Lover's Leap

 I whacked my poles on the cornice and yelled “I’m gonna rip the shit out of this!”

A demonstration of my wannabe radness and 400 G.N.A.R. points to boot.

In actuality, it took me a few tries to actually achieve the radness. A few years, actually.

On our very first date in January of 2021, Greg and I were deep in the getting-to-know-you-here-are-all-the-reasons-why-I’m-awesome-and-you-should-dig-me conversation, and the topic of hobbies came up. Both of us had mentioned skiing in our profiles, so we talked about it some more and realized that skiing is something that we both really love and spend a lot of doing in the winter.

We also established that he is an infinitely better skier than I am. He was born and raised in Colorado and has been skiing his whole life. He is very, very, very good. Great, even.

Only other hand, I learned to ski when I was 28 but didn’t start skiing regularly until I was 40. I try really hard to get better - I take lessons, I ski with friends who are better than I am, I always push myself out of my comfort zone so I can constantly improve. There is no truer maxim than, “skiing is easy to learn but hard to master.” But I do my best.

On that very first date, which was on a Monday, he invited me to go to the mountains to go skiing that weekend.

When you know, you know.

We love sking together. I mean, we love doing everything together. We always have fun together. And skiing is really high on the list.

The pattern is this: We get to the top of a run or a section of a run that looks a little scary to me. He stops and looks over at me. I make a little high pitched “uuh” sound and take a deep breath.

“No?” he says.

“It looks scary,” I say.

“Piece of cake for a woman like you,” he says.

The first time, or even the first 20 times, I might say, “I’ll go around and meet you at the bottom.”

He goes down the scary part like it’s nothing, and I go around and meet him at the bottom.

And then one day, I feel more competent and more confident, and so I do the scary part.

“You rock!” he says.

This has been happening more and more over the years. It makes skiing so much fun.

There have been a couple of hurdles that I have not been able to clear, though.

One is this little curlicue of a chute that takes you about twenty feet down from the top of a rocky ledge straight down to a path below. Twenty feet isn’t all that much and it goes quickly, but it’s still a chute. It’s very steep - you’re basically going straight down. There’s one way down, and it’s around a narrow curve with rocks on either side. I don’t like chutes. If you fuck up, there’s no way to avoid a hard spill.

So when we get to that point, Greg does the chute  - he glides down like it's nothing. And I go around and meet him at the bottom. 

The other white whale is Lover’s Leap.

Lover’s Leap is a run that starts with a 4 or 5 foot drop off a cornice, and then through terrain that is steep, with moguls and rocks and trees. Ever since we started dating, Greg has been trying to get me to do Lover’s Leap.

My answer has always been, of course not. Never. I’m in my fifties. Too late for me to try something like that for the first time. That’s the kind of run you start to do when you’re in your twenties, before you realize that you’re mortal.

Every time we go to that part of Vail, he says, “today’s the day for Lover’s Leap!”

“Hmm. I don’t know about that,” I say with a smile.

I mean, look at it! It’s preposterous.

But then a couple of weeks ago we were skiing with another friend and we had a cracker of a day. The snow was incredible - soft and forgiving, like gently bouncing along on feathers. The weather was sunny and warm, with beautiful views in every direction. The snow sparkled like crystals on the mountains. 

And I skied better than I had ever skied in my life. We were ripping through glades and bowls, bombing down fast steep runs, swooping and swirling all over the mountain. It felt amazing.

Greg said that he had never seen me ski so well, or with such glee.

Mid-afternoon, I said, “I want to do Lover’s Leap.”

“Really??”

“Yes! I’m ready.”

We made our way over to the lift that would get us there. Unfortunately, it’s a lift that closes earlier than others. By the time we made it there, they had just shut it down.

But still. I knew I could do it. It’ll happen before the end of the season.

In the meantime, we were back at Vail on Sunday. We arrived at the curlicue.

I decided it was time.

I stood up at the top looking down, trying to calm down and get out of my own head. I stood there for at least a minute. 

It's so steep. So narrow. I had visions of being catapulted down the little curve and smashing myself on the side of the rocks on the way. 

I couldn’t do it. I went the easy way around and met him at the bottom.

We went to the lift and rode back up. The lift takes you to the starting point of 4 or 5 different runs, and no matter which one you take, you pass the curlicue at the end. I decided to try again. 

I stood at the top looking down, contemplating my fate. I took deep breaths and exhaled slowly. But I felt myself shaking. So once again, I bailed. 

I was irritated with myself.

As we got on the lift, I said, “I’m going to do it this time. One more attempt.”

“You don’t have to do it,” Greg said.

“I know. But I can’t stand failing.”

