Skiing

I dislike skiing.  Sliding down an ice mountain at 60 mph on two slats of wood just doesn't appeal to me.  It's cold.  It can mess up your knees or give you other injuries.  People have died doing it.

In 1986, I allowed myself to be persuaded to go skiing at Garmisch Partenkirchen in the Bavarian alps.  There was a daily C-130 flight - the klong - from RAF Bentwaters that serviced the four forward operating detachments in Germany - SLAN: Sembach, Leipheim, Alhorn and Norvenich.  Leiphein was pretty close to Munich.  So we hopped the klong to Leipheim.  We got a taxi from Leipheim AB to Munich, and from there caught the train to Garmisch.  I was lost the moment we left the front gate at Leipheim, and knew there was no way I could find my way back.

Our reservation had been lost at the AFEES hotel in Garmisch, so we ended up in a two single bed suite at the very end of the facility.

Next day we geared up for the slopes.  Rental gear.  These fucking German ski boots force your knees forward at about a 20° angle when they're buckled the way they should be.  The outside is solid plastic with absolutely no give whatsoever.  I'm worried.  Whatever protection they're affording my ankles by not allowing them to move a fraction of an inch in any direction is more than lost on the additional pressure they place on my knees, and more importantly, my shins, which have to take a considerable amount of weight.  I have to unbuckle them just to move around.

The "lift" wasn't what I was expecting.  I thought it worked like a chair, like civilized ski slopes in the states.  It was supposed to pick up up, carry you to the top and deposit you there.  No, this is just a drag.  You sort of seat it behind your butt and let it drag you up the slope.  I tried to sit down on it, and went right to the ground.  Embarrassing?  Hell yeah.

After figuring that out, I let it drag me up the slope.  I got off at the first "stop", while the drag took the more experienced skiers further up the slope.

Okay.  I'm at the top of the hill, getting all set for my first foray down the mountain.  Goggles down, feet set, deep breath, and HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!

The bunny slope is the bottom of the expert slope. People are literally jumping off a ramp behind me and landing in front of me!

I shook that off and tentatively start down the mountain.  I slide across the slope to the edge, then fall down.  I get up, slide the other way across the slope and fall down.  I have no idea how to turn these things.  The lady I'm with keeps telling me to snowplow - put the tips of the skis together - and then I can lift one and turn the way I want.  Except that isn't happening.  Trying to make the skis snowplow is an exercise in futility.

Not my fault.  The physics of these things were later explained to me. The blades are shaped so that if you want to snowplow, you lean forward, and put more pressure on the front of the skis. they naturally come together then. Except with these hideous instruments of torture I was doing all I could to NOT lean forward, because it hurt my shins too damn much to do so.

After about a dozen or so back and forth trips across the slope, I said, "Fuck it." and aimed my skis straight down the slope.  Feet together, crouched down to get my knees forward and keep the center of gravity so my shins aren't the focal point of my weight, and off I went.  Wind screaming across my face, gathering speed as I went.  It was exhilarating, but I quickly became concerned because I realized I was going to hit the bottom of that slope with a considerable amount of velocity and I had no idea how to stop gracefully.

Not to worry.  My own incompetence took care of that.  I hit a small bump and found myself momentarily airborne.  The landing was less than graceful. I crashed and cartwheeled for a good hundred yards down the slope, before I came to a stop, head down, my left ankle somewhere in the vicinity of my right shoulder, having just scattered most of me gear for a hundred yards along the slope.  One of my skis slowly slid past me.  I lay there for a good 30 seconds, wondering just how the hell I had let her talk me into doing this.

Fortunately, the weather closed in and they closed the slopes the next day, and we spent the remainder of our week touring Bavaria.  I wasn't thrilled about getting back on the slopes.

Returning to England was an adventure.  With no idea how to get back to Leipheim, we took the train to Oostende which gave me a wonderful tour of the Rhine river and some of the places I had read abut from WWII, like St. Goar.  Took a nighttime ferry to Felixstowe, which was just a few miles from our house.

Upon arriving back to work, I found that my best friend had been in an alcohol related accident involving hood surfing on a car at 50mph when a lady pushing a pram stepped out in front of him and the driver slammed on the brakes, then drove over him.  With me in Germany and him in the hospital, our maintenance had backed up, and it took us three months to dig ourselves back out of the hole and get back on schedule.

Mt. St. Helens

Sunday, May 18th, Mom and I went to church at St. Mary's in Ridgefield. It was a clear day, but kind of hazy on the horizon, so you couldn't see the mountains. After church, Mom would stay and chat with people leaving church.  I would get her keys and head out to the truck to listen to American Top 40.

It was about 11:00, and when I turned on the radio, I heard, ". . . and there are about a dozen fires burning around the base of the mountain. . . ."  I said to myself, "Er?"  I stepped out of the truck, and if I squinted my eyes, I could make out texture to the haze and clouds to the northwest. Yep, It had erupted! 

We got home just west of La Center and stayed glued to the TV for the rest of the day. The haze burned away and we had a clear view of the mountain. We had a model of the Cutty Sark on top of kind of rickety metal bookshelf.  In the afternoon, the cat would start fussing and meowing, and then this model would start to rock back and forth, tic-tic-tic.  We would run outside and see another huge plume blowing skyward.

A year or two before we had had a total solar eclipse on my Dad's birthday.  This year I joked, "Dad, Last year I got you an eclipse.  I tried to lay on an eruption for you this year, but it's harder to schedule volcanoes."

Later that summer I found work at a restaurant just off I-5 with a clear view of the mountain. Thousands would stop for a look.  There was a souvenir stand selling T-shirts, like "I made an ash of myself at Mt. St. Helens!"  My favorite was a T-shirt which had holes blowtorched into it, that read, "Mt. St. Helens Ski Team."

Arrested

I was arrested one time, when I was in the military.  I worked the night shift, got off at 7:00 am.  My best friend Jeff and I left the flightline and he wanted to stop and check his mail at the base post office.  The parking lot was full, so I pulled over and he hopped out for like 15 seconds to quick dash and check his box.  My car was in gear, my foot was on the clutch, and my passenger door was open, and this fired up skycop came over and wrote me a ticket for “parking in a non-designated parking spot.”  Fuckin’ idiot.  I gritted my teeth and bore it, but when he was done – my best friend was back in the car asking “WTF?” and the skycop was walking away.  I savagely shoved it in reverse and flipped the bird to the asshole, whose back was turned.

Well, his buddy – a master sergeant cop was watching and came over and read me the riot act and started quoting articles of the UCMJ at me about “provoking speech and gestures”  Like, how could I provoke the guy when his effing back was turned?  They decided to make an example of me, took me to the cop shop, read me my rights, did the whole frisk, search, process… etc. I cooperated.  As they were frisking me, the guy doing the frisking was being watched.  It was obvious he was being evaluated. An hour later I was in my squadron commander’s office, with my branch chief, Eddie Carlisle, who really didn’t need this shit. Eddie was there long before me, and I think he explained to the commander that if I copped an attitude, they could kiss their operational readiness rate good bye. They were pretty disgusted that the skycops had nothing better to do than bust the ass of tired wrench turners.  I got a “letter of admonishment”  which was the lightest tap on the wrist I could get short of ignoring me, just so they could say they did something to me at the base commander’s stand-up.  Looking back, I think Major Humphries, my CO, was a pretty right guy.