Instant Karma

The dull thud of the empty pint glass striking the oak patio table was drowned out by laughter. I had just hung up the phone with the owner of Jasmine Restaurant, a Chinese bistro with a sushi bar in Salt Lake City, which had served as my gainful employer for the past two years. I had successfully negotiated my way out of a slow shift of minimal tips with my tall tale of a faulty scooter and a jammed shoulder.

Our laughs encapsulated the improbable shift in plans that fateful Friday afternoon. Two hours earlier I was bidding my friends farewell for the evening and expressing my jealousy of their adventurous trip up Little Cottonwood Canyon.

"You sure you can't join?" Sam asked.

"Dinner rush is in two hours. Not quite enough time to make it up and back," I replied.

"Half hour up, hour of play, half hour down, and you're golden," Shawn pleaded.

I chewed on that for a second. 'I know how to take a drink order,' I thought. 'Don't need mental preparation for that. As long as I'm clocked in on time, I could show up in a full body cast for all I care and still make more tips than some of my socially inept coworkers.'

"I'll drive." The adrenaline rushed through my head and down to my limbs. "Hop in."

I made quick work of the long, winding, uphill road to Snowbird with youthful determination and a lead foot. The Mercury Tracer I had been driving for five years knew my good intentions as well as anyone, so when I requested extra juice around the corners it happily obliged. An improbable front parking spot and a quick jaunt up to the second floor of the Iron Blossom Lodge later, and I was placing an order for a cold pint of St. Provo Girl.

The view of the newly installed thrill-ride from the patio we occupied was unmatched.

"Well, what do you think?" Shawn asked after a trip down memory lane to the summer when we had gleefully whisked down the Alpine Slide in Park City. "Does it measure up?"

"Only one way to find out," Sam said. "How we looking on time?"

"We have all night," I replied. "Let me make a quick phone call."

The irony is that my excuse for not being able to ensure the safety of the restaurant's patrons due to the uncertainty of my tray holding capabilities wasn't completely untrue. One night prior, at approximately 2:30 am in Park City, my slightly inebriated self had inadvertently concluded that the shortest distance between the Canyons Mountain Resort parking lot and the condo I inhabited was a straight line over the handle bars of a motorized scooter. Sure, my shoulder was sore and scarred, but the phone call was placed because a ride on Snowbird's Alpine Slide had finagled its way up the queue of "things I wanted to do that night," not because I couldn't capably perform my brainless physical workload.

Sam and Shawn supported my last minute change of heart.

"Last one down buys the next round?" Sam wagered.

My smile in the reflection of his sunglasses said more than words ever could.

Five minutes later I was holding a 20 pound sled at the top of a twisting fiberglass course and the smile on my face had stuck as if the wind had changed at just the right moment like my mother had predicted when I was a kid.

"Johnny, we clear?" the slide operator asked the mid-mountain guide.

"Clear!" he responded.

"We're next Sammy. Last chance to head back to the bar with your tail between your legs." Actually, I knew I was going to lose the race. And I knew that Sam knew it too. I hadn't taken Physics in high school but something told me that the fifty pounds I was giving up to him might affect the outcome of our afternoon glide down the mountain.

"You guys done this before?" the slide operator asked.

"Pro's," we responded in unison.

"Alrighty, you're clear. Whenever you're ready."

"See you at the bottom," Sam declared confidently. "I'll be the guy halfway done with a pint of Guinness."

We jerked forward on the handle of our sleds at the same time, raising our seat bottoms just high enough to reveal the wheels underneath that would allow gravity to pull us down the mountain. Our tracks were identical, never more than two feet apart, which in a leisurely ride would enable us to carry on a casual conversation. But this was no leisurely ride.

The first thirty yards were pretty standard - a steep but steady slope leading us toward the first of a series of switchback turns. We stayed close to each other down the opening stretch, neither of us wanting to risk a brake check and the ensuing separation of space that would inevitably ensue. The first curve, as suspected, did little to intimidate us. The second curve was same as the first. But as we approached the third curve, I could sense myself losing ground. At that point, we were one hundred yards deep into our battle and our speed was increasing by the foot. As we negotiated the third turn and sped toward the fourth, I sensed an opportunity.

As the wind slipped over the sled, through my crouched position, and evaporated in the thin mountain air behind me, I came to the conclusion that the next twenty yards would determine the winner of our gentleman's bet. We were rapidly approaching a sharp right turn that would thrust us high onto the wall of the track and catapult us toward the bottom and ever closer to the lifelong pride that awaited us at the bottom. The only problem was that the wall we were about to scale wasn't high at all. We would have to decrease our speed just to stay on the track.

I was three yards behind at this point and found myself at a crossroad. I could lower my sled to the track and create the appropriate friction to ensure enough deceleration to safely navigate the turn, or I could trust that my lightweight frame could withstand the thrust created by a sudden shift in direction at a high speed. The latter, I thought, was my only option to catch Sam, who at this point was fully visible in my peripheral vision.

I had to make a quick decision. A decision between safety and glory. I consulted the daredevil in my head for a second opinion. He chose glory.

The next 4 seconds were the most horrifying of my life.

I pushed every ounce of my body weight onto the handle of my sled to ensure maximum speed through the turn, which was now too close to change my mind. Sam wisely pulled up on his brake, two feet to my left on the same track on which he had started. The first inch of track that veered to the right was the same inch that I knew I had made a mistake.

