| | Last weekend, I took a trip up to Vermont to visit one of Ryan's lifelong friends, Brian, who's at Dartmouth. Our plan was to visit and take advantage of the last snowboarding weekend of the season at Killington, a ski mountain in VT. It also happened to be the weekend of their pond skim. I had never heard of a pond skim before, but it's apparently a common spring skiing or last weekend of skiing activity at many different mountains. They dig out a chest deep trench that's maybe 50 feet long, fill it with water, and have a contest where people try to get up enough speed coming down a hill that they can skim across the top of the water and make it out the other side. People are all crazy and wear funny costumes to do it, they play music and announce you as you head down the hill, and the give prizes to the best skim, best fall, best costume, etc.
I was doubting whether this sounded like something that I wanted to do. On the one hand, any kind of crazy silliness ESPECIALLY involving COSTUMES is right up my alley. Nothing screams Jessica like that kind of event. On the other hand, anyone who knows me knows that I consider 73 degree water freezing cold, so it's unclear how I would fare splashing down in water that is *actually* cold. And it's not like I would expect to make it across. But as I discussed this with Michal, she matter-of-factly reminded me, "eh, you only live once." So pond-skimming it would be. Saturday came and the weather turned out to be sunny and warmish, the mountain was a pleasant wet slushiness, and I had a blast snowboarding. We practiced for the pond skim on a naturally occuring puddle, and even though I didn't make it across that, getting my boots wet wasn't so bad. Sunday was the day of the actual pond skim. Somehow, the temperature dropped to 30 degrees, the "pond" was covered in a thin layer of ice, all the slushy mountain froze over into the iciest conditions I'd ever been in, and it started to snow. Meanwhile, I had come equipped with my shorts tankini made of neoprene (1mm), a swim cap, mardi gras beads, and swim goggles. I was starting to think that maybe if the cutoff happened before we registered, it wouldn't be such a big disappointment. It's one thing when it's kind of warm out, but when it's snowing?? But when we registered, they were only halfway to the cutoff, so I was definitely getting to go. We got our official numbers, and it turned out it was only an hour until the skim. We decided to take one run down the mountain to prepare ourselves. This is when I started really freaking out. It was so icy, and I was really scared that I would fall on the way down the hill, BEFORE the pond, and look like a complete idiot. Plus I wouldn't be wearing my helmet or wrist guards. I was definitely having second thoughts, but I had to keep thinking, you only live once!
I changed into my outfit and came out into the lodge in my somewhat small outfit, and people told me I was either very brave or crazy. I would like to think brave, so I'm going to go with that. Ryan wore his swim trunks and an awesome crossing-guard type orange mesh top, Brian dressed like Mugatu (or some combo of Mugatu and some of his other Halloween costumes), and his friend Christine who got roped in at the last minute wore some of her ski clothes. We hiked up the hill with all the other people, and it was so icy it was hard even just to sit up there without slipping down. I was sitting on my pants and covering myself with my jacket to stay warm until it was my turn, and I decided to also wear my gloves on the way down. We watched from the top as person after person splashed down into the water. I actually somehow got less nervous and more psyched up. Ryan went first and had a spectacular go at it, splashing down probably more than halfway across. Then a couple of pre-teen girls went together, and their strategy was to go down slow, stop, take off their boards, and then run into the water. To me, that took even more guts than falling! Then my turn came, and I took it a little slow so I wouldn't fall, actually got part of the way across, and then fell in. It was SO COLD. But I couldn't stop smiling -- you can see how much I'm laughing in all the pictures. It was one of the most fun things I've ever done, and I'm proud that I stood up to the cold and showed it who was boss. Brian came SO CLOSE to making it. And Christine had the best fall, losing a ski to the pond which had to be fished out later when they drained it. Ryan found someone's mom to use our camera and take video of us. You can hear people commenting on how I'm going to slow in mine :)
Links to video!
Starting off okay
Still looks like I might have a chance
Brian as Mugatu
Christine splashing down
Ryan "safety first" Kelly (someone says this about his outfit in the video)
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| | Posted 4/15/2008 5:48 PM - 74 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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