Being from Louisiana, I was twenty-six before I ever went snow skiing for the first time.  I had such a horrible time that I was twenty-eight before I went again, this time with my second wife Anne.  Anne's roommate, Cathy, asked us to join herself and her boyfriend John on a ski trip to Red River, New Mexico.  They were going in an RV with a group of other people.  Anne convinced me that we would have a great time so I reluctantly agreed to participate.  Anne had a surprise coming when we met the group at the RV.

One of the couples on the trip was Gary and Carroll.  Carroll is a geologist and was Anne's best friend in grade school.  Gary, her husband, later became an Oklahoma County deputy sheriff but was a bookstore owner at the time.  Go figure!  In addition, there were two more geologists, Doug and his wife Mary, and Ken and his wife Cassie.  Altogether, there were five geologists and their significant others on the trip - a sure recipe for impending disaster.

John is no longer with us but he was one of the most intelligent persons that I have ever known.  He was tall, at least six-foot-six, and he liked his liquor.  At two in the morning, as we descended into the Red River Ski Resort, the roads turned deadly icy.  Luckily, John was wide awake and drove us into the resort without mishap.  Anne and I were awake, holding on for dear live as the RV slid from one side of the road to the other, coming dangerously close to the precipice more times than I care to remember.

The sun was coming up over the mountains as we arrived.  We soon learned that our reservations had become slightly screwed up.  The ten of us ended up staying in a single large room with a single bathroom.  When Anne informed the very German innkeeper that our bathwater was "tepid" we all proceeded to get an earful.

"If you don't like it, you vill get out," she told us, her thick accent informing us she meant business.

The ski trip went mostly without incident, except for my badly dislocated thumb that I got when I had a disastrous meeting with an unexpected mogul.  Oh, and I managed to drive about eighty miles in the wrong direction on the way home after being awakened at a gas station late at night to take my turn at the wheel.

We all grew close and Gary, Ken and Doug became the core of the softball team that I organized that weekend, John volunteering mostly to be a spectator.  The following year I really learned how to ski well, not sobering up for seven days - but that's another story.

http://www.ericwilder.com