Skiing. Sliding down a mountain of crisp white snow, the sun shining, the gentle breeze blowing nothing compared to the wind of your passage down the mountain. Behind you a field of smooth snow, unmarked by anything but the clean tracks of your passage. In front of you, more snow, completely unmarked. Trees to either side of you but you have a clear fast track ahead.
Of course that's the moment when some complete imbecile comes shooting out of the trees onto the snow in front of you and props there. I ask you, who stops in front of a skier coming downhill fast? This was a black diamond run, the hardest at the lodge. That's why I had it all to myself for the time being. Someone who obviously hadn't graduated past the bunny slopes had no reason being anywhere near the black diamond.
I had two choices. I could go straight through the blasted rabbit and hang the consequences or I could abandon ship, throwing myself to the ground and hitting the quick release so I didn't wind up with a broken leg or two.
Despite the temptation to go with murder and mayhem my better nature won out and I went sidewards, splashing into the snow while my skis continued without me. I rose to my feet, wincing at the pain in my wrist. Apparently the snow had hidden a stone and my wrist had hit it hard. I turned to the silly bunny, intending to create a nice dish of Fricasseed Rabbit, only to see the tail end of the bunny vanishing back into the woods. I wearily trudged down the slope to recover my skis and returned to the lodge to get my wrist checked out.
Badly wrenched but it would be fine after a day or so the Doctor told me. Just rest it and you'll be right. Unless you're a practised one handed skier, stay off the slopes.
Right there that stuffed up the first couple of days of my holiday. Still, I would have ample time to make up for it.
After lunch I wandered down to the Lodge's game room. I was the sole occupant, everyone else being out on the slopes. There's not much you can do in a game room when you're by yourself and only have one working arm. There were a couple of big comfortable chairs next to each other and facing a large TV screen. I settled down in one and started watching mindless drivel.
After I'd been watching for a while a pretty young thing came in and flopped down on the chair next to me. My guess was that she was about twenty, rather petite, blonde, better than average figure, and more than passably pretty. She was also wearing a wedding ring, not that that would stop me at least chatting to her.
"Hi, I'm Mike," I said. "And you are?"
"Erica, and not interested," she replied with a smile.
"Don't worry. I'm not trying to date you. I've already noted the wedding ring."
We talked idly for a while about nothing in particular. I finally raised the subject of her husband.
"I assume your husband is out on the slopes?"
"Yes," she said with a nod. "He loves skiing. I'm not very good and am a bit reluctant to go out."
"All you need to do is get in some practice on the bunny slopes."
"But I feel so silly on those slopes. There're little kids zipping past me all the time. It's embarrassing."
"Maybe for right now but you have to remember that some of those little kids have been skiing for quite a while. If you swallow your pride a little and get in some practice you'll find you catch up to them and will be better than them soon enough."
"I don't know," she said, sounding rather dubious. "It's such a dangerous sport."
"Not if you're careful," I pointed out.
"Ha. I was careful this morning and still almost got killed."
"Do tell?" I said, amused, wondering what had happened.
"I was just practicing by myself out in the woods. I came to this nice stretch and started across it when I saw this idiot absolutely hurtling down the hill towards me. I stopped but he just kept on coming. I thought he was going to crash into me and he was so big he'd have killed me for sure. Fortunately he was a bad skier as well as a careless one and he fell over before he reached me."
"Really?" I said, holding hard to my temper. "How unfortunate. Ah, this nice stretch of snow that you found. Did it run between the trees all the way down the mountain?"
"Oh, yeah. Do you know it?"
"I think so. That sounds like the Lodge's Black Diamond run. It's the hardest slope around. Only the very best of skiers are allowed on it."
"Oh. Well that man shouldn't have been on it if he couldn't handle it."
"I think you'll find he ran into an unexpected hazard. A bunny on the course. It happens sometimes."
