The Danger of Fun

I recently discovered that skiing is a very dangerous activity. It's really fun and all and I know going down a hill with a forty-five percent grade gives you a thrill like none other. But, how many of you know that while skiing down a hill of just snow, you can slice your knee open so bad you need stitches? Well, I didn't...that is, until this year.

My adventure started a couple of weeks ago, when the ski resorts were still open. My dad and I decided that we were going to go skiing the week before the Wolf Mountain Ski Resort closed. So, we get ready and head to Wolf Mountain around 5 pm for an evening of night skiing. About one hour later we arrive, strap on our skis, and head up the mountain. We go down a couple of beginner runs so that we can get in the groove of skiing. Then we go to try some of the intermediate routes. I have almost mastered those. In fact, I was planning on going on some of the black diamonds for my very first time that day.

My dad is a good skier too. He can handle himself on the slopes pretty well. He's a pretty hardy guy too. Unfortunately, the mountain seemed to be against him that day. It was almost as if it was trying to kill him. Every once in a while, for like no reason at all, his skis would come out from underneath him. The weather was against him, too. The snow wasn't very good. It was either extremely slushy or extremely icy. Neither one of those are very good for skiing. The perfect skiing snow is the stuff in the middle. Anyway, so we were going down this somewhat hard hill that we had just discovered. My dad was having an especially hard time and fell once or twice on that run alone. I was having a less difficult time, but it was still pretty hard. So we made it onto the main path and decided to stop at the lodge to grab a bite to eat. Taking the main path, we headed down the now easy hill.

This is the part that is really confusing to me. I decided to go fast, so I sped down the hill as fast as I could. My dad likes to take things slower and by the time I got to the bottom he was about midway down. In any case, I reach the bottom and look back just in time to see my dad make an especially bad fall. (To this day, neither of us have any clue what happened to actually make him fall.) His skis are off and he goes and gets them. Then he continues down the mountain like nothing is wrong. When he reaches the bottom of the mountain he explains to me about the fall and says it scratched his knee and he is going to put a band-aid on it from the car. I decided to wait in the lodge for him to get done. So, for the next five or so minutes, I stay in the lodge.

I get bored. When I go outside to the car to see what's taking him so long, I find he has mysteriously disappeared! I spend the next five to ten minutes exploring the lodge looking for him. I was about to go talk to the lodge staff when one of them approaches me and says,"Are you Moe Joe?" I tell him yes and he says,"Follow me." All the while I'm thinking that this must be a mistake. I didn't do anything wrong. My dad didn't do anything. So where am I going? We end up going to the first aid room, were one of the doctors just finished putting a gauze pad on my dads knee and taping it on. Apparently that scratch was a little more than a scratch. My dad had a huge wound to the knee caused by the ski blade. I then learned that my dad would need to go to the hospital to get stitches. That night he had 13 stitches. Sounds fun, huh?