I went upstairs to wake the kids a few days ago and the first thing my younger son uttered was, “Is it raining?”
“No,” I answered, a triumphant hint of optimism in my voice. “It’s cold and gray.”

Something on the other side of the room made a quilt-muffled snurfling sound, and Thing 1 piped up again, cheerlessly, “This is like the worst winter ever!”

He’s not far off, though old timers, especially parents, will always find another, worse instance of anything about which you complain.

I bored my kids with tales of a New Years Day in the late Seventies when we hiked bare trails through Tahoe’s Desolation Wilderness, to skate on frozen Sierra lakes that were typically buried in snow by then. As proof of past suffering my husband pulled out a high school yearbook. “See here. This picture was taken January 18, 1980.” In it high school boys dressed in ski pants and padded sweaters, bound on leaves and rocks through slalom poles set in the brown woods. This bit of perspective was of interest to other old timers, but offered no consolation to the youngsters.

The most troubling aspect of the winter—the country-wide suckishness of it—is actually a bit of a convenience in our household. There is no east vs west undercurrent of superiority when it’s this bad everywhere, when the east coast slopes, along with the entire swath of ski areas from the Rockies to the Sierra are down and quite literally dirty. Just the other day a good friend did not recognize my car because it was thoroughly encased in a brown, ultrasuedeish coating of dirt.

But I will say this. It could be worse. In fact it was much worse just last month. Early season skiing, with too many people hurtling down too few trails on what is fondly referred to as the “white ribbon of death,” in ever-dwindling daylight, is always somewhat tough on the psyche. This year it was brutal.

Our ski club scrambled to get on any snow, and convened at a resort that shall not be named. I won’t name it because all resorts had similarly challenging conditions in early December–a skimcoat of snowmaking that turned into a concrete base, topped with a layer of gravel and sugar. Skis were destroyed, but spirits remained defiantly high. While riding through the frozen murk and deafening hiss of snowmaking guns on an especially unhospitable December Saturday, I remembered why we do this. It has to do with that spirit, and with being surrounded by people who think, through optimism or pragmatism, “What the heck else are we going to do on a winter day?”

Beyond the benefits of a self-selecting social circle, there are indeed some positives to this “worst winter ever” experience. Here are just a few so far:

Snowmaking: It’s a good thing, and these days it’s really good. When it gets cold they can make lots of good snow fast. When it gets warm and rains, making our moods plummet, the snowmaking ponds (and our potential for hope) refill.

Slalom training: East to west, rock hard conditions and the necessity for repetition of drills and basic skills (how many ways can you tackle one trail?) are making for epic slalom training.

Little areas: When you only have a few trails you can cover ‘em deep. (Thank you Dartmouth Skiway). And on that note…

Less feels like more: I got a press release from Jackson Hole about “6 INCHES OF NEW SNOW!” I’ll bet they haven’t been so fired up about that in a while.

Desperate Optimism: My husband has pledged his allegiance to a meteorologist who specializes in long term forecasts. He is convinced that it’s all going to change in a matter of weeks, that the ocean temperatures, gyres and currents will conspire to shift the jet stream and open the door for winter to rage upon our doorsteps. Rather than question this information, we cling to it.

We had our first snow day yesterday. At 5 am there wasn’t a speck of white in sight under the still bright moon. Nevertheless, at 5:30 a town snowplow was rumbling past, scraping sparks from the same pavement that the town will likely be repairing in July. The phone rang with the automated message kids live for. Snow day! It was probably unnecessary, in that the storm event did not begin in earnest until 8 am, and was well over by 3pm. But the snow day was necessary in other ways. It gave us a chance to put our snow boots on and get out in real winter weather, to saturate our butts on a snowy chairlift, catch snowflakes in our mouths on the way up the mountain, and glide through 3 heavenly inches of “the best powder of the season.”

The kids are back in school and at the moment it’s dumping outside. We get it Mother Nature–we’ll take what we get and do our best to enjoy every last flake. So please, please, please, just bring it on!

Once the slalom gates are set in the snow that is the most common and the most cringe-worthy question a ski coach for junior racers gets asked.

The answer? “How about never?”

First off, the term cross-blocking is misleading. It is often referenced as a good thing, a sign of advancement, while in reality it is quite the opposite. “Blocking” is simply clearing a gate out of your path. “Cross,” well it has no possible upside here.

If your skis are arcing hard around the gate, your feet are close to the gate, and your body is angled so far into the hill that it actually passes on the inside of the gate…if all that is happening, then your outside hand is the closest one to the gate, and is therefore the one to “clear” the gate. Look at a top NCAA skier, or watch a World Cup and that is what you see. Calm, disciplined, upper bodies with arms, hips, knees always pushing forward and down the fall-line. Like a metronome the outside hand ticks the gates out of the way without creating any extra movement or influencing body position.

