#2. Being Miserable Builds Character
& Other Lessons from Calvin & Hobbes
Every tree has a hole in the middle of it shaped like a face.
- skier to a friend, whipping around a tight tree
Athletic Brewing Co. Non-Alcoholic Beer – In an effort to feel better, I stopped drinking last year. Ever since, I’ve missed the taste of small-batch craft beer. Especially after long days in the mountains. Enter, Athletic Brewing Co. Part of ABC’s mission is to create delicious craft beer (sans alcohol) to “positively impact health, fitness, and happiness.” After trying their Golden Ale, Upside Dawn, happy I am. Refreshing, slightly floral, and absolutely delicious, I was shocked at how “real” this non-alcoholic beer tastes. Even better, you feel great the morning after. With bicoastal breweries in California and Connecticut, ABC emphasizes local flavors, organic malts, and seasonal ingredients. Bonus: they’re a company with a conscience. For every product purchased, Athletic Brewing Co. give 2% back to protecting and restoring local trails.
Nike Metcon 8 – For the past few years I’ve trained in Nobulls almost exclusively. While I love their flexibility, abrasion resistance, and low heel-to-toe drop (4mm), I’ve been looking for a pair of shoes with a little more stability for heavy lifts. The new Nike Metcon 8s do just that. Featuring a unique heel with an inner plate, the Metcons distribute weight evenly across the foot, dramatically increasing stability. They feel solid on heavy lifts while maintaining enough flexion for more aerobic moves. Plus, they come in party colors to help keep you motivated through the long winter.
8greens Peach Tea – Candice Georgiadis founded 8Greens after a Stage III cancer diagnosis at age 25 changed her life. Searching for alternative ways to improve her immune system, 8Greens was born. Like the name implies, these dissolvable tablets contain 8 organic greens: spinach, kale, aloe vera, wheatgrass, blue green algae, barley grass, chlorella, and spirulina. Unlike other green drinks I’ve tried (which tend to taste too bitter), this one is actually enjoyable to drink. The Peach Tea flavor is sweet, but not overpowering. Mixed with water first thing in the morning, I feel hydrated, refreshed, and ready to go.
Everyone hates stories that start with, “When I was your age…” “Back in my day…” Phrases that initiate eye rolls and indicate your elders are out of touch. But these phrases exist for a reason. And now that I’m on the other side of the age spectrum, I’m authorized to use them.
Reason, meet rope tow – the ancient art of hauling yourself up a hill on skis. Rated sketchy at best, likely unsafe, and certainly harder than you had it.
Back in my day, making it to the top of the bunny hill was an adventure – filled with wild-eyed risk, high-pitched screams, and unpredictable outcomes.
Attempts to make it to the top of the hill looked a little like this:
1. Skate ski up the base trying to catch whoever you’re with (Friend? Family? Who knows. Everyone looks the same in ski clothes).
2. Turn left past the pile of tangled bodies and slide into line.
3. Inch forward ever-so-carefully, trying not to scratch the skis in front of you or fall on your behind.
4. When it’s your turn to go, 2 quick side-steps left
5. Reach your hands out for the rope (moving at a high rate of speed). Then,
Choose your own adventure:
1. Grab the rope so hard your skis slingshot out from under you, pulling you backwards with a bloodcurdling scream.
a. Stay here if you want to experience freezer burn down your back.
b. Let go to become roadkill for the rope-tower behind.
2. Grab the rope and hunch over for extra support, ensuring your skis slide one way, torso the other.
a. Cross your tips so you’re a tangled mess when you fall, possibly strain a tendon.
b. Hang on for dear life until your forearms fatigue and you fall into the angry line of skiers behind.
c. Watch your parallel stance start to widen slowly, then pull you into the splits with a high-pitched scream.
Whichever option you choose, rest assured you’ll be joining the other rope tow carnage – splayed out on the hill too reluctant to move.
If, by some miracle, you do make it to the top, it’s essential to let go of the rope in time, before the rapidly decreasing angle bends your body in half, threatening to snap your spine.
When I remember how hard it was to make it to the top of the rope tow, how discouraged I would get at the strength in my small hands, I think of my father back in his day, when he and his friends had to make their own rope tow. They accomplished this by rigging a running car motor, wheel, and winch together. This is how he learned to ski, uninhibited in backcountry powder.
Imagine the consequences of not letting go of this kind of tow before you reached the top. “Trundled by a truck one snowy December day…” another Unsolved Mystery in the making.
Today, I can’t get over how much things have changed. Instead of winches and tow ropes too fast to catch, motors have morphed into moving walkways. Gone are the sketchy, frayed strands that used to slingshot me off onto the icy hill. In their place, covered conveyor belts roll out like red carpets, whisking skiers away up the hill.
That’s not to say I miss it, the old rope tow, dear nemesis. But those days marked by gravity and glove-burns built character. Without the luxury of weather-proof walkways, I learned firsthand what it’s like to “earn your turns,” (though skinning up a hill seems easier, in retrospect). I have a greater appreciation now for all the trouble it took, for the slow, steel-gripped slide up that hill to ski. On days I thought, like Calvin & Hobbes, that building character might kill me.
I expected this book to be a delicate dance around what it’s like to be part of the royal family; a circuitous story that said a lot without saying much at all. Boy, was I wrong. Starting with the first sentence, Prince Harry lets you in on it all, reconstructing everything he can remember (with the admission that memories sometimes take new shapes), spilling anger, emotion, and pain across the page.
Raised with the same expectations as his brother, the heir, but none of the same esteem, Harry describes life growing up the way one might describe a caged animal –imprisoned, dispirited, and deeply sad.
I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion, and if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. It was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter.
As a reader, at times I felt guilty for intruding on such intimate scenes, like I was reading a diary never meant to be opened. Secrets spill out on the page assembling a picture of what it’s like to live in a gilded prison. It’s a bit like observing a lab experiment involving animals who are never let out—who are trapped and harassed, yet expected to behave. Disturbing on one level, heart-wrenching throughout, Harry’s story is full of imaginary hope for the family he almost had.
The fonder the memory, the deeper the ache.
It’s hard to imagine reconciliation for Prince Harry and the royal family after this release. But for the little boy who so desperately wants to tell his side of the story, whose deep chasms of pain crescendo into anger then recede into sadness, I hope so.
*Rare recommendation - listen to the audiobook (narrated by Prince Harry himself) over reading the hard copy.
Things to get excited about:
(Or not) This resort broke the $300 barrier for single-day lift tickets.
Lynsey Dyer & The Ready State talk extreme skiing, motherhood, & how to have it all.
One-piece Ski Suits Are Staging a Comeback. I have my eye on the Arc’teryx Sentinel (in Orca)!
Wildlife Photographer Paul Nicklen launches his first Masterclass, letting others in on some of the secrets that make his images so powerful.
Let it Snow - David Sedaris
Selfish mothers wanted the house to themselves and their children were discovered years later, frozen like mastodons in blocks of ice.
