Where the pad hits the snow

I love to ski. Of this there is no doubt. Luckily, my dad put a pair of skis on me at a young enough age that my "You've got to be joking. There's no way I'm doing that" reflex hadn't kicked in yet (which if you were curious was at about 5 yrs old). I was never very serious about it due to lack of funds, gear and skill until my senior senior year (5th year) of college got a little depressing. All my best friends had graduated and left me alone in freezing cold Logan and I had broken up with a guy who I was still in a ward with who insisted being a total jerk to me. I needed a distraction. And I chose skiing.

I got my own gear for Christmas and I signed up for USU's skiing class at Beaver Mountain which for $100 got me six lessons and six half day's worth of skiing. This was a game changer. Skiing suddenly went from something I did because I grew up at the foot of the Rockies and my dad was paying to something I really loved and was pretty good at.

The class I was in at Beaver Mountain consisted of three girls and one shy, slightly stout young man with a brand new pair of nice skis. Our instructor was a good-looking, middle-aged guy who did something a couple days a week that earned him enough money to ski whenever he wanted. On our last day of class we had arranged to have a little potluck at the top of the mountain (I brought muddy buddies of course). We rode the lift and skied a little ways down to a spot where the run curved and flattened out. My instructor demonstrated how to stick our skis straight up in the snow so that it made a chair back when you sat on the snow. The three girls got there skis in the ground in a jiff and promptly plopped down and started passing the food around. Our instructor busied himself with a piece of gear. After a bit I noticed that the guy in our class had put his skis in the snow but had moved away from us a little bit. He was holding and looking at one of his bare hands. Then I noticed the red drops in the snow.

I asked if he was alright. Turns out he put his skis in the snow using his bare hands and the brand new sharp edge of his brand new skis had sliced him right in the soft skin between two of his fingers. Someone suggested holding some snow on it to stop the bleeding. He picked a chunk up and held in between his fingers and it was instantly red. It was really bleeding. It wasn't long before the area around us looked like a small helpless animal had lost a fight with a less helpless animal with big teeth.

My instructor started checking his pockets for a band aid (although I think we knew a band aid wasn't going to cut it) but he came up empty. I started brainstorming what piece of gear (hat, gator) I could sacrifice for the cause when the girl next to me leaned over and whispered "I have a pad"...I was about to sarcastically congratulate her for getting her period when the light came on and I started to laugh. "Should I tell him?" she whispered.

"What?" our instructor asked.

"She has a maxi pad."

A smile spread onto my instructor's face. "That'll do it." he said.

And so it was that this quiet guy who probably got red in the face at the mere mention of a maxi pad, ended up with a big ol' overnighter wrapped around his bleeding hand to ski down the mountain to the first aid hut.

I mean really, can you think of anything more appropriate for absorbing blood? In fact this experience convinced me that every first aid kit should include one. It has also made me paranoid about handling my skis with my bare hands.