An example of what happens when you are allowed to mix satire into school reports. Case: Skiing.

The following was written back in high school as a make-up assignment for gym class for having missed school for a family vacation up in Wisconsin.  Gratifyingly, my gym teacher gave me an A and never said anything against my use of satire.

            Skiing is when you strap a long, thin board to each foot and subject yourself to the acceleration due to gravity, starting from a position of high potential energy.  You balance your center of gravity and allow your mass to overcome the force of friction upon your skis, causing a steady acceleration, while converting your potential energy into kinetic energy.  During all of this, the pleasure center of the brain sends out positive charges in attempt to overcome the reasoning center of the brain (which sends out negative charges) with a feeling of euphoria.  Finally, the reasoning center of the brain takes over, and while activating the adrenal glands for a possible emergency, calmly decides on a route that would not cause any damage in an inelastic collision.  This process is repeated over and over until the inelastic collision does indeed occur, or the muscles of the body eventually experience a deficiency of oxygen and ATP.  (Can you tell I was studying physics before I wrote this?)

            “Skiing is the act of gliding over snow on long narrow runners called skis.” (World Book Encyclopedia).  Now see, I could’ve put that first, but it would insult my creativity, not to mention only taking up a couple of lines.  (Brevity is death in all school reports such as this.)

            Did you know there’s such a thing as ballet freestyle skiing?  It combines movements from figure skating and gymnastics.  The skiers perform to music and do spins, pirouettes, rolls, somersaults, etc.  Fancy Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding in that kind of scenario!

            One branch of skiing I’ve often wondered about is ski jumping, where you slide down a steep track and fly off the platform at the end.  I always assumed at the back of my mind that the track was actually supposed to be an artificial hill and some prankster kept bending the end up to make the skiers go airborne, freak out, and do a crash-dive into a drift.  Who knows?  Maybe that’s how it started!  But I stray from the point. Jumpers are judged on how far their leap goes, on their grace and poise, as well as the severity of their landing.  (Oops, just kidding on that last one.)

Judge 1: My goodness, I’ve never seen such grace and poise in all my life!

Judge 2: Indeed! He only screamed once, and that spread-eagle position is so…so… free and artistic!

Judge 1: And that flip… it.. conveyed so much raw emotion!

            Most ski jumping is done on 70 or 90 meter hills, meaning the typical jump distances from the end of the track are 70 to 90 meters long.  Oooo.  I notice in the encyclopedias they never say what happens when the skier embraces Mother Earth once more.  This means that either the encyclopedia is keeping ski jumpers’ trade secrets, or ski jumpers are exorbitantly paid to keep quiet about their injuries.

   

         Cross-country skiing is what people do before they ultimately realize the existence of snowmobiles.  When cross-country skiing, there are different techniques with their own special name.  There’s the “diagonal stride” (like jogging, but a lot harder and colder because it’s outside on skis), the “skate” (like rollerskatting, only a lot harder and colder because it’s outside on skis), and the “herringbone”, which distinctly resembles something that is NOT a herringbone.  What is undeservedly called a “herringbone” is actually the reverse of the “snowplow” maneuver of slowing down, but that doesn’t mean that the herringbone makes you accelerate.  The herringbone is used to climb up steep hills and is commonly seen of cross-country skiers who haven’t yet realized that climbing that steep hill is a lot easier and faster if you just take your skis off and use snowshoes instead.  But who knows?  Maybe it’s actually a sub-competition to see who can go beyond their target heart rate and have a violent heart attack first.  (And if there’s a tie, then the one who gets the prettiest nurse wins.)

           A form of downhill skiing that you will never try if you value your life and limb is “schussing.”  This involves skiing straight down a hillside without any turns or stops.  I personally believe the name came from the sound of German skiers shushing their comrades to silence so that they’d be able to hear the impact of that stupid skier who just raced straight past them and who had decided involuntarily to become close friends with some pine tree.  The route schussers take, which is the most direct way to the bottom, is quite literally called (I swear I am NOT making this up.  It is there in the encyclopedia—volume S-Sn, page 485) the “fall line.”  How’s that for telling it like it is?  Another cool term is “sitzmark,” or the indentation left in the snow by a fallen skier.  (That would make an impression on anybody.   Yes, the pun was deliberate.  (grin))

           In conclusion, I must say that I do like to ski.  I’m not very good at it, but I like it, especially when someone else pays for me to go.  But if I’ve learned anything from my research on skiing, it is this—always ALWAYS  look both ways before you cross the fall line.