My shoulders were the first body parts to lose control - they immediately darted off center toward Sam's track. My hips soon followed and the inertia began to lift my butt off the smooth plastic seat I had hoped to call home until the bottom of the track. My hands, once tightly draping the rubber handle that, in turn, held my life in its own single hand, began to slip eastward toward the towering peaks of Alta. The wind that had aided me in my journey toward immortality up until that point suddenly sliced between my body and the sled I was sailing on and catapulted me skyward as if I had been shot out of a cannon.

The first thought that came to mind when I was airborne above Sam's sled was that I had lost the race. The second thought that came to mind was the glorious day that the Salt Lake City Fire Department had visited Mrs. Best's kindergarten class and taught an impressionable group of five year olds the invaluable lesson of the stop, drop, and roll philosophy. I was neither on fire nor capable of stopping at that point, but I sure as hell was dropping and knew that a series of rolls were in my immediate future.

My left shoulder was first to find the earth. The muscles wrapping its delicate socket acted as coils to cushion the blow, not too dissimilar to those mattress commercials showcasing the energy absorption of a Posturepedic bed catching a bowling ball and deflecting the force away from the source of impact. But my shoulder wasn't created by Sealy. It took the force head on and spun my helpless flailing body end over end like a lab rat spinning its wheel.

I vividly remember completing my first revolution. I knew I was in for a second spin but was simultaneously grateful for my consciousness and fearful of my next rotation. As the milliseconds passed I couldn't help but think of my parents. The images that raced through my mind weren't of the disappointed grimaces that would adorn their faces when they learned of my as-yet-to-be-determined-fate, rather the memories of them pouring my mandatory glass-of-milk-with-dinner that had assuredly built strong bones inside the youngest of their five children. If anyone was built to sustain this irresponsible freefall of epic proportion, it was their second son made from Irish Catholic love and heavy doses of 2% milk.

My back ended up taking the majority of the beating, as it was the body part touching down first after every flip down the mountain. The rocky terrain took more and more skin with each passing tumble, but made sure to replace it with dirt and pebbles that embedded deep into my back. I was extremely fearful that my head would crash onto one of the bigger rocks and crush my skull, but with everything happening so fast and my momentum so strong, I was unable to create a natural helmet of hands and forearms. So I waited.

When the unintentional acrobatic show finally subsided, I felt like the luckiest man in the world to still just have one head. But the nightmare wasn't over. I was still on a steep mountain. I was still moving fast. And I was still collecting dirt like Pig-Pen from Peanuts.

The last twenty feet of the disaster were spent solely on my back as I slid down the mountain like Tom Cruise sliding across the freshly waxed floor in Risky Business. When my body came to a halt, I took inventory.

One head? Check. Two arms? Check. Two legs? Check. Shoes? Amazingly, check. Full body of skin? Not so much. I left enough DNA on that mountain to make another me.

Upon realizing I was in one piece, embarrassment began to set in when I noticed the witnesses. There were people on the balcony, people waiting in line, people at the bottom, employees, foreigners, skaters, businessmen - all wide eyed, jaw dropped, hand-to-the-mouth horrified at what they had just seen. I heard a woman scream.

The only way to save face now was to pretend like I was alright.

I hopped to my feet, located my sled roughly 70 yards down the track, and decided to make a run for it. I gave thumbs up to the concerned father on the chair lift above, who was obviously mortified of the thought his 10 year old could share the same fate. When I arrived at my sled, I made the mistake of rushing to sit down, not realizing that I was missing a chunk of my ass, and the sting of open flesh on hot plastic was unmerciful.

When the tip of my sled finally touched the rubber tires at the end of the track, I had successfully taken second place. Sam was waiting for me with a look of concern and amazement. After all, he had just watched me exit my sled, fly over the gap between the tracks, over his head, land on my shoulder, complete four unintentional back flips on rocky terrain, slide on my back an additional twenty feet, sprint down to my sled, take a seat, and finish the course.

The first aid team hurried to my side to begin the Q&A. Where does it hurt? Do you think you broke any bones? Did you hit your head? How many fingers am I holding up?

I let them know that I was fine, but I wasn’t dumb. They had seen my crash. They knew I couldn’t have been fine. But I played the part despite fighting through the shock. I was shaking almost uncontrollably but not enough to turn heads. I implored them to believe my lie; I was fine, I just wanted to get the hell off the mountain.

Shawn had taken the next run and, after a lengthy delay at the top to determine whether or not the previous rider still had a heartbeat, finally made it down as Sam and I were walking to the bathroom to assess the damage.

I didn’t want to look in the mirror. I knew it was bad. I could feel it was bad. The shock was wearing off and the pain was setting in. Sam had grabbed alcohol pads from the first aid lady who had inaccurately assessed me as ‘okay’, and began to clean the wounds that I couldn’t reach. The alcohol stung like a swarm of bees. It wasn’t until my first yelp of pain that Shawn and Sam realized I was hurt but not injured. And that’s when they knew it was okay to laugh. And I laughed too. It was an awkward laugh combining a sense of humor with pain, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

“Damn,” Sam said. “Instant karma.”

And the laughter continued.