| Monday, January 19, 2004 |
23:44 - Pass the controller
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On the way up the backside ski lift at Sierra-at-Tahoe on Saturday, a friend and I looked down at the largest of the many terrain parks now strewn about the resort.
Kids from fifteen through thirty-five were hurling themselves twenty feet in the air, spinning around in space, grabbing the edges of their boards, turning graceful somersaults, even riding the grind rails on skis. By the dozen, one after another, they were swooshing down the hill as easily as though they were strolling through the park, dressed in baggy pants and drooping hoodie-sweatshirts, looking almost bored. Boarder after boarder turned perfectly executed pirouettes and soaring leaps and flashy displays of easy competence, tossed off with an air of complete low-key nonchalance. It could hardly have been choreographed better.
"Wait a minute," my friend said. "Weren't we supposed to be a nation of big, fat, klutzy couch-potatoes?"
Funny, yeah-- I'd heard the same thing.
Next time someone steps up to the mike to lecture about how America's youth is bloating itself to death in an anti-physical wasteland of virtual reality and fast food, I'll offer to take him to the backside of Sierra-at-Tahoe and show him what America's youth is doing in its spare time.
Hell, I'll even spring for the lift ticket.
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Brian Tiemann
