One of the most interesting books I've ever read was the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. It was quite a long read, but I really enjoyed it. This book is memorable to me not only because I was reading it when I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, but also because the book discusses how Jobs often mentioned that taking LSD was "one of the two or three most important things [he's] ever done in [his] life". I think a lot of people can relate to this. Maybe not the taking LSD part, but having two or three things that they've done in their life that they consider the most important. The most pivotal. The most life altering. If you're like me and you spend a lot of time reflecting on life, you probably know these two or three things off the top of your head. Others may ponder for a while and find their two or three things at some point down the road. Some may never find them after a lifetime of searching, and others may simply not give a damn and choose to not search for them. Those two or three things can occur at any point in life. They can occur in our formative years, during adulthood, or even later in life when we're in our fifties and sixties. I may only be thirty-six, but I already know damn well the two or three most important things I've done in my life up to this point.
Let's take it back to the Detroit suburbs. It was cold Sunday morning in January 1998. During the week a small snow storm had made it's way across the Great Lakes and dumped about five inches of snow on the ground in my hometown. By the time Sunday morning arrived, my dad and I had shoveled the sidewalk and driveway, the street had been plowed, and the storm had left behind an ample amount of sunshine, giving way to a bright and sunny morning with clear blues skies and a layer of fresh snow on the ground. A winter day this nice in Michigan was indeed pretty rare. The sun reflected off the snow and beamed in the living room window as I sat in front of the TV, bowl of cereal in hand, watching Rocko's Modern Life. The doorbell rang. When my dad opened the door the voice of our guest was a familiar one. It was my Uncle Gale. When I heard him at the door, that was my queue to finish up my cereal and get dressed. Uncle Gale is a great family friend of ours, and although we're not related, he's always been like an uncle to me, hence the title. He's one of my dad's sailing buddies and his wife, Aunt Gina, was my mom's college roommate. Besides my parents, Uncle Gale and Aunt Gina were probably the most influential adults in my life while I was growing up. They brought nothing but positivity to my childhood. My mom, dad, sister, and I spent a great deal of time with them, especially during the spring and summer months. During sailing season we'd spend weekends with them at our yacht club and go sailing together. When I entered my teen years, I went on to accompany Uncle Gale, my dad, and a couple of their friends on overnight sailing trips around the Great Lakes in the summer. Whenever my parents went out of town for weekend getaways, my sister and I would always stay at their house. In my eyes, they were great people. They were happy and had a lot of zest and enthusiasm for life. They exemplified a healthy and active lifestyle and took good care of themselves. They were my kind of people. I viewed them as successful and I looked up to them. Because of the positivity that they brought to my life, especially during some very dark times, I loved and respected them deeply, and I still do to this day.
Speaking of dark times, life was a struggle for me back in January 1998. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I grew up in poverty and went to bed hungry. I had good, supportive parents, we had a nice house, and I had a good education. My sister and I, more or less, had a pretty middle class upbringing. But I wasn't like most other kids. I was different. Other kids were more reserved, but I was energetic, and perhaps a little too overzealous at times. I've been different my whole life. Even today, I tend to stick out most places I go. I'm proud of it now, but at ten years old, living in Michigan suburbia, with people expecting me to be a certain way, it wasn't always fun. A lot of people didn't get me. I struggled in school and had a hard time academically. I was shamed by teachers. Other kids insulted me for being different. I was just starting to develop an interest in girls, but I had no freaking clue what to do about that, so I downplayed it. When I got together with my extended family for holidays, I felt a lot like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. I was the outsider. Feeling other than and less than was the story of my life when I was a kid. I had some friends, but they didn't know how much I struggled internally. I never told them. I didn't want to show my feelings out of fear of being shamed. I saw a psychologist in third grade. Honestly, I think my parents were sometimes at a loss as to what to do about me. They had me try a wide variety of sports. Soccer, basketball, swimming, gymnastics, judo, and others. I didn't have much interest in those sports and nothing seemed to stick. I was pretty good at little league baseball though. The summer before, my team made it all the way to the tournament final. We lost, and it was heartbreaking. I gave up little league baseball for two years afterwards. It wasn't fun anymore. I liked to ride my bike and skateboard, but I was losing interest by the time January 1998 came around. I'm glad my parents never gave up on me because I'm sure it was tough on them sometimes. Uncle Gale and Aunt Gina never gave up on me either. They were among the few adults in my life who understood me. They were awesome to me, even during my angsty teen and pre-teen years. In addition to being avid sailors, they were also passionate skiers and took ski trips to Colorado every winter. We had gone over to their house for dinner on a Friday night in January and out of nowhere, Uncle Gale asked me if I wanted to go skiing with him next Sunday. "Uh, I've never done it before, I don't know" I replied. "I'll teach ya" he said cheerfully. I thought about it for a moment. "Okay, let's do it" I managed to say. I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. Little did I know at the time, it would turn out later that taking Uncle Gale up on his offer to take me skiing would have a tremendous and profound impact on my life.
