Everyone’s a Cripple

Perhaps occasionally I may have possibly been known to sometimes retell certain humorous or informative stories several times. I realise that in an ideal world life (and/or I) would be interesting enough that I never had to retell a story, that there was always something new and exciting to discuss. However, there are certain stories that even I get sick of telling. Whatever humour, interest or self-congratulations such tales may once have had, for some stories the shine eventually wears off and the whole process gets a bit tedious.

One such story regards my knee reconstructions. This story comes up a lot, often because I’m stretching or occasionally strapping my knee up or resting to manage whatever needs managing. A Friendly Enquirer will often ask:

FE: “Why are you stretching/wearing a bandage/not skiing/such a fantastic human being?”

Me: “My knee is stiff/swollen/being weird/made completely out of awesome.”

Fortunately, Friendly Enquirer can empathise, because Friendly Enquirer has always, ALWAYS had a knee injury. Once every now and then, Friendly Enquirer has really done some damage and understands what’s going, but 95% of the time, Friendly Enquirer is thinking of a very different kind of injury. And funnily enough, for that injury, Friendly Enquirer never had to do much stretching or resting to sort that it out.

FE: “Oh yeah, I’ve got a gammy knee too. You see, there was this time I cut my knee shaving my legs for a hotpants parade/hit myself in the kneecap with a yoyo/had to get out of a REALLY squishy sofa/wore these REALLY tight jeans and my knee has never been the same since. It was really sore for while – I had to skip Zumba for a whole week and to this day I feel excruciating pain every time I crush it in a vice. But you’re young. You shouldn’t have to stretch/strap/rest anything.”

Me: “Hmmm, that sounds... Bad. I’ve had both knees reconstructed in the last four years, including a meniscus repair in the most recent knee. Since November 2007 I’ve spent 23 months doing rehab. After the last injury (where the sound of my ligaments tearing was clearly audible to teammates ten metres away) it hurt to sit upright for two weeks and I couldn’t walk for three months, it took 6 months and a follow-up arthroscopy to stop limping, at which point I was so relieved I almost cried, and within 12 months of the injury (let alone the operation) I was skiing again. But I know what you mean, some razor cuts/yoyos/sofas/pants are really painful/spinny-aroundy/squishy/tight.”

I normally don’t bother to tell Friendly Enquirer that I don’t have a gammy knee. Gammy knees are for wimps who don’t do their rehab.

Also, if anyone has smashed up their knee and is thinking of getting a LARS graft, they get two thumbs up from me. Go plastic!

An Update With Facts

I first envisioned this blog serving as a replacement for group spam emails and as a way of charting my attempt to atone for the sins of my people. However, these noble intentions have been overwhelmed by a tendency towards highly speculative comparative anthropology. My goal in this post is to begin to remedy this imbalance. Today is Fact Day

I’m currently in Temple Basin, where the friendly white lion is conspicuously absent. This is Fact Day, so I won’t speculate about his location. There is reasonable snow cover here, but not as good as the Temple Basin website or breathless fanpersons claim. The snow is in pretty poor condition though, it’s really icy and lots of this field doesn’t get enough sun to soften it up. Because it is Fact Day, I am not allowed to take this opportunity to lambast Temple Basin for its ridiculous snow reports, because I officially had fun. One of the basins here picked up a few centimetres of fresh or windblown snow overnight. This dusting was just enough to give your skis some grip and left nice clean tracks that you could later admire. Some lucky timing meant that the rope tow in this basin opened just before the catered lunch got served. Since I’m making my own food rather than getting the catered option, I ate lunch later and while most other people were chowing down I was tracking out the fresh snow. Because it is Fact Day, I’m obliged to point out that there were a few other people who were also eating a late lunch that day skiing and the same time as me. They also appeared to be having fun. It is also snowing now, although Fact Day conventions require me to point out that it will probably be windy, wet or raining fire tonight to ensure that this new snow does not substantially improve skiing conditions.

Under normal circumstances, I’d claim that this ski field had so many Australians that it had its own voting booth for both federal and state elections. However, the stringent requirements of Fact Day disallow this claim. They almost certainly don’t get booths for state elections. Regardless of how many booths they do or don’t get and where the scrutineers for those booths come from, there are a lot of Australians here. Being around Australians is nerve wracking. What if one of them is named Sharon? What if they claim to be able to ski? What if one of them picks up my accent and blows my cover? The disdain of a nation is hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

The final Fact of the day is particularly interesting. It turns out that Temple Basin is less of a sausage party than many other fields I’ve been to. By my count, there are three female guests here (of probably only 15 in total), and there are a number of female staff members. Plus, to further complicate matters, just about everyone here is fairly young. This place is almost completely comprised of people in their twenties and early thirties. Broken River always seems to have representatives from at least three generations (and the youngest and oldest representatives are usually excellent skiers to boot). Temple just has people who would easily pass for ski bums. I’m not sure that the standard is all that high (of skiing, I’m sure these people would all make excellent vagrants), but if you played some dubstep here, I doubt anyone would instinctively start looking to see which piece of farm machinery had just broken down. Perhaps this is just a quiet week, which might mean the ratio of women and Australians s more likely to be a statistical outlier.

