Monday, February 24, 2014

Skiing is Synonymous with Scaring Five Year Olds, At Least for Me

A while back there was a Groupon for $50 worth of Funspot tokens for $25.  JO absolutely loves this place, and I have to say, I do too.  Funspot is the "world's largest arcade" featuring lots of carnival games and tons of old school pinball and arcade games.  Recently we realized that the Groupon was about to expire so we made plans to do an overnight trip to New Hampshire over my February vacation.











Because JO is always looking to challenge people, aka me, to be better and take risks he convinced me that we should do some skiing on this trip.  With the exception of trying cross country skiing once, and it didn't go very well, I have never been on skis.  I don't like to go fast and I don't like to fall.  I really wanted to say no but JO was really excited so I caved and said I would give it a try.  I put together this lovely "ghetto" skiing outfit: windbreaker pants, leggings, slipper socks from Old Navy, and sunglasses for goggles.  Who needs Oakley goggles when you have three year old, scratched to hell Ann Taylor Loft sunglasses.












We got up super early to head out to Mt. Sunapee.  The weather was gorgeous and we rented skis outside of the park to avoid the crazy lines.  I was actually kind of excited when we got to the mountain.  I have to say, we got a super deal.  My learning class came with a all day pass to the South Peek and JO got to ski free on the entire mountain because he was "sharing his passion" with me, which basically meant he had to walk me to my class.  The mountain looked beautiful.


After nearly injuring myself putting on my ski boots, yes you read that correctly, I managed to get my skis on and headed off to my class.  We started on a ramp, maybe two feet high, with hardly any incline.  This terrified me and I cried twice trying to do my snow plow down the hill.  Luckily I was wearing sunglasses so no one could see my mini-meltdown.  A few minutes later we were told to ski over to the baby bunny  hill.  To get there you had to ski up a very small ramp.  Most people were flying right up it.  It was just a ramp.  For some reason I kept sliding backwards as I attempted to get up the ramp.  All of a sudden I totally frozen, had what I can only describe as a panic attack, and started shaking and crying so violently that several mothers of young children came rushing over to try to help me.  My instructor came back, realizing something must have been wrong, and I promptly dropped out of the class.  If I couldn't make it up the entrance ramp how would I even begin to get down the hill.  I walked back to the ski rack to calm down and wait for JO.  

Of course, when JO came back he was able to convince me to try again.  This led to one of the lowlights on my life's highlight reel, almost wiping out an entire class of five year olds on the magic carpet ride.  As I was skiing down the bunny hill it became painfully obvious that I could only turn right.  I went careening towards the magic carpet, sheer horror on the faces of the five year olds.  They had no where to go and neither did I.  Thankfully, JO managed to throw himself in between the children and me.  I came to a stop before injuring anyone, or myself.  

I spent four more hours trying to master the left turn to no avail.  JO wants me to try this whole skiing thing again, but when you make a young child scream in terror you know you don't belong out there.  

After skiing we went to the Lake House for dinner, a perfect rustic setting for dinner by the lake, before headed back to the hotel to rest up for a day at Funspot.  Funspot was more fun than skiing, that's for sure!  I have to say, the more time we spend by Lake Winnipseauke (I'm not even going to attempt to spell that correctly) the more I love it.  It's certainly not the city life but it's so beautiful, and the mountains remind me of our National Parks adventures.


 

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