I went skiing with the family over the weekend, and it occurred to me about halfway through the day that skiing with the kids can be a lot like fishing with them. In either activity, I wind up helping them the entire time, and don’t have any time to fish or ski by myself.
That’s OK, though. I figure in a few years, the boys will catch up to me in terms of skill in both skiing and fishing. Actually, they probably won’t take nearly as long to catch me at fishing. Really, the only thing they need to get better at to beat me at that is to learn how to unbury a fly from the back of their own necks after a bad backcast-to-forecast transition.
Skiing, though, might take a little longer. It took us most of the morning to convince Logan, the 10-year-old, that the chairlifts were safe. He was sure if he got on one, he’d inevitably plummet to his doom. But we finally got him to try the lifts, and he enjoyed it. That’s a good thing, because not all ski areas have Magic Carpets. Riding the chairlift is a pretty important part of going skiing. Especially when the lift ticket costs your parents 50 bucks.
Getting Logan on the chair was the good news. The bad news was that he had used up all his adventurousness on the lift. After that, we took the same run every time for the rest of the day.
But it won’t be long until my skills start deteriorating, and the boys will have to look after me, instead of the other way around. It’ll be Colby and Logan convincing me to try something new, and hopefully they’ll be there to catch me before I fall. Either that, or we’ll just stick to fishing.
