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  1. #51
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Switzerland
    Posts
    7,578
    Quote Originally Posted by powdrhound View Post
    Totally off topic:

    Why do half of the YouTube videos posted on this board give me “Video unavailable” after YouTube opens?
    Some video may be marked to prevent embedding. You gave to click thru into YT and open from there.

    Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

  2. #52
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Before
    Posts
    27,915
    My son turns 18 today, hard to believe.

    At the beginning, the natural birth attempt ended up failing and got stuck.

    So after 20 hours of labor, I drove my normally reticient wife howling across Lake Washington at 4 in the morning to the emergency room at Virginia Mason.

    Our doula had called ahead and we were both on board for the caesarian, so most of the staff were ready and knew what was going on. Except for one little nurse who came up to me to announce that I had five minutes to decide if I wanted a brain damaged child or not. If I hadn't been so blown out, I would have punched her, but I just laughed and said I just wanted everyone to come out OK.

    I sweated bullets for that half an hour, most agonizing interval of time in my life.

    But then I got the signal, put on the gown and walked in to hold my son while my wife got stitched up. He immediately grabbed my finger and I walked him around to the various check stations and let him hold my finger while the staff poked, prodded and took vital signs. With some slight jaundice, they set him up for some ultraviolet treatment due to low bilireubens. So I stood there for the whole 40 minutes, completely delirious with his little fist wrapped around my finger.

    As a baby, he virtually never put stuff in his mouth, but would hold anything and just look at it, turning around and gurgling, humming, cooing. We did the full contact parenting, sleeping with him, breast feeding coupled with some bottle feeding and lots of contact. Always a super quiet kid, I recoginized something about emotional momentum, so whenever he's get agitated, one of us would be on him immediately, so the agitation never got any real momentum.

    All the way through the toddler thing, I never remember him throwing a tantrum or freaking out. I guess I think now that people's character is more a function of nature than nurture, but we kept up with the theory of arresting any upset, so he never got up the steam for a real screamer.

    We read to him a lot, avoided television and kind of blew out being present and calm to heights of patience I never thought I had. By age 4, he was reading with us, correcting things, all self taught. Quiet in a stern way that seemed to belie wisdom far beyond his experience.

    He became a bookworm, consuming everything and all modes of reading, from Harry Potter, The Hobbit and LOTR, Paolini;s Eragon series, The Song of Fire and Ice series and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. I do remember coming home one day to find him laying out on the couch reading the NYT when the paper was bigger than he was.

    He always waved as I drove off to work, poking his head above the windowsill and watching as I left. Clockwork.

    But he refused to interface with other children and being left alone without an adult family member never worked. Daycare reported him going off to corners to play by himself and withdrawing completely if in the attention of another kid. But he was always interactive with us.

    I started him skiing at 2, mostly a few slides on the plastic skis off a parking lot berm, then snowplay. then hot chocolate, then a nap on the way home. By 3 he was riding lifts and skiing holding onto my ski poles as I held them horizontally. He would not take lessons, going back to clamshell and completely withdrawn in our absence. So all the skiing he did, he did with us. As much as I tried, he never wanted or tolerated classes with other kids.

    By 5 or so, I managed to get him to let go of the pole technique and he skied on his own. He got better and better and really seemed to enjoy skiing the steep stuff, like Bear Pits one spring day with ACH and -h-. He was the youngest kid to ski off the chair at Silverton at age 7 in 2008. I think younger kids have done it since, but he was button bursting proud that day, as was I.

    As a teenager, his interest in skiing waned, in part due to us having to get up at 5:30 and out the door before 6. Not his mien. School was a priority for him, which meant getting up at 5:45 every day for high school, so the weekend was the only time to sleep in. So he started to do that a lot the last couple of years and honed a wit and scholastic aptitude that has garnered straight A's with 3 to 4 AP classes per year. He wants to be a scientist.

    So sometimes I think I've failed when I see other kids skiing, racing, doing the freeride thing. But then I slap myself for thinking that way. He has his own life to live and his own choices to make and most importantly I'm glad I'm not forcing him, trying to live through him in the only way I see fit.

    So he's not a better skier than I am, but I'm proud as hell of him and so glad I've gotten to go on this journey.
    Merde De Glace On the Freak When Ski
    >>>200 cm Black Bamboo Sidewalled DPS Lotus 120 : Best Skis Ever <<<

  3. #53
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Park City
    Posts
    5,013
    As well you should be. I would say your a wildly successful father and roll model. Congrats and condolences both as he turns 18 and moves on into adulthood.


    Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums
    I rip the groomed on tele gear

  4. #54
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    2,767
    My son beat me down a big bump run at 8, I held my own on groomers 'til he was about 11 and now I can't touch him anywhere. My daughter was beatable 'til this winter until I tried to follow her in Super G training and pulled out due to fear (I could have made a better ski choice?).
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    what's orange and looks good on hippies?
    fire

    rails are for trains
    If I had a dollar for every time capitalism was blamed for problems caused by the government I'd be a rich fat film maker in a baseball hat.

    www.theguideshut.ca

  5. #55
    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Location
    the LCC
    Posts
    1,170
    Quote Originally Posted by Buster Highmen View Post
    My son turns 18 today, hard to believe.

