Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

Today I started to bring life back into skis I long thought retired... my Line Ostness Dragons from 1999. 110-76-100, 193cm. I loved these skis. I loved them so much I have two pairs. My first pair I retired after 100 days of skiing on them. Stuck my first 360 on these skis. I still remember that moment. My second pair has less days, but still has my alpine bindings on them. I decided that this winter the Dragons are coming back out of the closet and will fly down the hills once again breathing fire and snow off their big old tails spraying corn upon anyone who crosses my exhaust!

After dinner I started plugging the holes from the old bindings. Bam bam bam. One of the last plugs of the night did not seat well and flattened over the ski. I went to pick it out with pliers, but it just ripped the plastic so I grabbed boxcutters sitting nearby and tried to wedge/slice it out with the boxcutters. It slipped and went right into my thumb on my left hand, splitting the thumb in two pieces vertically just off to the side to the base of the nail. So I had my thumb, and a big wiggly part. Blood everywhere. My wonderful wife drove me to the hospital. The medical staff was great, they didn't have to remove my nail, 4 stitches (it looked like it needed a lot more!) and now I'm back writing this post.

IS THIS A SIGN? IS THE DRAGON TELLING ME IT JUST WANTS TO SLEEP? IS SHE KEEPING ME FROM SKIING THEM and getting into WORSE INJURIES?

or, am I just a big ass dumb-dumb dummy and I should mount them up with those COBRAS and get going?

I'm trying to calculate the wu-wu, the vibes, the message from beyond time. Would you want to be wakened from your deep slumber of many years? I am spooked. Now what?

inanimate objects have no soul.
who's the boss? get the dragons out for a ride.

They have as much soul as the skier attributes to them! My skis are intergalactic universe transporters, vehicles of the sublime, animals that speed my soul into an unknown future! When the skis talk, I listen.

And you're right. They are dragons, they need to have a sword waved in their face once and again and they need to be saddled up for some flying.

For my entire life, I used to treat these signs as challenges. My whole life has been a hard luck story. So to me, these kinds of things were signs to test my determination. I'm quite stubborn, so I would always make twice the effort to show life that I'm stronger and I could face any challenges, no matter how difficult or impossible they seem to be. Blood and stitches? To hell with it, I would have mounted them with NTN as soon as I got better and use them as my main skis just to prove I can win.

After some 40 years of challenging and misunderstanding life and her subtle, gentle signs, I got tired. I have to say that the "challenges" got to the point of being totally ridiculous. So unbelievable sometimes that I would laugh out loud at the severeness and violence of these impossible-to-happen events.

At some point, wisdom kicked in. Life is a form of intelligence a billion times more advanced that what we can imagine. I would trust her.

Or maybe you just need better tools? Or do your ski tuning in the morning...?

Well, one of the Dragons has barely any camber left compared to the other one. A dead ski, I would say, or almost dead. I have the other pair, I guess I'm going to unmount those and use them instead, no sense in skiing a dead ski around when there's a perfectly useable second pair. I split my thumb in two for nothing! I should've check this before I went all in on the amputation front. Stitches out tomorrow!

Johnny wrote: Or maybe you just need better tools? Or do your ski tuning in the morning...?

I just need to not be lazy and walk up to the garage for the chisel instead of reaching for the dumb-dumb box-cutter