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Blow by Blow: "Moron Kills Wife and Children"

Added: February 22, 2007

The man I am talking to clearly can't decide if I am insane, or merely an idiot.

I've been discussing my binding adjustment plan with the ski technician renting me my boots and it is not going well. He is sensing the truth of the matter, which is that I am not one of those mysterious ski-town people with mysterious, irritating sources of income that allows them to not (apparently) work very hard ("Contracting" usually...but it doesn't seem to entail anything that "contracting" did for my father, which was many, many nights and weekends of hard work and worry) and have a brand-motherfuckin-new 4x4 behemoth with 2 grand just in the tires, and also the ability to drop $4K on brand new ski equipment for their entire family, including $500 for the 4 year old's racing skis.

Nope, not me. Who I am is the guy who noticed some ski tips sticking up out of a bin at the local Goodwill, and stopped to investigate. Having grown up skiing, the prospect of teaching my kids to ski on the same mountain was a real motivator, but being $3980 short of the $4k mentioned above had very effectively put a stop to any and all family ski operations up to this point.

However, the stop at the Goodwill bin was a real eye opener. It is a cliche to say "it is amazing what people throw away", but I gotta say, after looking in that bin and seeing pair after pair after pair of brand new skis sitting in a big pile, I must say it is amazing what people throw away.

You can't walk into the Goodwill and buy a nice new bike for $5, you can't get a nice new tennis racket for $5 and you certainly can't get a nice new Ipod for $5, but you sure as hell can get a brand-new pair of nice skis for $5. Oh yeah, and boots too...those are $2. Any size.

Ski marketers must do an incredibly good job of convincing folks that last years skis are complete garbage, because they show up in the Goodwill bin by the barrel-full. I must admit that I still remember the sweetness of taking out my first pair of new skis in 1981. It was fantastic being on boards that had not a scratch on them, even if it was only for about 15 minutes. And even then, after they got scratched up after a few runs, I knew that they we my scratches.

However, daddy-on-a-budget was limited to two options:

A. Never, ever, ever go skiing with my family or anyone else because I don't even have enough extra cash for even one ski (without bindings). Sit around the house all winter trying to get a decent nap in on the couch and telling the kids to play somewhere else whenever they come near me.

B. Pick out gear for everybody out of the Goodwill bin for less than $30. Have an absolutely insanely fun time with my family every single weekend from Nov. through March (kids don't have any hangups on the Goodwill thing...they just put whatever you give them on their feet and take of down the hill like banshees) and, for the first time in my entire life, feel sad at the prospect of winter ending.

Which would you choose?

I chose the second option, spent the 30 bucks, and got ready to have some F.U.N. The only gap in the plan was my own big feet, which just would not cram into any of the $2 boots in the GW pile. Renting a single pair of boots would be no big expense, so I headed down to the local ski shop.

This is when the questions started from the ski technician as he eyed me suspiciously - "Who are they for?" "Who will adjust the bindings?" "What kind of boots did you have before?"

I'm realizing this is not the happy-go-lucky Oregon of my youth, where you could rent some of the most dangerous equipment known to man without the rental guy asking you one question about whether you had the slightest fucking idea what you were doing, or if you knew which end of the thing to point at the tree, or if you were a moron or insane or anything. It is incredible that me and my dad weren't disemboweled by some of the power equipment we rented and tried to operate with no knowledge whatsoever of what we were doing. (Maybe the power-rake was the most hazardous of them all?...I still remember some small projectile whizzing past my ear having been accerated to super-sonic speed by the whirring tines...only to embed itself deeper than a .22 slug in the side of our very sturdy shed).

But those days are gone. All I want to do is rent some ski boots so I can go on the bunny hill with my kids and this guy isn't going to let me get out the door without proof that I am a factory certified binding adjustment technician.

"No...no...no" he says after another one of my completely inadequate answers. He pauses, trying to phrase his next statement in terms that I can understand (one answer for idiots, one answer for the insane). "I really shouldn't tell you this, but that won't work...you need to adjust the forward pressure, the toe release spacing, the 1mm toe gap and make sure that the rear arrows line up between the scribe marks on the set plate when the binding is locked". He pauses to let it sink in. "Otherwise, you run a serious risk of no release, or pre-release, both of which will lead to severe injury."

