The Wimp's Guide to Cross-Country Skiing

A SHORT HISTORY OF CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING

Cross-country skiing is an unlikely sport, and it has had an unlikely history.

It all began with the discovery of snow, upon which Gustav Mahler stumbled while yodeling in 1884. Mahler chuckled so hard over the score of "Til Eugenspeil," which is what he had been yodeling, that years elapsed before the significance of his discovery could be understood. Finally, however, Anton Bruckner, Cosima Wagner and Richard Strauss decided to follow Mahler's footsteps, wet and icy though they were. Unfortunately, they were all rather loud yodelers and caused many avalanches. Igor Stravinsky eventually solved the problem of getting past an avalanche by attaching bassoons to his hiking boots. And so was born the sport of cross-country skiing. (The sport was originally called cross-country Stravinskying but shortened its name when it came to America.)

The novice will want to familiarize himself or herself with these critical dates in North American cross-country skiing:

circa 1400:  a band of dissolute Vikings skis the Canadian Laurentians, which they litter with containers of goats' milk

1492:  Christopher Columbus skis portions of the Appalachian Trail but is unable to find a path suitable for herringboning the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria over Mount Katahdin

1525:  Vasco da Gama traverses the Appalachian Trail; da Gama expires of blisters at Stone Mountain, Georgia, as the result of having skied over one thousand miles of dry, snowless terrain

1759:  a Frenchman, Pierre Cardin, and an Indian, Vijay Armitraj, simultaneously attempt to rent the same pair of ski poles at Bear Mountain State Park; this leads to the French and Indian War; for reasons no one understands, the British, who were not even in the war, are declared winners

1805:  Lewis and Clark are commissioned by Thomas Jefferson to explore golf courses suitable for cross-country skiing in the western United States; among other things, they discover Gerry Brown attempting to chisel his portrait into Mount Rushmore; Lewis eventually comes to a tawdry end in a Santa Monica hot tub filled with Swix Silver Blue, and Clark becomes president of Sail Boarders for H. Ross Perot.

1904:  Theodore Roosevelt climbs Mount Marcy on the winter solstice, becoming the first person to climb the Adirondack 46ers on cross-country skis; Roosevelt is immediately declared president of the United States and rushes off to Washington, leaving William Howard Taft to clean the pots, unwax the skis and settle up with the rental shop

New skiing terrain behind the former Iron Curtain has recently been discovered by a group of retired schoolteachers from New Paltz, New York. The schoolteachers actually intended to view the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As chance would have it, however, their cab driver, Lorenzo Uffizi, now known to history as Lorenzo the Magnificent, could hear their cries of "Murals!" only indistinctly over the roar of his mufflerless Fiat and interpreted them as a command to be driven to the Urals. "Basta! Basta!," shouted the quondam geography teacher as Lorenzo passed border after border with nary a thought for his brakes. To Lorenzo's ears it was all "Pasta! Pasta!," and he loaded up on spinach linguini at a roadside restaurant outside of Syktykvar. The journey not only revealed hundreds of miles of previously unexplored hillsides and outruns but also became the most expensive cab ride in history. Lorenzo, however, was reported to be disappointed at the size of his tip.