I’m a decent skier. Let me just throw that out there before we go any further. I was on a racing team. Okay, I promise I’m done now. And for balance I’m a horrible snowboarder. I David Blained my way to a concussion and nice unconscious slide into a ditch the last time I snowboarded. And that was on the bunny hill. But seriously, I can ski, and I’ve been on plenty of lifts. That day, however, was different. I was skiing with my buddy Dan, and we had been working our across the mountain hill (Wisconsin skiing) to the more advanced runs. These runs had their own lifts that operated much faster, and only sat two riders. Perfect. Well we line up at the load line and thats when Dan started to slide backwards. Lucky enough for him, the chair just hit him and he sat down. Unlucky for me, the chair began to swing back as Dan sat down, and when it swung forward it caught me square in the lower back. Being the idiot that I am, I grabbed the railing of the chairlift and hung on for dear life. As I rose higher and higher, I realized I had to let go and just fall here, minimize the height from which I fell. (Yay!) As I let go, though, Dan decided to suddenly become a hero. His timing was terrible. As I fell, he grabbed my jacket hood with both hands. As I struggled to gargle out the words “release me,” people started yelling for ski patrol. When I finally got my point across to Dan, he dropped me and I landed amongst a worried crowd. Bruised ass and ego, but no other damage. But fuck these people now, they’re all laughing at me. I’m headed to another lift. So I trudged over to a “family” lift. A real slow one with four seats. As I got in line I realized that there was only one pole to hold onto and no safety bar, not really that family safe but whatever. That pole, though, was importantly located on the far left, so that only one seat had something to hold onto, and then the middle two were just holding on to each other and the last guy had a flimsy railing that gave the illusion of safety. I got lucky seat number three, which was fine because we all got on just fine. But then Captain Retard to my left decides to miraculously catch, not one, but both of his ski tips. This has sufficient force to swing the entire chair back, threatening to dump us all before CR’s bindings blew out and we swung forward, catapulting yours truly into the top of a short pine. And that, my friends, is how you fall off a lift twice.