If your skis are not arcing hard around the gate and are not very close to the gate, the outside hand is nowhere near the gate. To clear the gate with the outside hand you would have to reach across your body. In so doing you lose all pressure on your outside ski and any prayer of carving a turn or generating any power from the ski. It is rare to see a J4 who can consistently carve clean turns while running a tight enough line to warrant outside clearing. I have yet to meet such a J5. They simply do not have the strength or technical ability.

Armor is good. It saves on orthodontic bills, bloody knuckles and bruised shins. Better safe than sorry, and besides armor looks cool. It makes us feel stronger and more powerful. But put a kid in armor and all of a sudden he or she feels the need to hit something. Who can blame them? It is hard to resist the siren song of guard on plastic, the satisfying thwap of a gate bowing from our assault. But if you listen more closely, you will also hear another, less heroic sound. It is the rasp of edges skidding around a turn.

Here’s what’s happening, and it happens every day, every run, with every kid who wants to “cross block.” Skier sees gate, skier goes straight at gate, skier blocks gate with outside hand. The act of reaching over to the gate releases pressure from the edges before the turn is anywhere near completion. Skier must complete turn after the gate by skidding skis around and is already too low to make a good turn on the next gate. So, skier goes straight at that gate, whacking it out of the way, and again releasing any pressure and negating any turn initiation that might have been started above the gate. Pattern repeats until skier passes through finish and wonders, “Why am I so slow? After all, I hit all the gates!”

What do we do?

First: Accept that cross blocking is a Faustian bargain. One you reach across your body you are trading the long term prospect of clean powerful turns and engaged edges, for the immediate gratification of plastic-on-plastic impact.

Second: Ditch the term cross blocking altogether and use the proper term for getting gates out of your way—clearing.

Third: Refocus on the one core skill that will never fail you—pole plants. Even when you are so awesome that you are carving and clearing with your outside hand, you’ll still be planting your pole. It’s what completes your turn, what allows you to get off one ski and on to the next, all while moving your body down the hill. If you can’t plant your poles, something is wrong (hands too low, timing not right, poles not in correct position, etc.) Figure it out with your coach, and get back to planting those poles.

Fourth: When you are planting your pole every turn and making clean turns above the gate and a gate gets in your way…CONGRATULATIONS! You can ski a line close enough to the gate to have to clear it. So knock it out of the way, without bringing your hand across the body. If you do that, you will automatically be clearing with the “correct” hand, be that inside or outside. You’ve got the armor—use it! And worry about your feet not the gates.

Fifth: Give it time. The above situation will happen sooner on flatter terrain, easy snow or on a straight course. Don’t expect to be able to run the same line on steep, icy or turny course. You will eventually be able to, but only if you take the time and go through the steps to master the basics of clean skiing first.

Thank you for reading. That will be all.

“Can I ski this?” The question, asked with a smile that belied terror, came moments too late. A friend and I, on our first multi- family ski vacation together, had just crossed a knife-edged ridgeline traverse, and dropped into an unexpectedly steep chute. Above us, the sun ducked behind dark clouds. Below us, our kids were already a pack of distant, hooting specks, accelerating from view. Beside us, a snowboarder careened past in freefall, cursing his friend. Without even looking back I knew retracing our route on the goat path was not an option, so I gave my companion the only answer possible:

“You can now!”

An expert skier was born, as another vacation moment was cemented in memory.

I hadn’t planned on scaring the pants off anyone here. In fact for this vacation on my California turf I had envisioned (ok, even promised the New Englanders in tow), perfect days of sunny skies and cruising on velvety corn snow. Instead, every day we awoke to some form of inhospitable snow or weather conditions. Nonetheless up the mountain we went, at the opening bell, sometimes through a fogbank or into a pelting snowstorm. And every day, four families came off the mountain exhausted, having followed each other through powder, down steeps, over jumps, or into some unexpected situation. Instead of being ready to kill me by apres ski, they were ready for more.

Skiers don’t expect to show up and be entertained. They seek their own unique outdoor adventure, something beyond the well paved trip to the Magic Kingdom, or even the plush 5-star “resort experience” where the more you pay, the more isolated you are. Families that ski together embrace not only a sort of egalitarian social interaction but also an element of uncertainty. They are not averse to cold temperatures, inclement weather, sore muscles, rides with strangers, an entire season of bad hair days and the occasional lost bout with gravity. Not surprisingly, it’s pretty easy to have a good vacation with people like that. And as one friend on that trip observed, “If you start taking your kids early, you very well may still be going on vacation with them when they have kids. “

Of course, any family trip presents challenges. After two successive years of getting stranded with toddlers, first in Atlanta and then in Minneapolis, and spending the first day of each vacation at the Coca Cola Museum and the Mall of America respectively, my husband and I swore off holiday travel. But if you have kids, and they eventually go to school as the authorities insist, you too will be faced with the choice: Travel during high season, or don’t travel at all.