The third time, I stood at the top looking down. I could still feel myself shaking. I was still hesitating. I was still scared.

My solution was to scoot down a little bit until there was no option but to do it because I couldn’t get back up.

I looked down again. 

Come on, Wendy. Go.

I'm far enough down the little incline that there's really no easy way to get back up.

I took a deep breath, planted my pole, and pointed my skis down. I went.

Greg met me at the bottom. “You are awesome,” he said. “You totally rock.”

I was so happy. Still shaking, but proud to have conquered the demon.

“When we come back, if the conditions are decent, it’s on to Lover’s Leap,” I said.

“Fuck yeah!”

“Will you go down ahead of me so I can follow your line and know where to go?”

“Absolutely.”

He gives me confidence. I cannot express how amazing it is to be with someone who believes I can do anything, and who encourages me and cheers me on.

Vail got 13 inches of snow last night and is projected to get more this week. The forecast for Sunday is sunny.

I don’t want to jinx it, so suffice to say I’ll keep you posted.

Forget-me-not.

 I feel like Alzheimer’s and dementia are everywhere right now.

I hear about it constantly. It comes up and I learn that another friend, another co-worker, another relative has it.

My dad was diagnosed about a year ago. A co-worker’s mom has it. My aunt has been in really bad shape with it for years and is now completely incapacitated. I know so many people in this situation.

It fucking sucks.

That’s my dad with baby me.

From a big picture standpoint, right now he is relatively ok. Relative to what, though? I guess in my head it’s relative because when I think about Alzheimer’s, I think about not knowing who you or your family or friends are. Needing full-time care. Disappearing.

I know that it manifests itself differently in different people, but that’s what always comes to my mind.

So relative to that, it isn’t abjectly terrible. He’s lost a lot of weight and is noticably more physically frail, but he can get up and around for the most part. He goes to the gym every day. His short term memory is non-existent, he gets disoriented, and he loses everything, but he can still talk about politics and go to the movies and have a conversation. He reads books and watches the news. The disease has not caused him to forget his deep hatred for Donald Trump. To my knowledge, there has not been a single incident when he didn’t know who my mom is, or who my brothers and I are, or who his brother and sister are, or who his grandchildren are. He knows where and when he lives.

He knows his life.

It’s so hard on my mom, though. She is the one who is dealing with the relentless exhaustion and stress that comes from taking care of him. The ‘disease makes him even more yell-y and easily agitated than he already was and she bears the full brunt of it.

This is the “for worse” part of the marriage vows. But she carries on.

Greg’s mom has it, and the rate and extent of his mom’s decline over the past few months has been shocking. She is definitely losing herself and it’s heartbreaking to watch. This past week the family had to put her in an assisted living facility - against her will and with an excruciating amount of agita and tears - because it isn’t safe for her to be at home any more. Last night he and I were talking and he said that he had never felt such profound sadness in his entire life.

There’s also the selfish aspect of it. I worry about getting it. I don’t want my life to be that in the end. Women tend to get it more than men. But I am my mother’s clone and physically take after her side of the family much more than my dad’s side, except for the crazy little cowlick at the bottom of my hairline at the back of my neck. She’s fine, so maybe I will be too.

Maybe not.

I got involved with the Alzheimer’s Association last year and did a long bike ride to raise money for them. It was supposed to be a seventy-mile mile ride but I ended up doing seventy-seven because I took a wrong turn in the last stretch and ended up riding an extra two miles through the streets of Fort Collins. I’m doing it again - seventy-five miles in June.

Fingers crossed that I don’t get lost again.

Then this past weekend I got a wild hair and decided to do the one in D.C. - forty-five miles in May. It’ll be nice to have my dad there to cheer me on, plus I can use it as a training ride for the one the following month.

It makes me feel like I’m doing what I can, plus it keeps me in shape. Apparently exercise is a way to reduce the risk of getting the disease.

Anyway, it is a fundraiser, so I would be remiss if I didn’t post my fundraising link. All the money goes to Alzheimer’s research and to support for families - hotlines, support groups, things like that. Any donation, big or small, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for cheering me on.

Stop refreshing. Just go.

 I know this is a tortured metaphor. Moms who had their kids in the age of the internet can probably relate.

In the early stages of my pregnancies, especially with Zeke, the various baby-growing sites took up a lot of room in my history tab. Babycenter.com was a big one. Thebump.com was another. I know there were more.

There was all kinds of information available. You could put in your stats and it would show you how your fetus was developing. “It’s now the size of a plum and its skeleton is starting to harden…” Comparing the size to fruit was a big one. Mangos. Grapefruits. That sort of thing.

