Rope Tows & Rapids

Alzada was a reluctant but almost always willing victim. Consider the first – and LAST – time my mother attempted to ski.

Mom had a knack for finding affordable places we could all go to in our Volkswagen Bus, including King Pine, a family-friendly ski house in Madison, NH. The cost for skiing was $4 a day in the 1960s, and the lodging rates and all-you-can-eat meals (a must with growing boys in the family) were quite reasonable. I still remember Steve eating enough bacon for a battalion every morning.

Dad and the kids were quite adept at ascending by the chairlift, but beginners would start on the "rope tow," a free, crude system of a looped rope powered by a motor. You grasp the rope to haul you up the slope.

All of us urged mom to give it a try – "C’mon mom, just try it,” was the family refrain.  

And she did.

Mom grabbed the rope tow tight, fighting the momentum, she was getting there…

And then, halfway up, her skis crossed and she ended up on her back with her arms and legs splayed at her sides, as if she were going to make a snow angel. Skiers behind her joined the fray.

And mom just couldn't get up.

I’d like to think I’m better than this, but at that moment, all I could do was laugh! (It still makes me laugh!) I tried to suppress it, but it was just so, so funny.

Mom didn't think so, and never skied again.

Years later, when us Cross kids were adults, we all went together on a whitewater rafting trip in Colorado. Mom, on the back of the raft, was totally unprepared for what was going to happen.

As soon as we hit the first rapids – out of the raft she tumbled, taking the guy sitting next to her along with her.

She had to drift down current in her lifejacket for at least a mile before she could swim to shore, boiling mad that not one of us, not even our father, had jumped out to help her (which would have been impossible at our breakneck speed).

Needless to say, mom also gave up whitewater rafting.