Many people ski for a living or for fun, and many are quite good at it. But, what about that one person on the hill who can’t seem to go down the hill without flipping, tripping, or hugging a tree? Well, I can’t vouch for other people, but I will say that I’m usually that one skier. I don’t know why this happens to me, but that’s not what my speech is about. I’m here to tell you about my many misadventures.

I have had quite a few “adventures”, but the most memorable one was the trip I took with my uncle. There’s a joke in my family that my uncle and me should ski competitively. Obviously, we couldn’t. We decided to go skiing on Christmas Break last year, and chose the worst day to ski. It was around -15˚C and all the hills had iced over. Our day went along uneventfully, until we decided to go down a hill that was completely covered by ice. The hill was rough, but I’m proud to say that I didn’t fall on the way down. I decided to show off a little and coast up a small hill to slow down before going back into the chair lift line. I was going too fast, and went flying off he hill, and was only saved from an impromptu meeting with a fence by jamming my skis into two small trees. After I successfully got out of the ditch I had so suddenly found myself in, I saw my uncle get run over by another skier. As they helped each other up, a third skier promptly slammed into them and sent all of them sprawling. Once my uncle and I were ready to go back up the hill, we got on the chair lift, which I fell off of pretty quickly. After that, we decided to give up for the day.

Running a close second is last years ski trip. I was skiing with my friends when we decided to go down a hill that really should have been closed for safety reasons. The beginning was fairly smooth, but then I got my skies stuck in a rut, and went straight down the hill until I slid and lost my gloves, poles, a ski and, somehow, my hat, even though it was underneath my helmet. I managed to finish the hill, but that wasn’t the end of it. We went back up the chair lift, and my ski snagged on the extension cord that powered the lift. I shut down the entire lift. Once the plug was plugged in again, we all went down the hill, and finished the day with a spectacular double back flip that I landed by bouncing off of my helmet. A little shaken, I finished the hill, but got separated from my group. I did a few runs by myself to try to salvage my dignity, but failed miserably when I ran over a small tree and almost went into a ski lift pole. Feeling discouraged, I went in for lunch and tried to prepare myself for the rest of the day. all I managed to do was eat to much, and the rest of the afternoon was a series of minor crashes that covered me in black, blue and purple. As you can imagine, this was a great conversation opener for the next two weeks as I explained why I had trouble sitting down. I hope to see you on the hills sometimes, if I haven’t already wrapped myself around that tree that everyone else can avoid.

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