How To Ski Like A Texan

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Bill Greenwood

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Bill Greenwood
We've had some discussion of what the best ski areas are. Now I'd like to give my observations of how most folks from Texas actually go on ski vacations.
1. Never fly, pile a large bunch of family in a huge 8 passenger land yacht and set out on the road. After all if you are in Dallas or Houston, how far can Colorado be, its just right out there past Abilene isn't it? Don't worry that you are going to give up 3 or 4 days of your vacation making the drive, you can listen to Russ on the radio to pass the time.
This doesn't apply if you've got your own Citation.
2. Always go where the other Texans go, Breckenridge or Snowmass. Somewhere flat so it feels like Texas and you never need to bend your knees or edge.
3. Never bother to take any lessons to actually learn to ski. After all, you were all state in football, how hard can this skiing thing be.
4. In the unlikely event you do sign up for lessons, stay out drinking the night before and arrive half hour late for the lesson.
5. Only ski with other Texans or maybe pilots from Florida who are even worse than you are, never get near any racers who might be a good example to emulate.
6. Complain about how the prices of the 4 start hotel are so much higher than the Motel 6 in Pearland, same as for the food.
7. But really, go and try it and have a good time, and it is possible for a Texan to learn to ski well, it only took me about 25 years.
 
Was this a long way of saying "You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell him much"? ;)
 
Not a single one of those applies to me. What do I win?
 
You forgot they only wear Texas GoreTex...ie denim.
 
KDEN to KDFW is 13 hours by car with food and bio breaks.

found that out when one of spring blizzards shut down KDEN for several days and I ran out of time waiting for the airlines to figure out rebooking to fly me home.
 
Notice the form on the water skier: bent over at the waist, knees kind of stiff and elbows bent in as if pulling on the rope, all the opposite of good form. I water skied a lot, but I was a lot better snow skier than water skier. We once water skied in Florida in a river with alligators, that was pretty dumb, but we were young.
 
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Sierra_Hotel said:
Not a single one of those applies to me. What do I win?
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A free trip to Amarillo?

Bill Greenwood said:
...We once water skied in Florida in a river with alligators, that was pretty dumb, but we were young.
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Sounds like something a Texan would do.

I lived in the Persian Gulf for a number of years. One of the cheap forms of entertainment for this boy from the Rockies was going to the indoor ski hill in Dubai to watch the locals give it a try. Spider on glass comes to mind...
 
Wow. I'm glad none of that applies to we Okies ;)

After nearly 40 straight years of heading into the hills for the puffy white stuff, we blend in pretty good. They only way you can tell us apart from the locals is our license plates and friendliness.
 
...and the true flat-landers wear their ski boots everywhere... to the grocery store, out to eat, in church. They still have their goggles on in the car, and they’re dressed in the ugliest colors. If they actually make it off a lift, and manage to stay upright long enough to be seen, their poles never, ever touch the snow once they start sliding straight down the trail, no turns, just a terrified yell and a quick sit-back-and-crash stopping technique. Those skiers are the reason that we snowshoe and backcountry ski now, and don’t pay for the privilege of waiting in line to be hauled up the mountain. ;)
 
Although not a Texan, Billy Kidd has to receive honorary Texan status based on how good he looks in that Stetson.

BillyKiddFILE1-1240x870.jpg
 
GRG55 said:
A free trip to Amarillo?
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Only ever drove through there. Good enough for me :D


GRG55 said:
Sounds like something a Texan would do.
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Grew up skiing a bayou down near Freeport. We always joked to the boat drivers about not leaving us in the water too long, pretty sure there wasn't a whole lot of truth to it in that river :lol:


GRG55 said:
I lived in the Persian Gulf for a number of years. One of the cheap forms of entertainment for this boy from the Rockies was going to the indoor ski hill in Dubai to watch the locals give it a try. Spider on glass comes to mind...
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Now that would be a fun time. Watching some of them try to swim was amusing enough.
 
Billy Kid is a great skier and a nice guy, for a Yankee. You notice once he came to Colo he didn't go back to cold country.
 
OkieFlyer the likelihood of an Okie actually being able to snow ski is about like seeing the Loch Ness monster in your local zoo. I think the Okies have other skills, like slant drilling ,nd recruiting Texans to play your football.
 
My 10th grade English teacher had a poster in the front of the classroom that said "Ski Oklahoma" and had a drawing of a skier going down the side of an oil derrick.

I couldn't find it online, but there is this:
514_550x550_Front_Color-NA.jpg
 
Bill Greenwood said:
OkieFlyer the likelihood of an Okie actually being able to snow ski is about like seeing the Loch Ness monster in your local zoo. I think the Okies have other skills, like slant drilling ,nd recruiting Texans to play your football.
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Well, I don't claim to be Billy Kidd, but you might be surprised what a week or two per year on the slopes for 35 years in a row, starting at two years old, will do for a flatlander. None of us plan on trying out for the Olympics, but you should probably check your local zoo for the new Plesiosaur display. Something like 250 8hr days on the slopes is enough to be fairly proficient. I've got 250 hours in the left seat of airplanes, and nobody says I can't fly an airplane. 2000 hrs on the slopes, and Okies still can't ski?
 
I remember a bit over 35 years ago there was an article in the Rocky Mountain News (RIP) entitled "You Know You're a Coloradan when..." One of the items in the long list was "When you come to realize that Oklahoma was created as a remilitarized zone between Texas and Colorado". This thread seems to back that up. I remember people in Colorado saying that if God had meant for Texans to ski he's have made BS white. I was just a temporary resident in Colorado (4 years), so I just sat back and enjoyed the show.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
6. Complain about how the prices of the 4 start hotel are so much higher than the Motel 6 in Pearland, same as for the food.
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Flip this because the motel 6 equivalent in keystone is costing me more than the 4-5 star hotel in Houston
 
I have only spent a collective 8 or 9 months total of my entire life outside of Texas, but the majority of those weeks have been in Steamboat Springs, Keystone, and Breckenridge. 4 days at Winter Park. I can hang with my native CO friends just fine on everything but the cornice hucks and steep chutes. Love powder tree days at the 'Boat. Ski one week every year or two. Missing it this year cause Mooney decided to furlough us ..... send Mooney any prayers or nice thoughts if you dont mind.
 
If you want some excellent suggestions for your next ski trip regarding the resorts, I could help you. I've done a lot of research on it in the past, and I made a list of the ones I liked the most. First on the list the Steamboat resort in Colorado, which is an excellent option if you're looking for a place in the US. It's one of the oldest ski resorts with a long tradition and has lots of significant holiday-themed events, including winter carnival and a spring festival. Another one, which is in Canada, though, is the Big White. It has incredible scenery and the widest area for ski-in/ski-out lodging in Canada.
 
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