain to Rachel and Patrick's house. The one criticism everyone had levelled at me all day (especially including the ski instructor who took our lesson): I'm too scared of speed. Too right, I am. I am the master of the unnecessary snow plough to slow down. No, they said, in order to make progress you need to conquer your fear of going quickly. So I'd been flirting a little on the way down with going faster. As we reached the final downhill chunk before the house, I figured: right, this is familiar territory. Skis parallel, straight down the slope. It was going well.
Then I needed to swerve to avoid someone, and I went into the loose powder beside the groomed piste. It was hardly off-piste, it was the sort of powder that any decent skier gets overly excited about. But it was a little bumpy, and I found myself getting out of control. OK, time to slow down.
The most counter-intuitive thing about skiing is that, when going too fast, you need to lean forwards to get things under control. I - and indeed most people learning - automatically lean backwards when everything feels too fast and scary. I could feel my weight was in the wrong place, and was just trying to work out how to move it forwards again and then I was on the floor.
No matter, I'd fallen over several times. I'd ski'd into a fence at one point, and Patrick paused to take a photo of me face down on the piste, legs hopelessly entangled in the mesh fence. I was laughing and sticking my thumb up as Rachel ski'd round to untangle me.
But this fall hurt. Whenever I fall over, I find there's a moment of blankness after impact, then a sort of automatic system check begins. Am I conscious? Am I breathing? Do I feel like both these things are going to continue to be true? (Yes, yes, yes).
Does anything feel like it hurts so spectacularly it's broken? No.
OK. Right. Shall I get up?
No.
By this time Patrick has ski'd over, and ChrisC has abandoned his skis and run back up the hill. I assure them that I'm OK. But I can't quite face getting up.
And at the back of my mind as I lie in the snow: it is DERT, the national rapper competition in three weeks. I am dancing in it. Without me, we don't have a team. If this is serious, rapperaddict is going to kill me.
Eventually I make it to a sitting position, then to standing. Patrick skis off to fetch the car (I have had the foresight to fall over very close to the road) and I walk slowly down the end of the slope, clumping awkwardly in ski boots and leaning all my weight on my ski poles. Having driven back to the house, I cautiously stand up out of the car. And there is a horrible, sickening, lurching sensation that feels like the insides of my knee aren't properly joined together any more. I sit back down again.
I spend the rest of the evening sitting on the sofa, my leg on cushions, the ice pack I brought to take care of my ordinarily 'bad' knee wrapped around the knee formerly known as 'good'. When I shuffle to the bathroom, I lean all my weight on someone else to avoid that nasty sideways shifting feeling in my knee.
RapperAddict is very probably going to kill me.
Heroes of the day: Rachel, Patrick, ChrisC.