With family (and big snowy mountains) across the country the latter was not an option. And so, we have figured out ways to ease the pain. Whenever possible we fly the carrier with no baggage fees. Of course, to make up for the fact that said carrier also has no entertainment or food, we bribe the kids with unlimited and often inappropriate movies for their iPods and enough snacks for three days. Most importantly, we leave expectations behind and bring a healthy bring-it-on appetite for the unexpected. I even started routing ourselves through Las Vegas, hoping we’d get stuck and have to stay at the really cool giant pyramid we see from the air. Since then, we’ve never hit a snag.

To be sure, we have made our share of mistakes in reaching this point. We’ve lost children  long enough to initiate an APB with ski patrol, tumbled off cornices together, walked 2 miles home in socks, violated the last run rule (see below) to the point of tears, crammed into tiny rental cars, booked a condo with no pool or hot tub, and visited urgent care facilities across ski country, for everything from dog bites and head bangs to hot tub injuries and altitude sickness. But we have also been rewarded with unexpected and unique experiences, together as a family and now as a larger family of skiing friends. There is no better vacation for fostering both togetherness and independence.

You never know what memories are going to stick in family lore. The greatest crash ever by a person under 80 lbs, and the consequences of putting a firecraker in an egg in a snowbank were two of my personal favorites. Will “double ejecting at the top of North Bowl” or “hanging with the liftie until my parents found me” make the life list for my kids? Time will tell. I already know who won’t forget “the time you almost killed me in that chute.” That’s the kind of treasure you just won’t find in the Magic Kingdom.

Sidebar:

Getting there is not half the fun. Pick the most direct route, and whenever possible do not take the last flight of the day into your destination. See Coca Cola Museum and Mall of America reference, above.

Just add water: When in doubt, book the place with the best pool and hot tub.

Pick a meeting spot: This can be in case of getting lost, or as kids get older a way to set them free until the appointed time. Ideally this is somewhere easily visible and fun. (Kids always find the cookie cart)

Down Time: Don’t push kids too hard, especially the first day, and expect to take at least one day off. Typically Day 3 is when fatigue catches up with everyone. Take a break and enjoy it.  Some of the best discoveries are accidental ones.

East Drink and be Happy: Heed the advice on coming up to high altitude and hydrate hydrate hydrate! Feed kids early and often. From breakfast, to breaks on the hill, to apres ski snacks, to early (and quick) dinners, remember that energy and mood go hand in hand.

Get Schooled: Good lessons from enthusiastic ski instructors can do wonders, especially if everyone is at different levels. Get the kids off in their lessons before you even think about getting your equipment organized.
Location location location: If you can afford it ski in ski out takes the stress level down several notches. If not, look for a place close to shuttle bus routes.

Buddy up: If you are lucky enough to travel with friends  and/or family – do it! The kids get motivation from their peers and  may find a little independence  while the parents may get a break in the action. And remind the kids that on the hill the buddy rule is in effect at all times. Stay together!

Scout it out: Explore new parts of the mountain with your kids before letting them go it alone.

Start Slow…: Don’t push your children to exhaustion day 1…But start early: Get out on the hill as early as possible and enjoy the day before trails get crowded and kids get cranky – whichever comes first! A hot cocoa break early may buy you more skiing time in the end. Once you stop for lunch, all bets are off.

Be realistic: Don’t have a fantasy about a family ski day during the vacation. Hope for a good day, and perhaps you’ll be pleasantly surprised with an epic one.

Quit before the last run: If you are on the fence wondering whether or not to take that last run of the day—don’t. End on a good note, with enough in the reserve tank.

Use phones judiciously: Cell phones are great for keeping track of everyone, especially in an emergency but you’ll miss the good stuff (and annoy those around you) if you’re on the electronic tether. And leave the electronic games off the hill.

Late every October, Granite Chief, a ski shop back home in Squaw Valley, Calif., stages something called Junior Race Night. For one spectacular evening, all the junior gear is discounted.

Company reps show up to talk to kids about equipment, parents talk shop about tuning, everyone gorges on Halloween candy and, at the end of the night, the place looks as if it were struck by a tornado. Though the concept started as a way to generate early-season cash flow, “Christmas in October” far exceeded the bounds of a retail event to become the official ski season kick-off.

Watching the mayhem, with kids marching around in whatever piece of new gear they can get their hands on, impatient for the first flake of snow, it always feels like a hopeful occasion¿a snapshot of the camaraderie and enthusiasm that is the real gift of skiing. When kids get into skiing, they are not just joining another youth league, but becoming part of an entire community.

The best part for shop owners Herb and Treas Manning is witnessing the reunion of city kids and mountain kids. “A lot of times they only see each other on winter weekends, so this is the first time for getting together,” says Treas. “We call them ‘foul-weather friends.’”

