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Joie de VIVre

Active travel and designing my website.

VIV Moment

Skiing off a ramp into Utah Olympic Park’s freestyle pool was not my typical idea of fun. But life is too short to only write about other people’s adventures. It was time for my own.

Outfitted with a helmet, boots and skis, I surveyed the scene from the top of the kicker.

Fortunately, this ramp was smaller than the U.S. Ski Team’s — theirs has a 71-degree incline. They jump 60 feet up, plummeting 70 miles an hour to their flat-footed water landing. Even with good speed, I wouldn’t be airborne more than three feet.

As I surveyed the scene, I noted the EMT on duty. Coach John gave me a pep talk. “Look straight at the horizon when you get to the bottom,” he said. “If you look down, you’ll go down.” And he was right!

After pushing off and skiing down the ramp, I caught air. There was an optimistic moment when I thought anything could happen. And then I landed in the water with a terrible thud.

“Are you OK?!?” yelled Coach Sandy at the bottom of the ramp.

Well, yes, my neck hurt, and the wind was knocked out of me, but I was alive.

I swam to the platform to remove my skis. “You need to look straight,” Sandy said, adding sympathetically, “That’s what everyone looks like on their first jump.”

At the top I went for my second and third tries with only partial belly flops. I was improving.

In truth, my ambition for the day was to land at least once on my feet. (Sometimes it’s okay to have low aspirations — like trying to preserve one’s spinal cord.)

As I pushed off for my sixth jump, I muttered continuously to myself “look straight, look straight.” And I noticed a difference. I saw the horizon. And when I jumped, I still saw the horizon.

The landing was pain-free. I stuck the landing! No one shrieked “Are you OK?!?” Instead I got cheers. And in a moment of Olympic glory, I yelled out “Woo-hoo!” pumping my fist in the air.

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