For the last couple years I have been admiring some cross country ski's hanging on sweet peas garage wall, with shoes and ski poles, all there together...I asked her about them and she said yes that she and her husband used to do that quite a bit and that it was fun and good exercise...So a couple weeks ago while I was working on her home laying the new tile floor, I suggested maybe we should take those out to the farm and try them out, if the shoes would happen to fit me..I brought them home and a few days ago got around to trying on the shoes...they fit like a glove, and no mice hiding in the toes.
Only had one problem though, and that was there was only 3 ski poles. Those of course are used to push you along and help you maintain balance while gliding though the snow. Well Susan decided that since I was the beginner that I should use the two good poles even though they were actually for her height and not mine. In the meantime early last week I went on line and ordered two new poles for a person of my height...Back to the story, she used the one pole with out a basket and I came up with the idea of using a mop that no longer was needed for that chore anymore. She did well with the mop and the not so good pole...We shoved off, she gave me lessons on turning and stopping if I get going to fast down a grade...She said I had the fear of terror on my face, I guess it could be mistaken for that, but actually it was just the same fear that has bugged me all this winter, and that is the fear of falling and doing some type damage to my new knee that I had replaced last June.
Anyway I finally got my shoes snapped into the ski's properly and trying to put on my best "I'm Cool" face, I ventured out into the lawn ready for action. No doubt that this type skiing on mostly flat ground is a whole lot safer than the real down hill type skiing that I completely missed out on in this life time and actually have no desire at this juncture in life to "catch up too"......
I will be very content if I can just master this flat land, farm boy skiing right here on the "slopes" of my 50 acres...I don't need to fly anywhere and risk wrapping myself around a birch tree that should not have been there...And maybe seeing my awesome new stainless steel knee unhooked in some way from my leg bone after all that good work by Dr. Daluga and Dr. Doug his understudy...those guys are craftmen of the highest degree and I don't want a closer look at what they did.I did fall one time, taking the advice of Gary Strup who I had quizzed at breakfast this A.M. about that very topic "Falling"...He said just go with it and lay over on your side don't fight it....I did just that, but as I layed there I realized that, "I had fallen and getting up was going to be somewhat a chore...I got one ski off and then getting up on my favored replacement knee and with Susan's help, we got me up...I put the ski back on and then we decided that maybe we had enough for the first time out and worked our way back to the house.
Well today the new poles came from LL Bean company...actually made in Austria and not China...can you believe those Chinese allowed that one to get away from them??
Well I am glad they did...anymore I do love to buy things that are made here in the US where we all live and so many jobs are needed...But things made in China do bother me a bit anymore as I realize that anything that I buy not made here in the USA is just confirming that I agree with our businesses being closed and the machinery being crated up and shipped to some foreign land for others to have jobs...It just should not have happened but the fact that it did, does not have to be forever...we can reverse this, and put our people back to work...May have to say no to selfish self centered labor unions, but eventually we need to work through this...Usually at this point I would apologize for the editorial but truthfully I am not sorry...it needs to be said over and over again until we the people, "get it".
Clicking on title above may be worthwhile....
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