I look at him for a few moments and mull over my own answer - finally deciding just to look him right in the eye and say "Okay" in the most deliberate way I can. There is another pause as he tangibly continues with the idiot/madman dilemma in his head, and I see that this is my chance to get out of the store with my boots before he thinks of some other reason to stop me. "Thanks" I mumble as I scuttle out the door.

"Sheesh" I think as I drive off..."That guy sure was uptight..." I go back home and continue getting things ready for the following day, not realizing until later that night that the ski-tech has planted a seed of doubt in my skull that is busily festering into a massive slow-burn anxiety fit that is going to make the next 10 hours of my life a living hell.

I have a theory about imagination. 99% of the time, imagination is a reliable friend, a stalwart ally in a world gone (virtually) mad. Imagination gives me the ability to write, it gives me the ability to appreciate the art of others, and it gives me the ability to visualize projects and ideas beyond my direct experience. Great thing to have around, right?

Pretty much.

In this type of scenario, imagination is very, very bad. Where the normal un-imaginative man would sleep like a baby, sofly cuddling in the arms of his inability to visualize future scenarios outside the range of his direct experience, my highly-imaginative mind ends up going utterly wild, taking the small chance of mishap outlined by the ski-tech and maginifying it into an 8 hour hyper-realistic 3-D sensurround menagerie exploring every facet of the worst, possible, possible, possible pre-release/no-release skiing disasters in all of human experience.

2:10 a.m. - My expert ski-chick wife (who grew up getting brand-new equipment every year) takes off down the hill on the $5 jerry-rigged (cheap) Goodwill skis I got her. Her (cheap) Goodwill ski with the (cheap) Goodwill binding pops off at during an extremely inopportune phase of a high-speed turn and she is sent ragdolling into a thick stand of old-growth doug fir. I watch the trees shake as she richochets through them like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

2:29 a.m. - Ski fails to pop off, wrenching wife's knee. She groans in pain on the snow as we wait for help. Ultimately, the evac requires a helicopter and makes the local news.

2:58 a.m. - Ski pops off while getting on chairlift, wife drops face down in the snow, looks up just in time to get nailed by the chair as it goes by, then gets binding snagged on chair and is hoisted by her feet 30 yards in the air. Lift shut down for 7 hours as firetruck (with 70ft. extension ladder) is dragged by snow cat to location of accident. Story and photos hit the wire and are picked up on the Yahoo! "news of the weird" page. Video outtakes of me dull-wittedly answering pointed questions from a CNN reporter shoot to the top of YouTube and stay there for months - "Cheapskate Kills Family".

It goes on and on for hours.

My cleverness has turned to idiocy. The prospect of fun with my family has turned into doom for us all. The "Mosquito Coast" factor is in full swing. I'm trying to cheat fate by overreaching my station in life...perhaps I could repair the ski lift, or clean the gears after hours, but heavans no, I couldn't possibly ride on it...

This is a classic case in which my imagination is not my friend. Not at all. My normally reliable imagination has turned into a dire enemy, and has me pinned to the ground for a nice, late-night beating.

"Good God man, get a grip on yourself!" I think as another alpine disaster begins forming in my half-asleep mind. I get out of bed and start doing a little research on the internet and find a pirated version the Solomon technical manual. I read the instructions and adjust the bindings exactly to my wife's height, weight, boot size and skiing ability. At least, as far as I can tell.

This fit of Swedish industriousness mutes the endless disaster loop in my mind a bit, and I am feeling a bit better as the sun rises outside. The thought creeps into my mind that perhaps I won't severely injure or kill my wife today. "Who knows?" I think, "crazier things have happened".

The weird fit of fear continues to fade as the sun continues to rise, and soon I am back to normal. We go up to the mountain. We have a great time without spending a ton of cash - simple.

CNN isn't invovled at all.


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