It’s generally accepted that sports can go a long way toward enriching the lives of kids, enhancing their education by teaching valuable lessons in discipline, perseverance, independence, graciousness and humility. In addition to all those traits, kids that are drawn to skiing¿a decidedly non-mainstream pursuit that pushes the comfort zone in every way¿develop an oddly enduring bond.

A typical training day for any sport includes times of intense focus, drills, repetition and listening. But in skiing, you don’t walk away from the field and go back to your real life.

Skiers spend the entire day together, their training interspersed with chairlift rides, freeskiing, warming up in the lodge, hauling slalom gates and packing courses. These are times when friends learn about each other and often share more than they do with their non-skiing friends.

In school, as the youngest, shortest and last chosen on every playground kickball team, I gave up trying to fit in and instead lived for winter weekends. Ski racing became a parallel life for us, a focus completely removed from schoolyard cliques and popularity contests.

From the start, our priority was simply to set goals and achieve them. That’s how we earned respect, which itself was enough of a prize to glean from the sport. I remember being in the finish corral of a ski race as a youngster. William Shatner of “Star Trek” fame was filming a Christmas special, and there was a staged shot of him with a group of us at the timing board after our run. He asked a few questions about the race and then ended it with, “Do you all want to go to the Olympics?” That apparently was our cue to scream, “Yes!” But I remember being dumbfounded.

Granted, I didn’t really know these kids off the slopes, but the Olympics certainly wasn’t something we ever talked about. It was the first time it occurred to me that we were supposed to get something concrete out of the sport.

People tend to ask a lot of sports, especially when it comes to their kids. Too often the focus is put on potential rewards or tangible benchmarks as a measure of the worth of the experience.

That helps explain why, long before the U.S. Ski Team or the Olympics were a reasonable goal, we’d see some pretty wild and strange behavior–parents yelling at their kids for not doing well in a race, or chasing them down the hill, pushing them to go faster. But with skiing it somehow seemed easier to leave disappointments behind on the mountain.

There was much more to our lives as skiers than what went on between the start wand and the finish. Yes, it’s an individual sport, but with a team structure for support.

Foul-weather friends could be counted on to put the experience in perspective instantly, in a way parents rarely can. At the end of the day, the crowd was not split down the middle, winners and losers.

Rather, we treated each other the same as ever¿with brutal honesty and short attention spans that rarely kept score. On occasion, when people speak to me of their competitive sports experiences, they first qualify it with, “I never went as far as you, but…” As absurd as that lead-in may seem, I admit to having done the same thing.

For most of my years on the U.S. Ski Team, I thought an Olympic gold medal or World Cup title meant being set for life, that it would validate my time spent in ski racing. It seems foolish now, but I think many of my teammates believed it, too.

For a long time after competing, what stuck in my mind was not what I did, but what I didn’t do¿namely, win an Olympic medal. But it’s pointless to gauge success in those terms.

The real success is what you learn from competing. I was reminded recently of ski racing’s enduring brotherhood at a double ex-racer wedding.

My husband grew up racing in Vermont and I grew up racing in California. Our collection of friends came from both coasts and everywhere in between.

The weekend ended up being a huge reunion of foul-weather friends. Some competed together into adulthood, others had barely seen each other since they were 15.

All of us had enjoyed varying levels of “success” in regards to “results,” whether that meant being World Champion or qualifying for the Junior Olympics. Viewed en masse, these ex-ski racers showed an edge from the experience¿confidence, independence and an unrelenting drive to seek new challenges.

The day was filled with laughter and spirited conversation but very little mention of skiing and no reference to past accomplishments. Of all the stories told, none were of the medals won, the career-ending injuries, the fat endorsement contracts, or the forced retirements.

It was as if the soccer coach, the TV commentator, the new mother, the ski shop owner, the investment banker, the resort ambassador and all the rest were right back on the chairlift, their characters fully exposed. There’s an honesty to the relationships built out in the elements that allowed the assembled athletes to transcend time, to jump right back in each other’s faces, and to settle into that comfortable place where individuality and familiarity coexist.

Checking out the excited kids getting fired up for the season, I don’t look for the next gold medal winner. Rather, I see strong characters and friendships in the making.

They may get a medal, the tools to build a good career, a lifelong love of the outdoors, or a pile of memories. At the very least, they’ll get a bunch of great friends and the makings of a really fun party in 15 years

Our team just got back from a big weekend at the races, where we experienced a rollercoaster of high expectations and low moments. At the end of the weekend events conspired to create some truly valuable perspective, both on the weekend and on the general purpose of our relationship with this sport. Bear in mind, this scenario could have played out after any junior sporting event:

After the awards ceremony and an excruciatingly lengthy raffle, our family headed for home, with two kids who had achieved their goals for the weekend. As good as they felt for themselves, they also felt badly for their less fortunate teammates who had worked just as hard, dreamed just as big, yet gone home disappointed.

