So, I went on my first ski trip with my youth group this weekend. I must say, it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t really too worried about the learning curve, since I water ski all the time, but I’ll admit, it proved to be a little more difficult than I anticipated.
We left the church about 5:00 Friday evening to go the Gell Memorial UMC to meet up with the rest of people that were were going with (the youth from that church and North Decatur UMC). Then, we were off to Flat Top, West Virginia. It was SUPPOSED to be about a 6 or 7 hour trip, but it ended up being more like 11 or 12 hours. We got there around 5 a.m. Saturday morning. It was also -2ºF when we got there. It didn’t bother me too bad. We weren’t meeting back in the morning until 9, so I still got about 3 hours of sleep in.
Once we had some breakfast we headed off to grab our rental equipment, which, frankly turned into more of an ordeal than I expected, but it didn’t take to long. Then it was time to hit the slopes. I did take a lesson since I had never done it before, which helped a little bit, but I may have gotten by without it in hindsight. I will admit I learned the hard way that I needed a little more practice on the “bunny slope” before I moved on to the real slopes. Saturday was a learning day for me for the most part, but it was still fun, and once I figured out some key points I caught on pretty quick. I think one of the main obstacles I had to get over was my fear of going to fast. At first I would freak out if I gained much of any speed and start doing all I could to stop myself, but once I learned how to control myself, I wasn’t scared of getting up a little speed. I did skip night skiing that day, but I wished hadn’t. Oh well, no big deal. Once the night skiers got back, we had a great time of worship and praise to finish the day.
Sunday was when teh real fun began. We again met at nine and ate some bfast, then it was once again time for the slope. Since I now had some confidence in my self, I was able to move on to some bigger slopes, and before I knew it I was heading down “blue” level slopes. I couldn’t get enough skiiing! I think my favorite “route” that I found was one that went all the way from the tip-top of the mountain right down to the lodge. It did take a while to get back up the mountain; it involved two lifts, but it was a long enough run that it was worth it. This time I definitely came back for night skiing.
Now the night skiing was interesting. The massive amounts of skiers had rubbed off most of the powdery snow throughout the day, so the slopes were probably at there most challenging at this point. The ligh level wasn’t really the issue. Unfourtunately some snowboarders apparently built up some humps at the bottom of a fairly steep hill on that run I mentioned earlier. I didn’t see these until I was about 10 or 15 feet away, so my attempt to awerve away resulted in one ski hitting the jump and the other not. Thankfully, it was one of those fun wipeouts and I was already laughing my butt off about half-way through my 20 or 30 foot slide. The night was again closed with an awesome time of worship and a great lesson from Ayubu. Needless to say, I slept very well that night.
Then there was the bus trip home… the now infamous bus trip home. Everything was going fine until we got about 30 miles north of Chattanooga. All of a sudden the bus just shut off, wthout warning, and it wouldn’t start back up. Anyone who’s ever been stuck on a broken-down bus knows the bus companies like to deliberate and stall instead of doing all they can to get you home. We basically sat there waiting on another bus for 2 hours, and finally rescue came. I ended up getting home about 10:00 that night, but it’s all good. On the whole it was an amazing trip and I can’t wait for next year’s retreat!
the_explorer 