Word: guns
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...other strange component of training for this sport in the city is that it involves guns. In Oregon everybody has guns. It's like having a chain saw or a motorcycle - hazardous but indispensable for life in the country, and the laws of the land reflect this attitude. Rifles, pistols and ammunition were readily available in Oregon at the sporting goods section of Kmart or any other big department story, right alongside the sleeping bags and fishing poles. It was just no big deal. In Jersey City, where I live now, however, guns are associated exclusively with crime, criminals...
...weeks rapidly turned into six months as I navigated through page after page of tricky self-contradicting forms and a bureaucracy with absolutely no interest in issuing any gun permits to anyone in Jersey City. This was the biggest hurdle yet, and the temptation to smuggle in a rifle from Oregon was overwhelming (federal laws regulating interstate transport of firearms are surprisingly lax; I could have flown from Oregon to Jersey with a rifle as declared luggage and nobody would have blinked an eye at Newark International). I just couldn't stand the fact that I was losing six months...
...Since I'm on the topic, I'm just going to come right out and say it: I love my gun. I know I'm bad; I know that as a thinking person I'm supposed to be repulsed by tools of violence and sense the evil that lurks at the very core of all firearms, but that is not the case. I love it and there is no denyin...
...meters is an activity most certainly undertaken by men - oh, and the untold platoons of Nordic Amazons who could twist me into a pretzel. Now that I can handle the thing, and make a decent show of myself as a ski-borne marksman, I realize that my gun has contributed directly to an increase my self-esteem. This makes me love it even more...
...during a dark moment of the day, as I get lapped by another skier, taste blood in my mouth that is spraying up from my heaving, overtaxed lungs, and catch a ski tip on a tree, causing me to plow into the underbrush and knock my head on my gun barrel. "This is not fun... this is just dumb... stop... please." Finally, the casual clockings we keep in the time trial reveal that I only need to cut my time in half in order to be competitive. Even my own formidable powers of denial are feeling the strain...