    At the beginning, the natural birth attempt ended up failing and got stuck.

    So after 20 hours of labor, I drove my normally reticient wife howling across Lake Washington at 4 in the morning to the emergency room at Virginia Mason.

    Our doula had called ahead and we were both on board for the caesarian, so most of the staff were ready and knew what was going on. Except for one little nurse who came up to me to announce that I had five minutes to decide if I wanted a brain damaged child or not. If I hadn't been so blown out, I would have punched her, but I just laughed and said I just wanted everyone to come out OK.

    I sweated bullets for that half an hour, most agonizing interval of time in my life.

    But then I got the signal, put on the gown and walked in to hold my son while my wife got stitched up. He immediately grabbed my finger and I walked him around to the various check stations and let him hold my finger while the staff poked, prodded and took vital signs. With some slight jaundice, they set him up for some ultraviolet treatment due to low bilireubens. So I stood there for the whole 40 minutes, completely delirious with his little fist wrapped around my finger.

    As a baby, he virtually never put stuff in his mouth, but would hold anything and just look at it, turning around and gurgling, humming, cooing. We did the full contact parenting, sleeping with him, breast feeding coupled with some bottle feeding and lots of contact. Always a super quiet kid, I recoginized something about emotional momentum, so whenever he's get agitated, one of us would be on him immediately, so the agitation never got any real momentum.

    All the way through the toddler thing, I never remember him throwing a tantrum or freaking out. I guess I think now that people's character is more a function of nature than nurture, but we kept up with the theory of arresting any upset, so he never got up the steam for a real screamer.

    We read to him a lot, avoided television and kind of blew out being present and calm to heights of patience I never thought I had. By age 4, he was reading with us, correcting things, all self taught. Quiet in a stern way that seemed to belie wisdom far beyond his experience.

    He became a bookworm, consuming everything and all modes of reading, from Harry Potter, The Hobbit and LOTR, Paolini;s Eragon series, The Song of Fire and Ice series and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. I do remember coming home one day to find him laying out on the couch reading the NYT when the paper was bigger than he was.

    He always waved as I drove off to work, poking his head above the windowsill and watching as I left. Clockwork.

    But he refused to interface with other children and being left alone without an adult family member never worked. Daycare reported him going off to corners to play by himself and withdrawing completely if in the attention of another kid. But he was always interactive with us.

    I started him skiing at 2, mostly a few slides on the plastic skis off a parking lot berm, then snowplay. then hot chocolate, then a nap on the way home. By 3 he was riding lifts and skiing holding onto my ski poles as I held them horizontally. He would not take lessons, going back to clamshell and completely withdrawn in our absence. So all the skiing he did, he did with us. As much as I tried, he never wanted or tolerated classes with other kids.

    By 5 or so, I managed to get him to let go of the pole technique and he skied on his own. He got better and better and really seemed to enjoy skiing the steep stuff, like Bear Pits one spring day with ACH and -h-. He was the youngest kid to ski off the chair at Silverton at age 7 in 2008. I think younger kids have done it since, but he was button bursting proud that day, as was I.

    As a teenager, his interest in skiing waned, in part due to us having to get up at 5:30 and out the door before 6. Not his mien. School was a priority for him, which meant getting up at 5:45 every day for high school, so the weekend was the only time to sleep in. So he started to do that a lot the last couple of years and honed a wit and scholastic aptitude that has garnered straight A's with 3 to 4 AP classes per year. He wants to be a scientist.

    So sometimes I think I've failed when I see other kids skiing, racing, doing the freeride thing. But then I slap myself for thinking that way. He has his own life to live and his own choices to make and most importantly I'm glad I'm not forcing him, trying to live through him in the only way I see fit.

    So he's not a better skier than I am, but I'm proud as hell of him and so glad I've gotten to go on this journey.
    Nice post.
    Thanks for sharing...
    Time spent skiing cannot be deducted from one's life.

  6. #56
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Babylon
    Posts
    13,454
    Quote Originally Posted by Buster Highmen View Post
    My son turns 18 today, hard to believe.
    By age 4, he was ...quiet in a stern way that seemed to belie wisdom far beyond his experience.
    Indeed on both counts. Cant wait to meet the man.

    At the rate my 5 y/o is going, I am counting on him surpassing me in 7 years, max.

  7. #57
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    2 hours from anything
    Posts
    10,734
    Quote Originally Posted by I've seen black diamonds! View Post
    My 4 year old can't touch me. At the very least you should stop buying your kids red boots so you at least have a fighting chance.
    I lol'd.

    Looking forward to days when I can ski with my kid.

  8. #58
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Location
    Impossible to knowl--I use an iPhone
    Posts
    13,143
    Quote Originally Posted by Buster Highmen View Post
    So sometimes I think I've failed when I see other kids skiing, racing, doing the freeride thing. But then I slap myself for thinking that way. He has his own life to live and his own choices to make and most importantly I'm glad I'm not forcing him, trying to live through him in the only way I see fit.

