On February 1st, 2026, I went to Lake Tahoe to go skiing for the first time. It was my first major outing in weeks, and it took a lot to even get me to consider going (especially with how prohibitively expensive skiing is). Nevertheless, my friends convinced me to go, and so I did. We woke up bright and early at 7AM Saturday morning to hit the slopes. I had such high hopes for myself. I imagined myself whipping down the slopes, effortlessly adjusting my knees and posture to absorb the undulating slopes as flecks of snow flew behind me. I was so excited. Such high hopes.
We put on our gear and buckled into our skis, which were way heavier and more unwieldy than I was expecting. There was a slight slope of snow as we walked up to the first ski lift. We started waddling towards it in our skis, and I managed to get about halfway up before I started losing traction. I started to slowly slide backwards, back toward the stone path, frantically windmilling my arms until I was finally stopped by protective orange netting at the base of the slope, designed explicitly for beginners like myself. My more experienced friends expertly glided back down toward me, chortling and wheezing in laughter as they helped untangle me from the netting.
I was embarrassed by the initial failure, but undeterred. We took the ski lift up to the first set of greens—ski routes are categorized by difficulty, from green to blue to black to double black and probably some ungodly unrated stuff beyond—and my friends tried to teach me how to ski.
“Bend your knees more, ok no, a little less—”
“Bro, he can figure it out himself—”
“Nah, he should definitely learn how to pizza”
“What in the buns is a pizza and why do I need pizza to ski??”
“Pizza is where you point your skis inwards so you can slow down”
“Like this? Like do I rotate at the knees or at the hips or shoot shoot shoot i’m slipping shoot—”
“PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA”
“HIPS OR KNEES??? I’M PIZZAING!”
“PIZZA HARDER!!”
“PIZZA!!”
“THERE’S A TREE”
“TURN LEFT”
“YOU DIDN’T TEACH ME HOW TO STEER”
“oh.”
“FAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
So for what seemed like forever but probably was only 30 minutes, I continued to wobble and hobble on my skis, barely managing 3 seconds of uptime before wiping out in a dramatic spray of snow, over and over and over again.
Eventually, my friends, who were good enough to do blues and mess with blacks, wanted to move on, and told me to meet another friend at the start of the next green. I, battered and exhausted already, managed a slumped nod before they headed off. I sat down, scrutinizing the map they handed me as my bruised limbs wailed in pain.
After some confusion and many more wipeouts on the way down, I found my friend at the bottom of a green.
“Brooooo, lowkey I’m mad hungry, you wanna head down the mountain in like 30”
“Huh? it’s like 10AM whatchu mean you’re hungry?”
“I didn’t eat breakfast and skiing makes you so hungry dude.”
“This is my first time skiing, you’re gonna have to teach me a lot for us to get down.”
“Aight that’s chill, we can run some greens and then it only takes like 10 minutes to get down.”
“Really? I swear this mountain is so tall bro”
“Nah if you’re like a double black skier, you can probably speed down in like 5, it’s probably like 10 to 15 minutes once we get you up to speed.”
Famous last words.
So this friend tries to teach me how to pizza and steer, except from afar, it looks a lot more like he’s teaching me how to wipe out, because that’s all I do. Eventually, we “accidentally” end up on a blue, and immediately I freak out. The slopes are way, way steeper, and straying from the route now entails very steep falls, rather than mere detours. I keep on freaking out and wiping out and crashing out at my friend, and the blue that normally takes 30 seconds to traverse took me ten minutes.
By this point, my friend’s stomach is growling like a nuclear-fueled lawnmower, and so he starts secretly guiding me down the mountain. Little do I know, the mountain is blues all the way down. The moment I pull out my map after a wipeout and realize what my friend is doing, I flip out:
“BRO WHAT ARE WE DOING IT’S BLUES ALL THE WAY DOWN!?”
“Brooo I’m sooooo hungry. We soo got this. Trust.”
“Nah bro, I can’t do this. Get me out of here.”
“Aight take the lift down then.”
“Nah I ain’t no wussy”
“You sure man? It’s a long way down. The ski lift is right there waiting for you.”
“I ain’t no wussy.”
I stay sitting on the ground. He smiles.
“Come on, you got this. Get up”
“Maaaaaannnnnnn, bro this hill is so steep. Why’s it gotta be blues all the way down, man.” I get up, struggling to keep my skis from slipping as I reorient myself.
And so we continue to hobble our way down the blues. At some point, I start getting the hang of it, especially on the wider paths. At some point, my friend tells me, “I’ll meet you at the bottom,” and slowly accelerates. I lose track of him, but I assume he’ll be at the bottom of the blue we’re on.
I finally arrive at the bottom of the blue, bewildered and breathing heavy and wondering when he’ll pop out and find me, only to finally realize after 5 minutes that he had just kept going, according to Find My. Turns out that “the bottom” meant “the bottom of the mountain” and not “the bottom of this blue.” After a plaintive sigh, I get up from my most recent wipe out, start my little pizza, and begin to slowly inch down the mountain.
Many epic wipeouts (including one with 1.5 body flips and a near concussion) later, the end is in sight. A steep decline with some moguls layered in. I manically cackle like a man standing at the edge of the world. I drop to the ground, unclip my skis, and trudge down the remainder of the slope. You could not have paid me to ski down those moguls. I was so done. It was finally over.
I was so tired afterwards. I didn’t even look for my friend. I found a water fountain and chugged the pristine Tahoe water for a minute straight. It tasted like the nectar of gods. I found a rock nearby and tore off my heavy ski shoes. And I laid there for an hour, my body sighing in relief to finally be free of the seemingly never-ending wipeouts.
As I laid there, I thought about what I had just done. This was the first time I had skied. Ever. In my whole life. I’d never even seen this much snow in my life before that day. I spent like 45 minutes skiing on greens, and I was only upright for maybe 10 of them. And then I proceeded to ski (though ski might be a strong word) blues all the way down the entire mountain.
I broke something in my mind that day. I shattered the self-imposed belief of my physical limits. I was forced to dig deep for one of the first times in my life, and in those merely superficial depths, I found something. I found the resolve and grit to keep going. And it was this moment that unlocked the self-belief that my body might be way more capable than I imagined.
A month later, I ran my first half marathon. One month after that, I ran my first marathon, with almost no additional training. I hit my first muscle-up and had crazy PRs on weighted dips that same week. A month and a half later, I beat my previous half marathon time by several minutes, again with minimal extra training.
The mind is the master of the body. And the body is capable of so much more than you imagine.
So expand your imagination.