In changing my blog topic this semester, making a full 180-degree turn, moving from the speech to the slopes, I believe that it is important to first tell you, the reader, why I chose this topic.  I chose to talk about skiing for the same reason I wrote about the beach, I hold the activity and place, respectively, very close to me.  Skiing is something I have done since I was a little kid.  I honestly don’t know if I can think of a time or year in my life when I have not skied at least once.  For this I am very fortunate.

I’ve noticed over the years that most people who are taught to ski from a young age have parents who also learned to ski at a young age or at least skied during their youth.  It’s these youth years, I believe, that people get hooked on skiing.  With that, they want to pass it down to their kids and that’s what they do.  But, unlike many of my friends who ski and have parents are big skiers, I do not.

My parents during their childhood years skied very little.  My Mom recounts only skiing once while my Dad claims that he only skied a few times.  As a result of their lack of skiing experience, they were never super inclined to bring my siblings and I skiing.  When we did go skiing my Dad would come skiing with us for only a little while my Mom would wait and watch from the bottom of the mountain.

Now you’re probably wondering how I learned to ski or got into the sport so much.  The answer: my friends.  Even from a young age, during elementary school and middle school, my friends were very involved in skiing.  Their involvement in the sport made me want to get more involved in it because I wanted to go to different mountains skiing with them and whenever they talked about it, it sounded fun.  Therefore, I began to make an effort to go skiing with them more.  Anytime I was offered to go skiing with them I did.   This allowed me from a young age to learn the ins and outs of skiing along with skiing on many different mountains and traveling all over the East Coast to ski.

Fast-forward to present day where all summer my friends and I talk about is the upcoming ski season, how much snow we think (or hope!) we might get for the following winter, and everything skiing.  One of the best things that happened was when all of my friends and I got our licenses.  This allowed us the ability to drive ourselves to the mountains and made it much easier for us to go skiing.  Anytime we heard it was going to snow, you best believe that we had our ski bags packed and the car ready for a 4am trip to the mountain.

The slopes have provided me with some of the greatest and most unique experiences of my life and I want to share some of them with you.