One topic of conversation in the car was about the “big winner” of the weekend’s events, and how he thrust his arms in the air as he crossed the finish line after each run. At the awards, he brought the first trophy along when he went up to receive the second, and hoisted them both overhead in victory. Certainly, he had earned the right to celebrate, but something about the rock star act had made all of us cringe and we didn’t really know why. Was it jealousy? Undoubtedly a bit, but it was also something else.

Half an hour later we stopped for dinner with a small group of kids and parents from our team. The kids were seated in a separate room, but within sight and hearing distance. Our exhausted kids sat quietly, talking and laughing with each other and practically licking their plates clean. Partway through the meal another group of kids came in, and were seated at an adjacent table, stuffed in the back corner. They were loud and boisterous, running around the restaurant, spitting the paper ends off the straws that came with their kiddie cups (our kids were all given regular glasses), ordering piles of food that was left uneaten.

Every time we parents looked over to that zone of the restaurant, and saw that the noise and flying objects were not emanating from our kids, we reminded ourselves of how proud we were of our kids for the manners and respect they were showing towards the other diners, the servers and each other.

When we got back in the car I found out that the other table of kids included the “big winner” from the weekend races.

“Why do you suppose they had kiddie cups?” my son asked.

“I think the server sized up those kids pretty quickly and knew how much she could trust them with real glasses.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I think she was right.”

We proceeded to have a conversation about the bigger picture of sports and why we do them.

“If you think we do this so you can win races and get trophies you are dead wrong,” I assured the kids.  “We do it so you can learn to push yourself, to test your limits, to set goals and work towards them. We do it so you can learn to be good teammates, who genuinely support and most times respect each other. We do it so you can get beyond kiddie cups and the back corner of the restaurant that much faster.”

It was a great conversation that we picked up again the next morning on the way to school. I shamelessly used it to yammer on about the many lessons we learn through sport. Among so many other things it is a vehicle to becoming the type of confident, self-reliant, well-rounded person we all hope to be. It’s a long road there, filled with high hopes and disappointments, victories and failures, but always driven by the instinct to get back up and try to do better next time.

Somewhere along the line I realized what was so troubling about the arm-pumping and trophy-waving. It seems that whenever someone feels the need to tell the world that he or she is the greatest, he or she may have just peaked. I think I can safely assume that none of us really want our kids to peak at anything, except maybe video games, at 12 yrs old.

The lessons these kids are learning, just by getting up and coming back for more, are the ones that best assure them long term success. They are growing steadily and at their own pace as skiers, as athletes and as people. They, and we, have a lot to be proud of, even on a bad day.

The Greatest Gift

By Edie Thys Morgan

We have developed a tradition in our house at Christmas. Every year the kids ask for a Wii, and every year they don’t get one. This is not because we are the meanest parents in the world (though on some days we’d easily get two votes). This is because my husband and I share a theory about presents, and it is this: We believe the greatest gifts have two things in common: First, they are much needed (need being a relative term here); And second, they inspire us to get outside, rather than stay inside.

Because of our family’s shared obsession with skiing, this theory holds particularly true for Christmas presents. What’s not to love about comfy boots, flashy new skis, a stylin’ warm coat or your very first racing suit?—all things that have been under the tree at some point. Inevitably, Christmas Day comes and goes with no disappointment other than the fact that it’s over. I will say though, that it would be much more convenient if Christmas was on, say, Thanksgiving, when the ski season officially starts. It would be kinder too.

The year my oldest son graduated from hand- me-down and ski swap ski boots he was overjoyed and even somewhat surprised to discover the exact pair of bright blue Lange’s he had tried on a month earlier—the ones he had fantasized about every time since when he’d crammed his feet into too-small boots. I felt a little bad about the pain, but he got over it. Likewise, it killed me to see my youngest son start his season like every other, in his brother’s outgrown battered helmet, and look longingly at the kids with pristine new helmets. But when he unwrapped his first very own helmet, a glittering blue and silver masterpiece with matching goggles, the suffering was forgotten. His suffering, that is.

I’m the one who wavers every year, who wants to just give them the cool and practical ski stuff they need outright, and join the parental arms race to get them that special “G.I. Joe-with-the-kung-fu-grip” of the moment. I do this despite my own long, shameful lists of obscenely expensive gifts that gather dust, and despite the greatest gift in my memory: the green puffy down coat.

I first saw it in November in our local sports shop, and every day after skiing I visited it to pet it and try it on. When the saleswoman gently informed me a man had bought it for his daughter I was devastated, and still really cold in my outgrown parka. My parents said nothing, though I’d like to think they agonized over my grief. When I finally opened my big present on Christmas Day, it was as if I’d rediscovered a long lost best friend.

But the best part was yet to come. My family was a little loose on any holiday that affected their ski time and even Christmas Eve was a moving target some years. But we had one hard and fast Christmas tradition. After the last box was opened Dad herded us to the mountain. “The best skiing of the year is on Christmas Day,” he’d remind us. “Nobody gets out there early.” So we abandoned the glee debris in the living room and hit the slopes, green coat and all, to enjoy the white of Christmas together.

