Skiing

This is a sport in which this arthritic has no interest. Think of the expense and preparation it takes to arrive at a destination where one slaps on planks to your feet and travel down a mountain. If you ever have been in a ski shop, you know the expense of skiing "costumes", skiing equipment - not to mention the lift tickets and travel expenses. Well if this were not enough to discourage me then the latest news out of Vail surely made me even wonder why I have ventured onto a scenic (slow) skilift during the summer months. I am certain this fellow below had no dignity left after his ordeal. (Guess I should say he was stripped of his dignity!)

A skier at Colorado's Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning. The January 1 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier, 48, and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail's Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift's fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding.





The Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair's botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair.

What a way to bring in the New Year! I am certain this skiier will not forget where he was on January 1, 2009.