The Ski Trip

On July 2, Anne, Bronwyn, Alison and I boarded a plane for Queenstown, New Zealand. I certainly didn't feel as though I'd "earned" a ski trip, but the plans had been made many months earlier by the other three, and I was looking forward to my first real stay in NZ. Prior to this, my only exposure to the land of the kiwi had been through concourse windows at Auckland airport, on the way to somewhere else.

The nerdier among you may be aware that Queenstown was a base of operations for a good deal of the filming of the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. The mountains here are every bit as grand and rugged as they appear onscreen, and we were treated to a cinematic view as we drifted over them in a roar of white noise on our southeast trajectory from Melbourne. Slipping low into the range on our approach, the snow-covered slopes loomed in the porthole windows on both sides of the plane; suddenly, without the ability to see their peaks, they appeared huge but scale-less, and perilously close. I was reminded of a scene filmed in an entirely different climate-- at the edge of the Suez Canal in "Lawrence of Arabia" when Peter O'Toole gawks at the sight of a massive ship cutting through the desert.

The airport. I don't know who this is, but I like his posture and the arrows over his head.

The air was cold and clear when we landed, and from the tarmac we passed through the duty-free shop, for gin, and into the line for customs clearance. Anne's shoes, which bore traces of Australian mud, were momentarily confiscated for a good scrubbing by one of the officers. After picking up the rental car, we drove to the hotel to drop off our bags and then headed straight into town to pick up our pre-arranged ski gear.

Brown's Ski Rentals, though thronged with customers, was a crackerjack operation and had me outfitted inside an hour with some pretty sweet-looking gear. I just had no faith I'd know how to make it work. The one and only time I had ever skied was at Massanutten, Virginia with my friend Leigh Carroll, when I was 13. I made perhaps two trips down the slope that afternoon and I don't recall having particularly enjoyed myself. But I did still like the idea of skiing and was eager to learn.