Dad picked his one tradition well. Skiing on Christmas Day is more than parading your new gear. It’s about truly being with your people. Every face on the mountain glints with a similar look that is equal parts wonder and joy at being able to do this sport, in this place, together. It took me a bunch of years, a couple of kids, and a little holding out to really understand it, but that “we” is the greatest gift of all.

The Best of the Worst
Here’s a safe prediction: The US Ski Team will like Vancouver better than Calgary.
By Edie Thys Morgan

My claim to fame, should I ever be desperate enough to want one, is that I was the best US skier at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. That achievement is better remembered in less flattering terms as, “the best the US could muster,” because the US Ski Team was coming off its most successful Olympics a mere four years earlier. Recently, I told my sister I wanted to write about the ‘88 experience and wasn’t sure what to call the article. “How about ‘Loser?’” she brightly suggested.

I’m pretty sure there was more to it than that, but I am still trying to figure out how one team went from winning five medals in Sarajevo, to being the only US ski team in the past 34 years to win no medals. It wasn’t talent—six of the athletes in Calgary won Olympic and WC medals in their careers. Many of the coaches, too, had previous or future success. Did we not train hard enough? I have the pictures to disprove that. Was it money? Again, the ski team coffers were much fuller in 88 than in 84. Our demise wasn’t the consequence of any one thing, but rather a combination of circumstances, a perfect storm on all fronts of bad luck, bad decisions and inexperience.

The summer before the Olympics, we still considered our medal chances to be pretty good. Sure, the big guns from the early 80’s had retired, but we still had World Cup Overall winner Tamara McKinney and gold medalist Debbie Armstrong. After two disastrous (and, we later realized, critical) years of athlete mismanagement and coaching blunders nearly caused a mass mutiny in 1986, a good crew was in place beneath a respected, experienced coach from the golden Eighties era. Relations with the equipment companies, badly damaged in the two-year leadership vacuum, had been mostly repaired.

Meanwhile, we relative youngsters were coming up slowly, and a few—like Eva Twardokens and Diann Roffe had come up very quickly. The alpine director of the moment (we went through them like Chapstick) referred to us as a “young inexperienced team.” He never further explained that our inexperience was a direct consequence of a ski team policy in place well before 1984 that had effectively decimated the entire tier of B team athletes. But that’s another story.

Nevertheless, we were naively optimistic, even in July when Debbie broke her leg wrestling with a teammate in Argentina. She’d be physically ready for the Olympics, but only barely. Then things got dicey. In November, during our last stateside tune up, Tamara broke her ankle. She too might be healed by February, but again with no training. “What else can go wrong?” I heard our head coach asking nobody in particular. If he only knew.

We headed over to Europe, the “speed” team (that is, those of us who raced the downhill and super G events) for some final training in Austria and the “technical team” (slalom and giant slalom specialists) straight to Italy for the opening slalom. On Thanksgiving Day, while the turkey cooked in our hotel’s kitchen, we excitedly settled in to watch the opening race. Eva, who had won a bronze medal in the 1985 World Champs as a pup of 17 was our first racer. We cheered as she burst out of the gate. Moments later we heard her scream as she disappeared in a puff of snow. She reappeared on the ground, clutching her blown out knee.

When we joined the technical team in Italy for the opening super G, a small miracle happened. I scored a seventh placed from “out of nowhere” as the press likes to say. Really, there is no such thing. Breakthrough performances are the natural progression, when work pays off, and things come together. The coaches leveraged my result into a motivational moment. This, they assured us, was our opportunity to step up and show the naysayers (and there were many) what this new generation could do. We pushed on to Leukerbad, a resort tucked high into the Swiss Alps where sparse snow conditions, sharp terrain and constant shadows made for a deceivingly treacherous course. Our entire team performed disastrously.

If we were frustrated the coaches were moreso, and that night we got “the speech,” about just how far behind the world we lagged. “Forget about the Swiss, Germans and Austrians,” our coach began. “The French are ahead of us, the Canadians, the Yugoslavians…” He went down the list, finishing with, “the Litchensteinians!” That hurt, considering their entire team included one racer.

Still riding a wave of confidence after the super G, I mistook this for a pep talk, but when I looked up I saw bowed heads and red eyes. The next day I waited a long time in the start, largely ignoring the whop, whop, whop of a helicopter airlifting a racer from the course. I was so focused on my run that I didn’t even notice when our trainer disappeared.

After a somewhat harrowing but fast run I enthusiastically radioed a course report to the girls in the start. Only then did I notice that two teammates already in the finish were white as ghosts. Nick Howe, the writer who traveled with us looked as if he might be ill. The helicopter had been for my teammate and good friend, Tori Pillinger. She had swung wide on the final gate, wrapping her body around the metal finishing post at 60 plus miles per hour.

