Slippery slope With skiing, I was finally good at a sport. Now I’m suddenly passé. BY ALAN OLIFSON

As our family car barreled headlong into the Sierra Nevadas, I couldn’t help but wonder why my parents were trying to kill me. Skiing? I mean, who the hell did they think they were dealing with here? I wasn’t a skier. I wasn’t even a tree climber. Hell, just a few months ago I had struck out in tee ball.

I was 11 years old and had just learned how to ride a bike the year before. Until then, while my sister and the other kids on the cul-de-sac rode around on their banana-seat cruisers, I was content to play "gas-station attendant." This consisted of sitting on my front lawn waiting for people to stop by and berate me, "Fill ’er up — baby."

So skiing seemed like an odd choice for a family vacation. We could have gone fishing or camping or gotten really into Scrabble. Instead, my parents opted for a pastime with the highest fatality rate out of any sport offering kiddie classes. What had I ever done to them?

As it turned out, I wasn’t a marked man. We were going skiing for one simple reason: my dad’s best friend owned a ski condo. In the world of family vacations, free lodging trumps everything.

Against all odds, I survived my first ski trip, only to realize there would be more. A lot more. For the rest of my childhood, every Christmas vacation, Presidents’ Day weekend, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday — basically, any holiday commemorating a great figure in history — my family would celebrate by strapping skis to the top of the car and hitting the slopes. Just the way Jesus, George Washington, and Dr. King would have wanted it, I’m sure.

And as the years went by, something amazing happened. I actually became good at a sport.

The condo-owner’s son, Rich, was a friend of mine. He’d already been skiing for years by the time my family started mooching in on his vacation time, so we were obviously at different skill levels: he was advanced; I accidentally stabbed people in the shins with my poles while waiting in lift lines. But we wanted to ski together, so we worked out a good compromise: I would follow Rich, and he would lie to me. "Sure there’s an easy way down this run." "Yeah, you can totally handle this lift." Every time I believed him, and every time, I ended up facing a vertical wall of ice and moguls. While my parents and sister were off learning at their own gentle pace, I learned how to ski quickly, as a matter of basic survival.

And Rich’s, as it turned out.

At the end of one ski day, Rich talked me into a last run. "An easy one," he promised. Why I continued to believe this kid, I have no idea. Sure enough, he led me down yet another experts-only trail. Three turns in, Rich broke his leg. Just like that. One moment, he’s laughing at me for trusting him, the next, he’s lying in the snow, racked with pain, screaming for help.

There’s a certain emptiness that encroaches on a mountain at the end of the day: the clouds roll in, the lifts begin to close, and — most important — the crowds thin. We were the only people on the run. I had no choice but to go for help. "Don’t worry, Rich, I’ll get the ski patrol!" I stood in the waist-high moguls and took stock of my situation. The trail was steep, icy, and, as my screaming friend with the broken leg could attest, dangerous. Normally it’d take me an hour of side-stepping to get down this run, but I barreled ahead. Turn. Fall. Repeat. As he watched me tumble toward the horizon, Rich probably started making his peace with God. But somehow I made it down in one piece, alerted the ski patrol, and Rich, though suffering a bad break that took him off the slopes for more than a year, survived.

My confidence soared.

From then on, I skied with a vengeance and discovered something I never thought I’d have: the poise that comes from being good at a sport. Sure, I still sucked at basketball and football. But fuck those sports. I was a skier. And as such, I could go on school-sponsored ski trips to Utah, where 20 of my newfound ski buddies and I could spend four days living in a condo with minimal adult supervision and a legal drinking age of 18. You can’t do that on the damn baseball team. I had really found my niche.

Over the years, I’ve continued to ski, and the most challenging part has always been finding ways to work it into everyday conversation. After all, what’s the use of being good at a sport if no one knows? In high school there was the classic "accidentally leaving your lift tickets on your jacket" move. "What? Oh, this thing? Yeah, no big deal, I was just up at the slopes this weekend. I did the Cornice." But that doesn’t fly much these days. So I’m forced to be more creative, like listening to ski reports really loudly on the radio, or leaving ski racks on my car all year round, or, on more desperate days, bringing skis into the office: "Gotta take these in to get waxed at lunch — didn’t want to leave ’em out in the parking lot."

But something worse than low visibility is now threatening my favorite sport: obsolescence.

Recently, taking my bait, a younger co-worker asked me about my computer-desktop background. "Is that Mammoth?"

"Why, yes. I grew up skiing there, love that mountain."

"Oh, you ski?"

"Oh yeah." I puffed my chest out like a rooster.

"Wow, you’re old-school. You should try boarding next time."

Bastard.

When snowboarding first hit the national radar, many of the bigger ski resorts didn’t even allow it. It was a fad, the passing fancy of some skate rats looking to while away the winter months. But now it rules the mountains.

And I am destined to become a relic.

In a few short years, when people see me gliding effortlessly down the slopes, feet together, hips forward, they’ll just shake their heads: "Remember that?" I may as well have a handlebar mustache and ride around on a bicycle with a giant back tire, wearing a black-and-white-striped unitard.

At least I finally did learn how to ride a bike.

Alan Olifson, who does not want to hear about the latest half-pipe you conquered on your snowboard, can be reached at alan@olifson.com