"Snow Skiing" is the best medicine!

This weekend was quite good - the right combo of excitement and rest. Yesterday, myself and venky set off and tried our hands(or rather legs) at Skiing here. It was a pretty good experience I should say. I have done Ice-skating once before, but this was many times nicer and easier. I knew we aren't experts and this is nothing like driving, to start straight without lessons(yaa, for all of you out there, it's me bragging in a silly fashion that I started to drive myself - like Elakaivan..err....Ekalaivan!). So we started our skiing experience with one-hour lesson. The first thing we did was to rent the ski-equipments, which included the shoes, the ski and the poles. The shoes, once wore made my legs look nothing less than an adult elephants legs. A stature like mine standing on elephant legs - wow! that would have been a "delight-to-ridicule" for many on-lookers! And as I tried to walk, every step made me feel, as if somebody was holding my legs from behind and begging me not to go skiing. (Yaa, I should accept that those shoes were a little heavy!). And the second thing was to get onto the ice and wear the ski. Yup! now, my legs has grown 3 to 4 feet in length from front to behind. With those things on, I couldn't even stand - let alone skiing. But my instructor taught us easy ways to start balancing, moving, stopping, turning and even manoeuvring. And I tried. And fell once. And twice. And thrice. Though it was a little embarassing to keep falling that way(like a "Always-falling-out-of-balance-yet-to-walk-kid"), I looked around and noticed that I wasn't the only one who was falling. Since we were in the learner's trail, every soul there was learning and invariably falling. Wow! isn't that a nice sight to watch? It was more like a live and a personal episode of "Laughs:just for gags" or "The planet's funniest videos" being telecast for me.

After our lessons and saying "bye" to our instructor, I took refuge onto the bench and relaxed, as "Mr. Cant-control-himself" Venky continued on his try to ski. I should admit he skii'ed decently well, except for that "first-time-big-fall", where looking at the way he fell, I thought he had his specs shattered, arms broken and ankles twisted. But nothing happened to him and that fall didn't stop him either. As he kept skiing to downhill and taking the 'rope-tow' to go uphill and again skiing to downhill, I was watching the rest of the people. They were trying and hoping desparately that they would one day ski with ease. And most of them fell down atleast twice in my sight. Have you ever sat down in a relaxed manner and watched somebody keep falling(that too in "repeat" mode)? That was what I got to see yesterday. Wow! That made me laugh. And at times, I laughed my heart out with my eyes drenched. Everybody was having fun. And since it doesn't hurt to fall there, those who fall down would invariably laugh embarrassingly before they get up. And that made me laugh all the more. And if there was something called the "best-fall" award, some deserved that for sure. You simply can't imagine that! And with the ski shoes on, they find it difficult to get up and that gives us the extra-understanding of how they fell and the after-effects! I was on the "laugh-roll" for almost 20 mins!

I almost decided that if I go skiing regularly, l would be the happiest person in life and in turn end up an healthy person. As they say "Laughter is the best medicine", which triggered the post of this title too!