    So he's not a better skier than I am, but I'm proud as hell of him and so glad I've gotten to go on this journey.
    In terms of parenting, this ^^^^^ is where it's at, IMO.

    Related--our younger girl no longer ski races, which is actually a little bit tough to accept because she was always the naturally faster racer (for some reason the only thing she really knew how to do with a ski was lay it on edge and work through the entire turn--ridiculously fast). In contrast to her sister who prefers SL, she always hated SL because she had no idea of tactics and couldn't control her speed (she'd DNF 50% of the time).

    Her last season ski racing she basically trained for a total of three days (adding up parts of mornings and afternoons, since I don't think she did a full day at all), didn't race for the whole winter, but finally (reluctantly) agreed to enter a GS on our home hill in early March. She was so self-conscious (part of the reason she stopped racing, I think) about 'rejoining' the team that she only agreed to race if she didn't have to inspect with everyone else (she didn't want her teammates noticing/talking about her).

    Blows up five gates in on the first run, hikes, finishes, and then finishes fourth or fifth in the second. A coach from another mountain standing on the side of the course as she came down says to me, sounding shocked, "Wait, that's the one who doesn't race anymore?" and all I could really do was shake my head...there she is, finishing ahead of 50 other girls who had mostly trained all winter, and it literally didn't mean a thing to her. She just didn't care, and she felt pressure from ski racing (despite all my attempts to explain to her that the only real pressure was from herself and her skiing really didn't make a difference to anyone else).

    Very hard for me to relate to since I know that at that age even if I had hated the sport, if I were beating people, you would have had trouble keeping me from doing it. But to her it didn't matter, so she's stopped (which is fine with me, especially since my goal was always just to have them gain good fundamentals and race at least through the age of 12, but I just have trouble wrapping my head around the lack of interest and enjoyment since that fun and interest feel so innate to me--a passion that her sister does seem to have inherited).

    Regardless, as others have noted here, ski racing and skiing generally have helped create a lot of time spent together, which is time that only seems more and more valuable as the years have gone on. Kids all eventually become their own people, and as bizarre as it might seem (to me and I assume a lot of other mags) skiing won't completely stick for all of them.

    Lots of great posts here, IMO.

  9. #59
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Posts
    5,531
    Some people are motivated by beating other people.


    Some people are motivated by being better or doing better than they did the last time...by beating themselves.


    The later personality type is much harder to be in almost every possible way, and those people are often misunderstood by the former.
    Quote Originally Posted by XXX-er View Post
    the situation strikes me as WAY too much drama at this point

  10. #60
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    2,767
    Quote Originally Posted by Dexter Rutecki View Post
    In terms of parenting, this ^^^^^ is where it's at, IMO.
    Blows up five gates in on the first run, hikes, finishes, and then finishes fourth or fifth in the second. A coach from another mountain standing on the side of the course as she came down says to me, sounding shocked, "Wait, that's the one who doesn't race anymore?" and all I could really do was shake my head...there she is, finishing ahead of 50 other girls who had mostly trained all winter, and it literally didn't mean a thing to her. She just didn't care, and she felt pressure from ski racing (despite all my attempts to explain to her that the only real pressure was from herself and her skiing really didn't make a difference to anyone else).

    Very hard for me to relate to since I know that at that age even if I had hated the sport, if I were beating people, you would have had trouble keeping me from doing it. But to her it didn't matter, so she's stopped

    Lots of great posts here, IMO.
    Huh? hiked back into a course in GS?
    what's orange and looks good on hippies?
    fire

    rails are for trains
    If I had a dollar for every time capitalism was blamed for problems caused by the government I'd be a rich fat film maker in a baseball hat.

    www.theguideshut.ca

  11. #61
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Location
    Impossible to knowl--I use an iPhone
    Posts
    13,143
    Yeah, that's a new rule, and this was two years ago. You used to be allowed to hike as long as you hadn't lost a ski and didn't interfere with another racer. Doesn't really matter (except that she did get a result for both runs) since we always let kids get second runs regardless.

    I have a video of both runs somewhere...(And if the rule had already changed--I don't know exactly which year they made the change--no one ever said anything to her about her hiking.)
    [quote][//quote]

  12. #62
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    2,767
    Quote Originally Posted by Dexter Rutecki View Post
    Yeah, that's a new rule, and this was two years ago. You used to be allowed to hike as long as you hadn't lost a ski and didn't interfere with another racer. Doesn't really matter (except that she did get a result for both runs) since we always let kids get second runs regardless.

    I have a video of both runs somewhere...(And if the rule had already changed--I don't know exactly which year they made the change--no one ever said anything to her about her hiking.)
    It's all good, different rules in the Great White North I guess.
    what's orange and looks good on hippies?
    fire

    rails are for trains
    If I had a dollar for every time capitalism was blamed for problems caused by the government I'd be a rich fat film maker in a baseball hat.

    www.theguideshut.ca

  13. #63
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    Apr 2002
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    Impossible to knowl--I use an iPhone
    Posts
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    Oh, maple leafs on the speed suits and all that. Yeah, totally possible you guys adopted that rule before we did.
    [quote][//quote]

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