In any case, the combination of women and Australians must be a devilish conundrum for the sorts of ski bums that end up at BR. It’s basically their favourite and least favourite things together in one place at one time, like if you were really hungry and someone made you a sandwich with ice-cream and dishwasher powder.

And because it is Fact Day, I must admit to a certain secret, guilty pleasure in having other Australians around. I just heard a guy ask where Timaru was. God, what a rookie.

Live the Dream

Before I left Australia, a number of people referred to my upcoming trip as “living the dream”. Perhaps for most people, leaving your job and your obligations behind to pursue one’s passions across the globe is living out their dreams. I, however, was and still am reticent to use the phrase “living the dream” in relation to this trip for two reasons.

First, I have worked at a certain retail chain which had a sales byline of “live the dream”, and every time I hear this motto I am faced with the vision of our store’s faulty stock box. This box was the last stop on the long journey to landfill for innumerable cheap headtorches, sleeping mats, insulating mugs and all manner of other crap that had tragically died young. Having collected some damaged components myself over the years the thought of this box and the well-intentioned products within it brings me little comfort.

Second, there’s a big difference between what trips like this are actually like and how people perceive them. This is dangerous territory, because I don’t want to sound ungrateful for this opportunity. If I wasn’t here skiing I’d probably be where most people are most of the time, at work. Skiing is obviously better than work. But I think people sometimes get confused by the glamour of ski movies, travel magazines and slide shows from luxury tourists. Life as a beginner ski bum is not like those things. Some common misconceptions are:

Ski bums spend every day skiing epic powder:

False. Most of my skiing on this trip has been done in varying degrees of ice and hardpack. Lately there has been some corn snow (some ankle deep and gloopy, some firm and fantastic), but mixed ice and hardpack has been something of a theme. Powder is good, but there’s been one storm since I got here and I missed three days of skiing in that snow because my knee puffed up.

Ski bums start every night in wild boozy parties and finish it fornicating with attractive members of their desired sex:

False. There have been some boozy parties in my general vicinity during my time in NZ, but I haven’t gotten involved, because having fun is a tool of the devil. But even if I had been slowly embalming myself, the second part of this myth is completely off the mark. For a start, skiing in NZ is a HUGE sausage party. Since most ski bums are not suitably inclined to take advantage of this glut in supply, there’s a lot more talk on this front than action. And even if there were beautiful women queuing up to use the Broken River funicular tramway each night, I’d still be out of bounds. And even if I wasn’t, it’s not like the imaginary women would be imaginarily throwing themselves and my non-imaginary feet. So far, the club of women who have admitted to finding me attractive has six members, two of whom have never even been identified. Admittedly, the club did welcome a new member just recently, but it was humongously, spectacularly awkward and was either a very droll and hilarious joke or a tragic mistake.

I have, however, learnt some valuable things about boozy parties while I’ve been here. It seems that the unwritten rules for removing a drunk person from your car are as follows:

Do: Yell at them, shove them, whack them and threaten them.

Don’t: Put snow down their pants. This seems to be an especially serious breach of the rules.

Thankfully, I was able to learn by watching the example of others more knowledgeable than myself, rather than by trial and error.

Ski bums are all great skiers who spend the day hooting with joy as the rip around the hill:

False. There is at least one ski bum who spends the day faceplanting, snorting snow out his nostrils and grumbling with frustration and rage as he leaves large arse and/or face-shaped craters in the hill. For some people, wearing a helmet is a fashion statement that they hope to never use. For me, a helmet is a vitally important piece of equipment that is on the front line of wear and tear.

Ski bums roam the earth in packs, buoying each other’s spirits with collegial spirit and jocularity:

False. Given that I disapprove of booze, having fun, people and skiing, it was always going to be a stretch to find a pack of appropriately jovial ski bums. In France I hung out with some Finnish guys, but they all wanted to die, so it worked out. Here, everyone wants to have fun and go to boozy parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. It’s not exactly that dating show from the 80s where a robot found people their soulmates. Whatever happened to that robot anyway? He’s probably at Temple Basin helping the fairies distribute the snowflakes evenly. I’m going up there tomorrow so I’ll let you know.

