More fit than my father was?

I often wonder, what would have happened if I had gone skiing with my Dad when he was the age I am today, assuming that he could ski – he couldn't really – and where we would have skied together...

I would have taken a day off instructing, the day was beautiful in this late part of April, the snow still good in the morning. If that were remotely possible, I would have taken him to Avoriaz, the place I skied in France, we would have taken the tram (it would have been back in the spring of 1971) and we would have taken two or three run up on Arare, at the very top and then had a “steak-frites” lunch at the Pas-du-Lac, the only major mid-mountain restaurant back in these days.

He would have told me how the current equipment was so good and made skiing so fast and easy. He would have been mostly impressed how I skied and how effortless I made the whole thing look, but would have kept these thoughts to himself. We would have probably debated how wise it would have been to ski down to Les Prodains, decided against it and downloaded on the tram.

My father would have been tired and would have not wanted to take a chance. His whole body had aged much faster than mine because of all the hard work he had to perform all life long, the diet he had and the very little care he ever devoted to his own body. By any measurement, he wasn't as lucky as I was to have been born when I did.