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Hate! Hate! Hate! Love!

Uagh, I hate skiing!

It's terrible, just terrible.

My childhood was at the end of the 90s, a time with warm winters and so I didn't learn how to ski despite growing up in a mountainous region with traditionally lots of snow. I stuck to sledding and was happy with it and that despite the malicious "childish" calls by parents and friends.

In my teens, there was the traditional skiing week for 8th graders in a big mountain cabin with lots of skiing "fun".

In my year, we were lucky. It was warm again and instead of stupid skiing, we could play football. Well, until the second last day. It got cold and snowed a lot over the night and despite me as well as a handful of other dissidents sabotaging our skiing gear, we had to do some skiing. Our teacher, a passionate dick skiing enthusiast got us replacements, which made us very happy - as he claimed.

The problem was that the ski were warm and after we had put them on and went outside reluctantly, they ended up having about 10cm of icy snow on the bottom side that stuck like glue. And despite trying to get it off, after a few meters there was new snow hanging on it and we had no chance of get the thing going. That meant, we had the pleasure of having to go on a skiing piste with both our disabled ski and our mood that was about as cold as the snow.

It ended up being the shittiest day of the year. At least we could shout out our anger and piss off our torturer teacher who insisted on us trying.

Luckily another classmate (a non-dissident) broke his leg eventually and so we got dismissed early. We ran back to the cabin and never left it until the whole event was over.

Another few years later, I was forced by friends to try snowboarding because totally different. Yeah, sure. So, you tie yourself to a board and then you glide down a hill while trying to keep standing. I have an idea: Why not doing exactly that while sitting and without being tied to that thing?!

My friends went on these trips regularly but every time without me, because I really didn't see the point.

Anyway, a lot of begging, convincing, peer pressure, glühwein and blatant lies later, I was standing on of these boards unable to run away. And then I was supposed to push myself - and off I went. Slowly I glided down the hill. Surprisingly, I didn't fall. In fact, the act of snowboarding was both simple and also for that reason most boring.

But while I was gliding I was occupied so much with me surviving the BS and fending off accusations, I was just pretending not to have fun, my path was almost horizontally. I glided over the entire piste and almost crashed into other snowboarders and skiers. About half a dozen of them could evade me with displeased shouts until the last one.

We crashed into each other but luckily nothing happened. I was just too slow. I apologized and the guy probably thought I was an idiot and just went on. I on the other hand was still lying there and I had a serious problem: I couldn't get up again. I was lying there on my belly with my head at the lower end and had the snowboard stuck in the snow. I tried to turn; couldn't do it. I tried to reach the fastening of the board; couldn't reach it. I tried to turn my feet enough to open the fastening; but it's a snowboard, you're tightly screwed to that board.

So I was lying there calling for my friends who thought I was pretending and so they laughed at me and told me to just turn around, or open the shoe. Very funny. Eventually, I got the stupid shoe open and slipped out.

I was cold, I was pissed and I was exhausted and I was in pain. And I had to walk down about 2/3 of that stupid piste!

Never again! Never again! Never again! I don't know if I thought that or if I shouted it. Down at the base I got drunk and made sure they would never do that again to me. I have a lot of patience, but that too ends somewhere.

And it could be so simple and so elegant and so fun - and as it turned out, I was not the only dissident! There was another one in my circle of friends, or well, she was the friend of one of the girls in my peer group and we both assumed we were the only ones who hated skiing and snowboarding, but loved bob sliding instead. And as it happened, she was also the funniest and hottest girl of the entire school - besides her sister who was equally hot.

Anyway, on some innocent winter day, my friends agreed on another skiing/snowboarding trip and both she and I happened to be present during the planning. And after me making very clear what I think about it and what barbarians they were I was very surprised when she suddenly agreed with me while insisting on having had the exact same horrible experience as I had! WOW!

And so in protest, we spontaneously decided to spend an entire afternoon with bob sliding on the very same day while the others would be doing their stupid and moronic stuff.

Not too far away, there was a 5km long bob sliding piste with amazing views and fun and fast passages and it was professional enough to have a lift. We went there and it was nothing short of perfect. We both brought our sleds. She also brought glühwein in a thermos flask and I brought some special smoke ware plus snacks.

My god did we have fun there!

It was totally relaxed, we raced down a bit, we could stop at the spots with a nice view, we had snowball fights and we drank the glühwein and smoked some spliffs. We laughed a lot and enjoyed ourselves as much as you can enjoy an afternoon in the snow, when everything is perfect and there is nothing that would stress you out.

But the best thing about it was that at the time when we reached the bottom of the piste: She was my girlfriend! ;-)

Image source: Appartements Kaiserwinkl