The apologetic accomplice

It seems that I’ve been unwittingly acting as a getaway driver lately. Before I left for NZ I picked up a hitchhiker while driving from Melbourne to Horsham (in Victoria, near Mt Arapiles). All was going well until we pulled into a regional centre just off the highway so that my passenger could get some food and smoke. He went into the supermarket and returned empty handed, saying something about not having money and shopping. I misinterpreted this comment, because as we drove out of the carpark he pulled a chocolate milk, a packet of M&Ms and a vacuum sealed salami that was at least 30cms long from various parts of his clothing. I tried to convince myself that he’d just refused a plastic bag to save a dolphin, but it didn’t seem like he was that worried about choking hazards for our ocean bound friends. The whole thing was a bit dumb, because if he’d just said he was broke I would have bought him some lunch, but I guess he saved us both some money. Anyway, the rest of that drive was a bit awkward, and I didn't feel comfortable sharing any of his illegal M&Ms.

More recently, I drove a posse of Broken River regulars to the Flock Hill pub a few ks from the bottom of the ski field’s access road to watch the All Blacks play the Wallabies. We ended up staying for a while after the game while some of the crew played pool. It must have been a pretty captivating game, because I just found the white cue ball in the seat well of my car. I suspect that some drunken absent mindedness is to blame, rather than malicious ball stealing or victorious souveniring, but it’s still a bit awkward, especially because I’m now several hundred ks from Flock Hill and it will take me a while to get the ball back to them.

As an aside, it’s a bit weird finding a hard, dense white sphere in the seat well of your car. Without the context of a pool table anywhere nearby, it’s not immediately obvious what it is. However, the density of the sphere ruled out dinosaur egg, and it was just a bit too big to be a gobstopper, so I worked it out in the end.

Frequently Asked Questions

In a way that comprehensively proves the Nietzschian concept of the eternal return, introductions at ski fields and the small towns I frequent often tend to follow a similar pattern. If someone else starts the conversation, things tend to go like this:

Q1: Do you work here?

A1: No. I don’t work anywhere. I am fundamentally broken.

A surprising number of people mistake me for a staff member, especially at hostels and Broken River. I’m not sure whether this is a compliment or an insult. It’s certainly a bit weird and something that should probably concern the staff at these establishments. This answer on its own isn’t disturbing, but when combined with the answer to question 2, eyebrows begin to rise.

Q2: How long are you here for?

A2: I’m in New Zealand for three months.

This question sometimes comes up because people have noticed my Australian accent, but quite a few people don’t pick it up. In New Zealand, however, the ski fields aren’t attached to towns, so you can be pretty sure that anyone who isn’t staff is only around temporarily. In any case, someone who is skiing and not working for three months is something of an oddity. This leads to question 3.

Q3: Where are you from?

A3: Canberra, Australia.

This answer satisfies a bunch of people about questions one and two. New Zealand lore is clear on the topic of Australians. We are all fabulously wealthy and love nothing more than living a life of luxury in NZ.

Q4: So you’ve got a car?

A4: Yeah, I bought one in Christchurch.

This question seems innocent, but really, the locals are trying to work out whether you’re one of the jillions of tourists who come to their country, hire a campervan, then drive around camping on the side of the road and defecating all over the countryside. Understandably, they frown on this kind of unsupervised defecating. Specifying that you have a car denotes that you’re not a freestyle defecator. After the disappointment in their face when they find out you’re Australian, having a car is a good way to keep the conversation civil.

Q5: What do you do in Canberra?

A5: I’m retired.

This is a difficult question to answer accurately. Strictly speaking, I don’t do anything in Canberra. I worked for a while in the local government while I was getting my knee fixed, but it was always a temporary job and pretty much the opposite of a career. I could say I’m unemployed, which is true, but it doesn’t really capture my job state correctly. Unemployment suggests that you either live on welfare or that you’re looking for work. I’m not doing either. I’ve been weaned off welfare and I’m more trying to hide from work than find it. Saying I’m retired is a good approximation to my actual working life and has the benefit of being true if I die soon.

Q6: How long are you at Mount Example for?

A6: I don’t know. What day of the week is it? What does the weather report say?

Since I never bother to book accommodation, I never really know how long I’ll be at a particular place. Sometimes the place will book out and I’ll need to move, other times I’ll get some kind of barely rational intuition that the snow is better somewhere else, if things get extreme I’ll run out of food or fuel and need to head back to town. On Friday, for example, I went to BR to find my ski pants and helmet which I left here last week, intending to go to Roundhill (a field further south) that day. I ended up staying two nights before I found myself delivering someone else’s forgotten gear to Roundhill. Now I’m eying off a new storm coming across on the weather charts and wondering where the best skiing will be.

Q7: Have you been to Temple Basin? I hear they have a 12 metre base and that every night fairies hand deliver a meter of fresh powder, each flake of which has been hand-carved by artisan gnomes from the frozen tears of a friendly white lion.

A7: No. I hear that there are heaps of rocks everywhere and what snow they do have is bulletproof ice. I’ve also met that lion and he’s a dick.

The only people getting really excited about Temple Basin this season are people who haven’t been there.