As my dad and Uncle Gale conversed in the kitchen, I finished up the last few bites of my Cinnamon Toast Crunch and hurried upstairs to my bedroom to change into my snow gear. I emerged in the kitchen a few minutes later and was greeted with a high five from Uncle Gale. "Hey Duker! You ready to go?". Ever since we were babies Uncle Gale has adopted the nicknames "Duke" for me and "Duchess" for my sister. Hearing him call me "Liam" was completely foreign to me. I felt a wave of cautious optimism as we made the forty-five minute drive to Mount Holly. It was one of the rare exceptions where an adult other than my parents spent time with me one on one. It was a nice break from my every day life to be hanging out with a guy who always brought good vibes. When we arrived at Mount Holly I was feeling excited. I had never been there before. I'd never been to a ski area, never been to a lodge. The only activity I did that involved snow up to this point was sledding. We rented all the equipment that I was going to need; skis, poles, and boots. Uncle Gale taught me how to get my boots on and how to clip the boots into the ski bindings. Once we got outside I looked up at the mountain in awe. And let's be clear here; it wasn't actually a mountain. It was a hill. We didn't have mountains in Michigan, but the three hundred and fifty feet of vertical drop that Mount Holly presented was enough to get my blood pumping. I looked around at the wilderness that surrounded us, the chair lifts, the ski huts, and the other skiers, taking it all in. It was all very exciting to me. I was starting to already feel like I was in the right place. That day was the most fun I'd had in a long time. Uncle Gale spent the morning teaching me the technique. He taught me how to do toe turns, how to stop, and how to use my ski poles efficiently. We spent almost the whole day on the bunny hill. I had a couple of laughable moments on the toe rope, but by the end of the day, we had gotten off the bunny hill and I went down one of the very easy beginner runs twice. Something happened to me out there that day. Something transforming. I loved everything about it. Being outside, being active, being in good company. When I arrived back home I told my parents all about our day on the slopes. I told my friends about it at school the next day. I was pumped, man. For the first time in my life I felt like I had found a sport that I genuinely enjoyed. I finally felt like I belonged.
We planned to go skiing two more times that winter. The second time I continued to work on my technique, had even more fun, and spent more time on the beginner slopes and less time on the bunny hill. I would get annoyed when I fell, but Uncle Gale told me not to worry and that falling was part of becoming a better skier. "Even people who've been skiing for years fall" he would tell me. "But, you never fall" I countered. He kicked the snow off his ski boot and laughed. "You should see me when I ski in Colorado. I fall all the time". The third planned trip unfortunately didn't happen. It was late Winter, and early Spring conditions prevailed. On the morning of the third trip it was forty-five degrees and raining, essentially turning Mount Holly into a giant slush fest. It was a bummer. I got out a few more times the following winter, enjoying it more and more each time. The only issue was I wasn't going enough to consistently improve. It wasn't until the following winter after that, that skiing began to have a major impact on my life. I heard some kids talking about ski club one day in school. "Ski club?" I thought. "I like skiing. What exactly is this ski club?". After intruding on their conversation I found out that ski club was an eight week winter program where students go skiing at Mount Holly once a week on Thursday nights after school. This sounded friggin' awesome. I can go skiing once a week on a school night? Where do I sign up?! I brought a handout home to my parents with all the information they needed to know and they enrolled me in the program without hesitation. For all of January and February, myself and about fifty other kids would board a bus after school every Thursday with our equipment. The bus would take us to Mount Holly, we were given a food ticket to use in the lodge for dinner, and we basically were free to ski all we wanted from 4:00 PM until 9:00 PM. The bus would then take us back to school and our parents would pick us up. I loved it. I looked forward to Thursday nights every week. I improved considerably as a skier since I was now going once a week. I passed all the basic tests, earned my patches, and was flying down more difficult terrain than the prior season. And I was having a blast. I would usually ski with the same three guys every week. We would ski for a while, go have dinner and warm up, then go back out for about another hour before we had to be back on the bus. I listened to my favorite music on the bus to and from Mount Holly. After four weeks in my first year of ski club I knew that I had finally found my sport. Skiing was my jam and it was starting to change my whole outlook on life.
