> You're definitely the outlier that proves my point though. Skiing is not something you can just go "do" a few times and have fun at it like tennis or golf.
Again, this doesn't match my experience as somebody who actually did learn to ski in my 40s while living in Phoenix, AZ. It's fine to say that you yourself couldn't do something, but you shouldn't speak for others. I'm very far from an elite athlete, I wouldn't consider myself an athlete at all. I'm largely sedentary.
>It's fine to say that you yourself couldn't do something, but you shouldn't speak for others.
I'm saying this as someone who has skiied from the age of five, and spent a solid decade skiing over 180 days/season while working at various resorts, with a majority of those days being backcountry steeps above 10k feet. When people say you can "learn to ski" with little effort it just irks me a bit. Yes, anyone who can walk can become competent enough to cruise down some blue groomers at a resort. But actual skiing, actually getting to the expert level where you can truly enjoy the sport, is a completely different thing. And getting to that level from beginner as an adult is incredibly difficult.
you might consider that your context is getting in the way of a fundamental point:
you can't say what it means for other people to "truly enjoy something".
And that irks me.
Like, how do you know you're really enjoying your skiing i you're not hiking up 8000M peaks to do your skiing? If you're not hopping out of a helicopter and getting filmed by Warren Miller, is it really worth it? Are you truly enjoying the sport if you're not skiing couloirs?
I mean, I play music and I do some hard stuff. I don't think a lot of it is easy. But I am confident that someone can pick up a guitar and play it well enough to enjoy it (themselves) after not much practice. I personally wouldn't be satisfied doing the exact same thing... I have been doing it a long time and have high expectations. But those expectations are -for myself-, and that has nothing to do with what other people might enjoy.
I'm gonna go enjoy some powder, I ain't a great skiier, but I can get down anything on my local hill. And for what it's worth, I am literally the only person who gets to say if I "truely enjoy" playing in the snow.
Again, this doesn't match my experience as somebody who actually did learn to ski in my 40s while living in Phoenix, AZ. It's fine to say that you yourself couldn't do something, but you shouldn't speak for others. I'm very far from an elite athlete, I wouldn't consider myself an athlete at all. I'm largely sedentary.