Skiing is one of my many hobbies where I throw common sense out the door and attempt to live outside of reality. Here's a couple of pictures that show the effects from one of my ski trips. Make sure you click on the pics to get the full idea.
Here's the story. Chris (my skiing buddy who offered to drive every time if I bought a season's pass) and I headed up to Steven's Pass ski resort on Wednesday, January 18 2000. I had already sent an email off to work that I wouldn't be in that day and would instead work that evening telecommuting. Chris and I are relatively similar in terms of ability at alpine skiing. We don't suck, but we aren't kickass Warren Miller/ ski patrol types. However, we like to do interesting things like ski odd places just to see what it is like. BTW, it was a total kickass day, frosty, less than 30 degrees, and totally sunny. The groomed was good stuff, but most of the ungroomed was a bit chunky and nast because of a lack of fresh.
Anyways, we decided to check out a relatively easy creek bed we had skied into submission last March. Turns out there's a big difference between the amount of snow in January as compared to March. There were still potholes 6ft deep into the creek and tons of trees and whatnot that wasn't covered. We skied it once and left it alone for a few hours. Right before that particular lift closed, I decided that we could ski the creek bed way better now that we were warmed up and knew where the holes were. I was totally cruisin' it and going way fast. I figured I had best keep on it because Chris would be right behind me (he likes to go fast.) I jumped a couple of the holes, and I'm feeling pretty good. I remember that there is a big one in front of me so I decide to take the alternate route around it up on the side rather than skiing the bottom of the bed. (Other people had already carved a decent set of tracks through here.) I notice that there's a tree about a foot away from the curve. I ski around it and WHAM. I caught something hard w/ my forearm that is enough to kill almost all of my momentum (which was substantial) and snap my neck forward pretty badly. I stop about 10 feet away and can't figure out how I hit that tree when I skied around it. About 2 minutes later Chris comes around and does the same thing but not as hard. He barely notices but stops when he sees me. Finally I see that there is another tree (bare of branches) almost a foot closer to the track than the tree I had been dodging around.
I then look down at my arm because my left arm is in just a bit of pain. The tree had just about torn my whole sleeve off of my coat. It didn't really catch on anything. Just the friction of the bark and the velocity of my impact had been enough to rip it most of the circumference around my arm. There was also a 3 inch tear in the second layer of nylon (the weatherX/goretex, whatever layer.) Down feathers were leaking out all around me. Needless to say we were pretty impressed. Unfortunately the jacket wasn't exactly in a repairable state so I chucked it after I got a couple of pics of it for entertainment. Definitely the most expensive ski day I've ever had. The feathers leaking out for the next three hours was pretty funny though.
My neck and forearm aren't feeling too great from the collision either. It was an asprin night tonight. Ah well, asprin are cheap. A new ski coat is going to be expensive. The dead one was like 10 years old or so, and I got it on a pro deal for dirt cheap. I kind of doubt I'll do that good this time around. Wouldn't it have sucked though to have ruined the coat and not gotten a good story out of it? Then I'd really be irritated at having to buy a new one.