Two teammates saw the grisly scene in person, and the rest of them saw it on TV from the mountain lodge, before their runs. Thanks to helicopters, great hospitals and excellent doctors, Tori survived. Our team, however, never fully recovered. A few of us who could have celebrated personal bests in the countdown to the Olympics, instead tread lightly amidst frayed tempers and fragile egos. We limped through January and after the final downhill (and another injury to Adele Allender) in Bad Gastein, the Olympic team was quietly announced.

Once in Calgary, the throng of media attention and medal hype again boosted our hopes. Miracles do happen, so why not here? Why not us? After getting our Olympic uniforms, credentials and gear, we checked in to our temporary digs at the Olympic Village and marched in the Opening Ceremonies to deafening cheers. For that moment at least, we all felt proud.

And then the Games began. We moved to our on site housing that the USST had arranged closer to the Alpine events. The Swiss had booked up the one luxury slopeside hotel for their athletes, coaches, masseuses, and—no lie– hairstylists. All that was left, we were told, was the trailer park. We stayed two to a trailer, tromping through the snow to a communal shower. When ABC did a special showing the Swiss dining on white linen and us roasting hot dogs over a bonfire, the sponsors went berserk. Miraculously, rooms in slopeside homes occupied by VIPs materialized. But by then the term “trailer park trash ” was stuck in our psyches.

On the morning of the downhill race when Pam Fletcher, our top ranked downhiller, crashed into a course worker and broke her leg, we barely flinched. It was, as they say, all downhill from there.
Maybe that all explains why, despite all the negative attention we received from those Games, when I came down from my super G run and placed 9th amongst the best skiers in the world, I didn’t feel like a failure. I felt like a survivor.

At the end of the trip we watched the opening World Cups which were impressive! I realize it was a heck of a lot easier running downhill straight down that face than arcing thirty turns on it. It was excellent to get a dose of the scene, to hear the wacky announcer zinging along in four languages and to see the real deal Ground Zero of skiing.

My kids thought their parents went to Europe and all they got was a lousy t-shirt (and a lot of chocolate). And they might have been right, had I not secured a start list for both of them and one autograph on each of their shirts. When they toted the start lists around for week studying the names, I knew that lousy shirt could become something way better.

Two weeks later I took them to Copper Mountain, a place I thought I’d never again visit voluntarily in mid November. It seems the Circle of Life can be cruel, and I find myself with two youngsters who are incredibly eager to ski on one trail with a bazillion people strafing the hill next to them.

No really, it was fun. Now that I live in the east and my early season alternative is the white ribbon of death at one of our fine resorts, I can see that the skiing was in fact quite excellent. Copper has changed in some ways. It has a bigger fancier village, better lifts, no sketchy Club Med and even more snowmaking. But the November vibe is the same and it’s all business. The air is filled with pre-season tension and excitement. By the time we loaded the lift, rows of downhill skis were getting strapped back together and the US Ski Team was already done with their 6:30 training session.

This was the perfect place for my fan training program to come together. I armed the kids with their Soelden shirts and a Sharpie and whispered how to politely stalk members of the US Ski Team for autographs as they were packing up their gear. The first day the kids merely loitered pensively on the sidelines, unable to go in for the kill. I was worried. Perhaps they didn’t have the stalking instinct.

That night, we were at a Squaw Valley group dinner with Stacy Cook and Marco Sullivan, who engaged the kids in conversation as soon as they saw their shirts and hopeful faces. I’ve never been a huge fan of the US Ski Team “playing hard to get” PR tactic, but the athletes sure get the part about building enthusiasm at the grass roots level. Once my guys got a whiff of real ski racer contact, they were like sharks smelling a drop of blood.

The next morning they woke up, wolfed down an Eggo and put on their gear without any prompts or threats. “Mom—we need to get to the lift for some autographs.”

This time, they were fearless, or at least savvy. I could see my son lurking at a respectful distance but trying to get eye contact, making sure the pen—and his intent—were clearly visible. The athletes were wonderful, gladly signing and asking the kids questions about their own ski racing. The kids came back to me periodically and asked in hushed tones who had signed their shirts. Truth is I’ve lost touch, which is easy to do when your only source of ski racing coverage is the Internet. So I taught them the trick about asking the athletes where they were from, and looking them up later. That way you can sort of pretend you aren’t just asking anyone in a uniform for an autograph (even if you are) and the athlete isn’t insulted. These pieces of stalking etiquette are important to me.

So now, I’m pretty sure I’ve created monsters. Already, they are disappointed that I am not taking them out of school for two weeks to watch the Olympics (what kind of parent am I anyway?), but said that it sure would be great to see Birds of Prey next year “when” (not if) we go to Colorado.

I guess we’ll be going, with our Sharpies.

