A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
I believe the year was 1978, and one of my job related trips was to, what was then, the Hercules Powder Co. facility in Utah. The purpose of the trip was to coordinate design requirements for the Navy’s Trident submarine missile with the Hercules engineers. As it turned out, scheduling of the trip took place during the winter and I 
planned to try my luck at skiing while I was there. All the skiers in my office were envious and wanted to share all their skiing experiences with me. Having lived most of my adult life going to college in southern California and working in Florida,
I hadn’t ever done any snow skiing, and appreciated most of the advice. I had no skiing togs and was in need of everything to play the part of a novice ski bum. Then, as luck would have it, I learned one of the other young engineers in our office was an avid skier and was willing to let me borrow his equipment for the trip. He provided me with a hat, goggles, gloves, sweater, a lined ski jacket and ski pants. All I had to come up with was some long johns, a couple pair of heavy wool socks and sun glasses. What a deal that was! He told me I could rent the skis, polls and boots at the ski lodge. So, off I went ready to meet the challenges of the Utah ski slopes.
It was recommended that I try the Park City, Utah ski resort, and since I was only going to have time for one day of skiing, that’s where I went. The snow that year in the Park City area was deep and beautiful, and I had no trouble finding the resort. The ski lodge was a picturesque structure set at the bottom of a mountain slope, 
where several ski trails were cut into the tree covered mountainside converged, with ski lift access to each. The ski instructors were very helpful, providing all levels of instruction. They had a beginner’s package, which included skis, polls & boot rental, a morning of basic instruction and a full day lift pass, all for a very reasonable price.
Even though I may have looked the part of a skier, I wasn’t ready for those first three hours of hard work it took 
just to learn how to stay upright on skis. They taught us how to walk sideways up a slope, how to point the front of our skis together to “wedge” slowly down a slope, how to fall and how to get up. And boy did I ever need to know how to do that! Once the morning basic class was over, I was ready for a rest and some lunch somewhere warm.
After lunch, the next four hours were spent riding the lift up the mountain and trying to
get back down the beginners slope without running into a tree or crashing into someone or falling and breaking something. To this day, I can’t believe I fell down that many times, in that many different ways, and didn’t break something. I have to admit, by the end of the day, even though I was tired, I was enjoying myself and really didn’t want to turn in my skis and leave. But I did, and of course that isn’t the end of the story.
I went back to my motel in town, thawed out in a long hot shower, had a wonderful steak dinner at a local restaurant, then went back to the motel and tried to watch some TV. But I was so tired by then I couldn’t stay awake, and just went to bed early, since I had to catch my flight back to Florida the next day anyway.
The next morning I woke up with two surprises. First of all I could hardly get out of 
bed. I was sore from head to toe. I hurt in places I didn’t even know I had muscles. I finally struggled over to the window and looked outside to find it had snowed 
during the night and the rental car was covered with almost 12 inches
of snow. What a sight that was! Then I began to worry if I would be able to get to the airport in time for my flight.
As it turned out, by the time I had breakfast, packed and checked out of the motel, the roads were clear enough for me to make it to the airport in time to catch my flight and my once in a lifetime ski trip was over. But that didn’t mean the muscle pain was over. Not on your life! It took almost a week for my body to recover from that day on the ski slopes. Even though I have never been on snow skis again my entire life, I wouldn’t exchange that experience for anything. I think the only type of snow skiing I would consider now would be in a nice slow horse-drawn sleigh ride with the love of my life by my side.
Old Things R New 