A Weekend for the Ages
So, as the year draws to a close, that means one thing... it's freakin cold. As the cold comes upon us, what else to do than to make the most of it? Maybe you know the direction I'm shootin at here... That's right, it's time to ski baby. Growing up in the Great Plains of Oklahoma, I rarely find time to take a weekend trip to the mountains.
It's just not something common to say... "Hey whatcha doin this weekend?" "Oh, I'm just gonna go skiing. Ski on Saturday and Sunday, and come back. Be back for school on Monday, no prob."
This is not a common conversation in Oklahoma. Ours lives seem to be ridden with the utmost guiltiness of being utterly surrounded by cowfields and indians. So, where to go from here? I look around and see no cows or cowfields and.... by God, where are all the indians? I keep looking and looking, and lo and behold, I see mountains... millions upon millions of them, as far as the eye can see. The land of milk and honey has finally arrived within my eyesight.
So anyways, some of you may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. In short, I went skiing this weekend, and it was great. To travel only 3 hours by public transit and to be at the mountains is a godsent provision that most of us can only dream of. One of my Czech ex-teacher friends is living up in this mountain resort town, so I went up to hang out with him. And it was quite a trip. Fun fun fun. Saturday I was skiing all day, and it was so strange to me to be skiing on a weekend, just for the heck of it. It was a very wonderful time though. Yet, the downer to it was that it was definitely no Rocky Mountains. Because it was so early in the season, there was only one slope open, so every time, I would go up the same lift and go down the exact same slope every time. You would thing it would be mettlesome, but it never really got boring. It brought happiness to my face.
Oh, and one other great thing that happened while I was there... (first, the place I was at was called Harrachov, and it is maybe the most popular place in Czech Rep to ski) and if you maybe tuned into your local European Sports Channel, maybe you saw something quite intriguing... Ski Jumping! There was a World Competition of Ski Jumping here this weekend, and it was absolutely wild. People were going crazy and skiers were jumping from rooftops! (not really, only from the ski jump). I never really realized (as I'm sure you have neither) just how important ski-jumping is to the everyday life of some people... especially the freakin Poles. This mountain is just on the border of Poland and CZ, and there are some really good Polish ski-jumpers. Thousands of people were traveling to this slope from Germany, Poland, and Czech Rep to see this event. They all take it very seriously. Remember watching Monday Night Football on NBC and they would always show pics of crazy fans all painted up and wearing crazy get-ups...? Well, this is how the Poles dress up and act during a Ski-jumping event. There's noise makers and crazy hats, flags, trumpets, shirts, everything. It was completely absurd. What the heck are these people thinking? Do they realize that it's just people jumping?!?! There's nothing even remotely exciting about it! They watch someone jump and then land. There's no spectator influence at all, and it's not even a sport where you really play against anyone. It just matters how far you can jump. Your opponents don't influence you in anyway. They aren't standing on the lift taunting them or screaming at them as they jump or trying to psyche them out. They don't have to ski through a gauntlet or anything where the other skiers are standing on the sides with baseball bats and the jumper has to avoid the bats and THEN see how far he could jump. It's just JUMPING! Personally, I think my form of extreme jumping sounds much more enjoyable to watch.
Anyways, great weekend, and that only scratches the surface of some of the interesting events that have been presented to my life. Tune in later for more info. There's great words of wisdom that will surely inspire you.
It's just not something common to say... "Hey whatcha doin this weekend?" "Oh, I'm just gonna go skiing. Ski on Saturday and Sunday, and come back. Be back for school on Monday, no prob."
This is not a common conversation in Oklahoma. Ours lives seem to be ridden with the utmost guiltiness of being utterly surrounded by cowfields and indians. So, where to go from here? I look around and see no cows or cowfields and.... by God, where are all the indians? I keep looking and looking, and lo and behold, I see mountains... millions upon millions of them, as far as the eye can see. The land of milk and honey has finally arrived within my eyesight.
So anyways, some of you may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. In short, I went skiing this weekend, and it was great. To travel only 3 hours by public transit and to be at the mountains is a godsent provision that most of us can only dream of. One of my Czech ex-teacher friends is living up in this mountain resort town, so I went up to hang out with him. And it was quite a trip. Fun fun fun. Saturday I was skiing all day, and it was so strange to me to be skiing on a weekend, just for the heck of it. It was a very wonderful time though. Yet, the downer to it was that it was definitely no Rocky Mountains. Because it was so early in the season, there was only one slope open, so every time, I would go up the same lift and go down the exact same slope every time. You would thing it would be mettlesome, but it never really got boring. It brought happiness to my face.
Oh, and one other great thing that happened while I was there... (first, the place I was at was called Harrachov, and it is maybe the most popular place in Czech Rep to ski) and if you maybe tuned into your local European Sports Channel, maybe you saw something quite intriguing... Ski Jumping! There was a World Competition of Ski Jumping here this weekend, and it was absolutely wild. People were going crazy and skiers were jumping from rooftops! (not really, only from the ski jump). I never really realized (as I'm sure you have neither) just how important ski-jumping is to the everyday life of some people... especially the freakin Poles. This mountain is just on the border of Poland and CZ, and there are some really good Polish ski-jumpers. Thousands of people were traveling to this slope from Germany, Poland, and Czech Rep to see this event. They all take it very seriously. Remember watching Monday Night Football on NBC and they would always show pics of crazy fans all painted up and wearing crazy get-ups...? Well, this is how the Poles dress up and act during a Ski-jumping event. There's noise makers and crazy hats, flags, trumpets, shirts, everything. It was completely absurd. What the heck are these people thinking? Do they realize that it's just people jumping?!?! There's nothing even remotely exciting about it! They watch someone jump and then land. There's no spectator influence at all, and it's not even a sport where you really play against anyone. It just matters how far you can jump. Your opponents don't influence you in anyway. They aren't standing on the lift taunting them or screaming at them as they jump or trying to psyche them out. They don't have to ski through a gauntlet or anything where the other skiers are standing on the sides with baseball bats and the jumper has to avoid the bats and THEN see how far he could jump. It's just JUMPING! Personally, I think my form of extreme jumping sounds much more enjoyable to watch.
Anyways, great weekend, and that only scratches the surface of some of the interesting events that have been presented to my life. Tune in later for more info. There's great words of wisdom that will surely inspire you.
posted by Zach Barnes at 12:33 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Zach! I saw a bit of the ski jumping on TV - some Pole broke some kinda record I think.
Just writing to tell you that I thought of you guys when the location of the competition came up on the TV screen here in Ottawa.
Keep on - I'm with you in Spirit.
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