I fell in love with downhill skiing at age 19, a little late to have been a competitor. But I realized that to get better I needed to take up ski racing, which at the tender age of 31 I did. In 1968, UCLA was forming an informal ski racing organization under Captain Steve Howe, and I worked out with the team and entered a few races against other schools. After a couple seasons it was ruled that professors were illegal.
But not until my first year at UCRiverside under Captain Jeff Nelson, a short, blond guy who worked professionally as a Chipmunk at Disneyland. The great Bud Jenkins was on our team, and we had a million laughs together. One day we tried to follow a couple 12-year-old Mammoth boys, who took us over every scary cliff or drop-off on the mountain and then fleeced us for an expensive lunch.
Then I joined the Far West Ski Association, a division of the US Ski Association. They had racing for veterans and I got Dave Kearns to join me. We were always defeated by a tough competitor named Billy G. DeHaas, who literally tramped over our skis on his way to the podium. Some slalom courses developed ruts like bushel baskets you felt like you could crawl almost inside. No break-away slalom poles for us. All genuine bamboo.
Later I raced in ski clubs such as the Sitzmarkers from Riverside and the Tyroleans from San Bernadino. We went on week-long trips to Crested Butte and Sun Valley. We had a woman in the Tyroleans named Chip Mahr who won the national beer chugging contest with her open-gullet method.
I won a few veteran racing trophies between 1971 and 1984 for decent performances, and countless NASTAR medals, usually silver. This was no World Cup competition, but I threw myself into it and did the best I could. I never earned a trophy too modest to keep on display, including my “horses-ass” award, earned skiing in costume at the annual Polish St. Patrick’s Day. It was a contest at Mammoth Mtn, CA, for skiing down the mountain in the most original costume. My friend Lou and I won the prize with the first two-man costume, the Bandini Bull of TV commercial fertilizer fame.
My German lawyer super-skier, Franz Milla, introduced me to ski-circuses in France and Austria. My son-in-law, Eric, introduced me to off-piste skiing in Beaver Creek where he almost got his lift ticket clipped by the Ski Patrol, and in Steamboat Springs where my daughter and I followed him down some cliffs which got so steep we finally all had to take off our skis. Then there was the time I followed Eric down a deep powder slope in Snowbasin, Utah, where I hit a buried tree-top with my knee so hard it swelled up like a melon for 3 days, but after Karen and Eric finally found my other ski I was able to ski out. My most spectacular fall was down the 1000 vertical feet 45 degree double black diamond High Rustler in Alta, where one of my bindings released on the first turn and I windmilled 2/3 of the way down the slope head over feet, with skis still flying around attached by the old-fashioned “safety straps.” With knees shaking on the remaining still steep slope, I was able to get back on my skis and finish the run.
