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The Qingyuan Trilogy-Part 3
Thursday, April 28, 2005-8:45 PM
Grass Sledding
The first thing I noticed when we finally arrived at the hill to go grass sledding was that the people weren't grass sledding at all. They were grass skiing.
The second thing I noticed was that they weren't going too fast.
It took a while to find boots big enough for Peter, Hans, and my enormous western feet, and once we did we discovered the boots weren't in terribly good repair. Both the top buckles on Peter and my boots were either damaged or missing.
We put on the boots and attached the treads. We were ready to ski.
In order to move across flat ground it was easier to adapt a skate skiing technique than trying to cross country ski. Energy wasn't used as efficiently as if we were inline skating or skiing, but I was surprised considering we were on grass.
I wanted to go fast and was willing to take risks to achieve that. Nobody seemed to be climbing far enough the hill to attain any real speed. I started working my way up as fast as I could.
There was no lift or pulley. You had to ski up and ski down the hill. The hill wasn't so steep that you couldn't ski up it. But, since I didn't have top buckles on either one of my boots, they didn't fit as snugly as I wanted. Every time I picked up the heavy boots (and even heavier tread attached to the boot) the boot lining painfully rubbed against my ankles.
I got about half the way up the hill and prepared myself for the decent. I tried to point myself away from the people at the bottom of the hill.
Using the ski poles I gave myself a little push down the hill. In the beginning it was smooth and controlled.
I'm not an experienced snow skier. But even if I was, I'm not sure it would have been very useful. Completely different rules of physics apply to grass and snow skiing.
Snow skis are light, thin, and agile; Grass skis are heavy, thick, and clumsy. As I picked up speed, it was apparent I was in danger.
I began to loose my balance. I started contorting my torso and waving my arms around to right myself. But every correction seemed to bring about a greater imbalance in the opposite direction. I was still gaining speed.
I tried shifting my skis to make myself more stable. But the skis were too big and heavy. Every time I got close to lifting one off the ground, I could feel that if I did lift it up completely, it would be like pulling a leg out from a table.
I saw a few people looking at me, just waiting for me to fall. For maybe ten or fifteen seconds it carried on like this. I was teetering on the edge of disaster.
For the safety of myself and those in my path, I decided the best course of action was a controlled fall. From experience as well as several hours of skydiving and Ju-Jitsu training, I knew the best way to take a fall was by exposing as big a surface area to the ground as you could, and rolling.
Unfortunately, this kind of fall can also look a more comical than the more dangerous approach of just catching yourself with an arm.
Safety won out. I forced myself to fall, absorbing the impact mostly with my back. No bruises, no scratches, no sprains. Didn't even have any grass stains. But I did manage to achieve the distinction of being the only one to fall that day.
I didn't fall any more after that. But, my feet took a beating in those heavy, oversized ski boots.
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