He was passionate about fishing, hunting, etc., and would often travel to the western part of our great country in order to do so. As a way of attempting to transfer his passion to become our passion, on several occassions he would take all of us skiing in Colorado.
I'm not sure there was a single one of us who necessarily looked forward to the actual "skiing" portion of the trip, nor did it make sense that a man of his age and hobbled knees desire to perform such an activity, but one thing I learned in my years married to his daughter, whatever he said, goes.
Being that all of us were primarily born and raised in the South, none of us were particularly adept skiers, myself especially. I never could figure why anyone would choose to voluntarily hoist themselves to the peak of a 2 mile-high mountain only to try not to die on the way back down. So in my case, making it from top to bottom was always dicey, at best.
It was during these dicey ventures that I began to understand my place in the heirarchy of my relatively new family.
On one particular spot on the mountain we reached a flat part of the slope with a wide swath of snow that allowed you to ski in several different directions to reach the same point. I opted, unwisely, to travel a different way from the rest of the family.
Casually coasting, I reached an upward grade and noticed myself slowing to a stop as I reached about midway up the slope. This is one of those "oh sh*t" moments where you realize there are no brakes on skis, nor a steering wheel. As I began to gradually slide in the opposite (read: wrong) direction, I found myself headed towards a cluster of pine trees. The speed was not of concern - it was the approximately 6 foot drop between the surface and the loose powdered snow surrounding the trees.
As it was described to me (from my own family who stood nearby to watch), it was as if I was there...and then suddenly....*poof*....I was gone.
So at this point I am down in a hole with skis pointed skyward, I figured about 3 to 4 feet in. It was at that point I heard "Don't help him!".
It was my father-in-law, instructing my wife and her siblings not to assist me "or you'll just fall in with him." I'm not sure how they heard this over their own laughter, but the message was clearly received as I had to figure my own way out of my snowy grave (which I did, eventually).
It was several years later when he invited us to go back. Have you ever heard the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
Myself, my wife, and my father-in-law are riding the ski lift up to the mountain top. For some reason I am in the middle and he is on the right side. As he was the size of the mountain itself (about 6'5, 300 lbs.) our chair tilted precariously to his side, threatening to snap the cable.
As we reached the top, my wife stands easily and skis off toward the rest of our family already waiting. Mr. Senstitive to my right, bad knees and 300 lbs, opts to use me as his personal walker in order to stand up off the lift. With nothing for me to balance myself, I suddenly find myself trying to stand up on skis with the gravity of Jupiter pressing on my shoulders. Naturally, I fall face first underneath the revolving chair lift as he skis merrily off to the rest of the family.
Instead of a snow-crevasse, I am now faced with dodging ski lift chairs whipping around at my head and no way to stand up (or move out of the way, since I am still wearing those g** d**** skis).
A kindly stranger finally ran up and hit the emergency stop for me. Certainly not my father-in-law, nor any of the rest of my family who not surprisingly were standing there laughing at my misfortune (once again).
The stories of my misadventures would be recounted at virtually every dinner thereafter when we'd get together. Never once did my father-in-law accept any blame for pushing me off the chair lift, or saying "you know, we probably should have at least offered a ski pole to help you out of that hole you so hilariously fell into." At least, not until years later at the 2,143rd telling of the story, when he finally admitted, "you know, I might have pushed you a little on the lift".
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