I remember the Tuesday afternoon when Elvis died. It was “Elvis week on the Three O’clock Movie, so I had actually been watching Blue Hawaii when the 3:30 news update told of the King’s demise. Even though I was just a kid, I knew it was a big deal. So I was somewhat surprised that when Michael Jackson–our modern day Elvis–died suddenly, my kids were merely mystified at all the fuss about this “weirdo,” with ironed hair and pale skin and a deer-like nose. When I realized they had never seen his previous incarnations, I was at first appalled at their cultural illiteracy. But when I discovered my parent’s total lack of Michael Jackson reverence, it dawned on me that my generation was perhaps the only one to have incorporated Michael Jackson into its collective psyche. I felt a bit hollow, like I’d blindly invested in some cheap pop culture icon. I thought his passing should be something more historic, but it seemed the only takeaway my children would get from Michael Jackson and his tragic end was that being rich and famous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Slowly, however, they came around. As they saw more footage of MJ from when he was an eleven-year-old superstar, they became intrigued. Then my sister, ever the vigilant aunt, sent them the “Thriller 25” disc and DVD set for their education. It not only showed the Thriller, Beat it and Billie Jean videos, but also the classic Motown Anniversary show where slinky, snappy MJ unveiled his moonwalk to the world. This sent them to You Tube for an MJ video-a-thon, and “How to Moonwalk” in six easy steps. Soon they were channeling Michael Jackson into their daily routine–moonwalking across the kitchen floor, entering every room with a toestand and punctuating their speech with Woo!, Hoo!, Woo hoo!

On our summer cross-country plane trip I allowed my iPodl-ess son to purchase the commemorative Michael Jackson magazine issue of his choice. Eleven dollars later he returned to the gate with a phone-book sized tome of MJ pictures, facts and stories. He devoured it, and by the time we landed in Reno he was an authority and a staunch defender of all the Pop King’s quirks: “He did not bleach his skin. He had Vitaligo”; “He did not do anything inappropriate with children. He just liked being around them because he was robbed of his own childhood.” He called up a You Tube videos of Christmas Day at Neverland where Michael delightedly scampered outdoors to play with his eight new supersoaker water guns.
“Mom, he was just a kid at heart.”
I happily fed this enthusiasm, as a way to vindicate my own musical youth but also to tackle some weighty issues.

When backstage footage of the Pepsi commercial came out, we counted the eight seconds that Michael’s hair was aflame, and discussed the theory that this event led to his addiction to painkillers. “Why didn’t he quit taking the painkillers when he was supposed to?” they wondered. I answered with a speech about the gray area between physical and emotional pain, and the slippery slope towards drug addiction.

“I wish I’d known him,” my son lamented.
“He could have used a friend like you,” I assured him sincerely, then talked about the importance of family and friends and people you trust, about how money can’t buy you any of those things. I was on a roll.

I took the boys into Wal Mart for school supplies and emerged with the Essential Michael Jackson two disc set, possibly my best purchase ever. These became my silver bullets for road trip bickering. All I had to do was crank them up and the squabbling stopped as the boys belted out songs. Even my own unchecked singing did not curb their enthusiasm. I comforted myself with the thought that perhaps this sad death may earn the entertainment genius recognition from at least two more generations, and vindication with the generation that first made him famous. Finally we may find compassion for his freakish evolution.

When school started, the kids in my carpool gamely adapted to all MJ all the time. Soon, each could request his favorite song by disc and track number, proudly singing all the words and the word-like sounds (I’m still not sure what Sha-mon means, but we say it a lot). Their astute observations– “Of course it doesn’t matter if your black or white. He was black and white”– led to spirited discussions, about which MJ song was the best, which outfit, which hair, which nose, etc. The debate on best voice was resolved by an authoritative statement from the way back seat:
“You know, nobody really knows what his true voice sounded like, because when he hit puberty he started taking those, you know, hemorrhoids.”

As Halloween approaches, Michael Jackson fever has not abated. We scour Ebay for red leather jackets and wide brimmed hats, sparkly socks and a glove. And the teachable moments keep coming. Just recently I heard an assured statement from the back seat:
“I know why Michael Jackson was so good.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because his dad beat him when he did things badly.”
I let it sit a second.
“Ok. And I know why Michael Jackson’s dead.”
“Why!?”
“Because his father beat him when he did things badly.”
A collective, unspoken “huh?” filled the air of the back seat, while I prepared to connect some of the dots between our scattered collection of MJ factoids.
“Do you remember when we talked about the Pepsi commercial, and how he started taking the pain medications for physical pain, then kept taking them for emotional pain?”
“Yeah”
“Do you think that maybe the emotional pain came from his Dad beating him?”
It felt, at that moment, like something came full circle. Did they get it? That when raising kids, “Beat it” is not the solution? Will they stay away from drugs, choose trustworthy friends, value family relationships, and respect their bodies as they are? Maybe. Maybe that’s too much message from one extraordinarily complicated individual. But they’ll sure have a mean moonwalk for college.