When I started skiing regularly my life improved considerably. Having a sport that I was passionate about and good at was a game changer. It boosted my self confidence to a level I had never seen before. As a result, I developed better social skills and had an easier time making friends, especially in the winter sports community, since we all shared a common interest. I had an outlet for my energy and was able to focus more and do better in school. My grades improved significantly, especially in math, which later became my favorite subject. I still got crap from people for being different sometimes, but it happened less often. Unfortunately some people were just too close minded to understand. But things were different now. I had more self confidence. I had more friends. I had a sport that I loved and in which I was skilled. By that time, when other kids insulted me, I was laughing in their faces, giving them the finger, and telling them to go fuck themselves. That shut them up. I also started telling adults off too. I didn't swear at them. I knew better than that. But if adults hassled me for reasons that I felt were unnecessary, I would tell them they're not the boss of me, to leave me alone, and not to tell me what to do. Let's just say I got in a little trouble for that and I had to write an apology letter to another kid's dad on one particular occasion. In my thirteen year old mind, I thought I was being cool, but it's safe to say that my newfound self confidence was getting the better of me and I needed to be kept in check. I started being more polite to adults even if they were getting on my nerves. My parents gave me a talking to for those mishaps, but they were mostly ecstatic about the situation. They were happy I had found skiing and my grades and social life were improving as a result. With newfound determination, I also resumed playing little league baseball, rode my bike more, and took up tennis, another sport I became interested in pursuing. By the time I graduated from middle school in eighth grade, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life up until that point.
I continued with ski club all throughout high school. I skied with my friends but I also continued to ski with Uncle Gale, and Aunt Gina would occasionally tag along. My sister learned to ski as well, and we would go on family weekend trips with my parents, Uncle Gale, and Aunt Gina to Northern Michigan and ski at some of the resorts up there. Not only were those "mountains" bigger but they got better snow than the places near my hometown. In ninth grade I transitioned from to skiing to snowboarding. As a diehard skier, Uncle Gale was initially a little put off by this change, but when he saw that I was dedicated to it, he was more okay with it. The last time we skied together was in Winter of 2010. He's since retired from the sport, but he and Aunt Gina still continue sail quite often during the warm season. I've been snowboarding ever since ninth grade. It brings me the same level of satisfaction it did when I was a kid, except now I get to snowboard down real mountains here in California. I remember as a kid asking Uncle Gale what it was like skiing down a real mountain. "It's awesome" he replied with a big smile. He couldn't be more right. I've occasionally dabbled back into downhill skiing, but these days I mainly prefer snowboarding and cross country skiing. Snowshoeing is also lots of fun. Most people who know me know that I love winter sports. This piece probably gives most readers a better idea of why I'm so into them. They've worked wonders for my life. They changed my world as a kid and opened up a lot of doors. You've probably been able to put it together by this point, but I'll still say it for good measure; saying "yes" to Uncle Gale's offer to go skiing with him on that Sunday morning in January 1997 was, without a doubt, one of the two or three most important things I've ever done in my life up until this point. The other two will be discussed some other time. They will have to be, because there's quite a story behind those as well.