Early on, especially for the first baby, you worry about whether things are proceeding normally. Are there genetic abnormalities that I need to worry about? Should I get an amnio? If I do, could I hurt the baby? Will everything be ok?

And with so much information, you search online and you search online and you search online for answers. This site says I should do X, but the other says I should do Y. This site says the likelihood of any issues are minimal. The other doesn’t use the word “minimal” - it says “reduced.” Is that bad? Which should I believe?

What is hard to get out of your head is that it doesn’t matter what the various websites say. None of them will change what is going on in your belly.

But you still cling to the notion that if you find the right article on the right site that tells you what you want to hear, then everything will turn out the way you want.

This is what occurred to me yesterday when we were trying to figure out when to head back to Denver after skiing in the mountains, and which route we should take.

We drove up at the crack on dawn on Sunday to ski with friends at Breckenridge, stay up there overnight, and then ski Vail yesterday. It has been dumping snow. Breck received 40 inches of snow in the last week. Vail got 53. The conditions are epic right now.

The skiing was incredible. Powder powder powder, especially in the bowls. So much fun.

But then it started snowing again as we headed back to the hotel. It didn’t stop. The highway up to the tunnel that goes through the Continental Divide closed sometime in the evening. We were incredibly glad that we didn’t have to get home in that mess.

We woke up to find that it had snowed 12 inches overnight and was still coming down. I-70 eastbound was still closed through the tunnel. As the day went on, it would only get worse.

We lay in bed pondering what to do. There was no way I was willing to go over Vail pass to ski there and then come back over the pass to go home AND have to deal with tunnel traffic. Maybe we could ski Breck again. But even if we did that, we would probably be completely screwed going home. What might have been a 3 hour drive in questionable conditions earlier in the day could turn into 5+ hours if the closures continued and the holiday weekend skiers got on the road back to Denver.

We decided to bail and head home. The beauty of living in Colorado is that we can always ski another day.

And thus began the battle of the navigation apps. This is Greg’s kryptonite.

Whenever there’s traffic, he is constantly checking the apps to determine the best way to go. If a particular route is moving, he would rather take that route even if it means getting to the destination slightly later, if the alternative is to sit in traffic that isn’t moving (and for the record, I am on board with this line of thinking). But even after making the choice and committing to it, he will keep checking the apps again. Did it clear up going the other way? Did we make the wrong choice? He agonizes over it. He gets agitated.

I try to stay out of it. I tend to be very Zen about traffic. I can’t change it, so I don’t get too exorcized. However he wants to go is fine.

Waze showed that the tunnel was open and that the drive home would be around two hours. We called bullshit - there was approximately a zero percent chance that that was true. The Colorado DOT site said the tunnel was still closed. There were avalanche warnings. Google said to use the southern route and avoid the interstate. Apple maps had us heading south over the mountain passes that were so traumatizing the last time I had to drive them.

I still get super anxious at the thought of driving over those passes, but at least this time we would be doing it in daylight. So we started driving through Breckenridge. Of course, Greg kept turning onto back roads because the main drag through Breck was super slow. He kept checking his phone and exhaling in an irritated manner.

But then Apple changed its mind because apparently the tunnel had reopened. It kept telling us to turn back.

“It’s saying we should go back. Should we go back?” Greg asked.

“It’s still snowing and whatever is going on back there is likely to get worse. When more people get on the road, the road will probably close again. Let’s stick to this.”

“But it looks like it’s slowing down going up to Hoosier Pass.”

“Whatever you think, babe. But let’s make a plan and stick to it.”

“OK. Let’s keep going. It will be an adventure.”

We put on an episode of This American Life and broke out a bag of peanut M&Ms. As we headed up over the pass, the traffic was slow over the snowy roads, but we kept moving and it was fine.

Coming over the Continental Divide in bad weather is trippy. We crested Hoosier Pass and as we came down the mountain, it stopped snowing. The roads were dry. There was even a bit of sun.

It’s deceptive. It makes you forget that the weather on the other side hasn’t changed.

Greg started looking at the navigation apps.

“It looks like traffic started to move on I-70. Maybe we should have gone the other way,” he said.

“Dude.” I responded.

We kept going and arrived home without incident.

Later he sent me a screenshot of the traffic later that night. Even hours after we were back in Denver, he couldn’t stop.

If we had gone to Vail, it would have taken us almost nine hours to get home. If we had stayed in Breck, it would have been almost four. Either way, we would have had to go home via Colorado Springs, which is insane.

The moral of the story is, gather information, make a plan, and go with it. This is true for most areas of life. Don’t second guess. Stop scrolling and refreshing. Just go. Your sanity will thank you.