Post a controversial opinion

I've never been on a rollercoaster

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver)

me neither

I'm too afraid to ski, but now that I live in Quebec and not Illinois, its non-frivolity is clearer. Golf is an atrocity.

prob not really controversial but downhill skiing/snowboarding as a leisure activity should be considered a dumb wasteful indulgence and worthy of ridicule. it's dangerous, frivolous, and expensive - all that dumb technical gear, lift tickets, cost of meals at a ski resort, the work required to maintain and patrol a ski mountain, lodging if you aren't a local. what a waste. there are other ways to get outside in the winter that are cheaper, safer, and more enjoyable.

Actually that’s not really a counterpoint

Eh, Michael Schumacher still elicits my pity.

Skiing is ridiculously expensive and unless you're going to be one of those people who lives by a mountain and does only hike-up backcountry, it takes time and dedication to have a transcendent experience, but when it does happen, it really makes me feel like it's the only reason bodies and money and gravity and winter exist

otm

i used to feel that way, someone who made multiple trips every winter to vermont, a few major trips to california and nevada, had all the snowboarding gear chasing a perfect run but it came to a point after i had seen life-altering injuries happen to family, suffered a concussion myself, and added up the cash both sides of my family have cumulatively spent on this dumb sport and i think i have had enough. the last few times i've gone the greatest emotion i felt was relief at the end of a run having made it down without breaking a limb or worse.

I skiied on one vacation as a teenager and it was neat but I can have hot chocolate at home

me neither

And yet you claim they're dud? I like the old fashioned enormous up-and-down rollercoasters never been on of these new-fangled twisty upside down ones.

the last few times i've gone the greatest emotion i felt was relief at the end of a run having made it down without breaking a limb or worse.

Yeah, same. I stopped skiing a few years ago. My family are all huge skiiers, but I was increasingly feeling very unsafe on the runs. I don't think I ever quite developed the right technique.

what is a bant

me neither

And yet you claim they're dud? I like the old fashioned enormous up-and-down rollercoasters never been on of these new-fangled twisty upside down ones.

― Wee boats wobble but they don't fall down (Tom D.)

they scare me

oh look ilxors resent outdoor sports

no i love outdoor sports

it's true there are a lot of NBA fans on this board

Isn't NBA basketball?

i mean i imagine U.S. ILX loves the indoor sport of basketball above all others

Oh, I see.

I love baseball. I played little league for 5 years. My burnout hippie coach said "baseball is a thinking man's game," and he's right. It's like a river.

well it certainly isn't a doing man's game

I really love white water rafting but the last time I went a couple of months ago I was like "please please please I am too old to get injured doing this shit."

controversial baseball opinion:
going to spring training game>>>>going to regular season game. Cheaper tickets, smaller more "intimate" stadiums, nothing better than a day at the ballpark in late Feb & seeing pale Midwesterners reveling in the warm sunshine, most stadiums have lawn seating in the outfield which is much more comfortable, and at this point I only know like 5 MLBers and even those I couldn't really pick out of a lineup (no pun intended) so seeing mostly lesser talent isn't even noticeable.

I grew up in a place with ridiculous amounts of snow and a small ski area about a five minute drive from my parent's house. Season passes were like $80 when I was a kid and there was always used gear available at local stores and ski swaps.

My sister and I spent basically every single Saturday and Sunday from 1987 until 1993 at the hill (skiing for the first two years and snowboarding for the rest) and it was one of the best and most formative experiences of my life, and if I won the lottery and never had to work again I'd probably spend as many days as I could every skiing (which I've gone back to because snowboarding isn't as much fun and is a lot more work when you're old IMO).

there are other ways to get outside in the winter that are cheaper, safer, and more enjoyable.

― marcos, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 12:22 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

such as?

sledding, hiking, cross-country skiing, snowball fighting

Going outside while it’s winter

skating!

ice-skating is the shit

If I wasn't for ice skating my mother and father would never have met and I, and my siblings, wouldn't be here so I'm all for it - even I only tried it once and hated the experience.

lol this thread is so horrible

I don't know about golf, you've made skiing sound more the scientology of mountains.

Skiing is the only justification for human bodies to continue to exist imo, truly the greatest pleasure in the world and I hope that I die while doing it

― froggles! (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, February 5, 2019 10:40 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic but obv i agree with this

but i also started as a lil kid, raced for 10+ years, made major life choices in order to be a ski bum/close to mountains, etc

that said: ski resorts and the financial costs associated with them are whack, and i generally only ski in the backcountry now B)

the danger and frivolity is real, tho

The two happiest people in my life are my aunt and uncle who got sober age 27 and bought a plot of land up a Utah canyon, built a house and continued to improve upon it over the next 40 years, and have spent every winter strapping skins on their skis, hiking every morning at 5am every morning to known heli-ski serviced bowls and getting first tracks before the helicopters arrived

Damn

money sounds awesome

money sounds awesome

hardly a controp

lol

It’s pretty good

The two happiest people in my life are my aunt and uncle who got sober age 27 and bought a plot of land up a Utah canyon, built a house and continued to improve upon it over the next 40 years, and have spent every winter strapping skins on their skis, hiking every morning at 5am every morning to known heli-ski serviced bowls and getting first tracks before the helicopters arrived

― froggles! (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, February 5, 2019 9:39 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hell yeah

ski resorts are terrible applications of resources and abuses of environment for a narrowly available, expensive recreation. skiing is great though, across a wide range of subdisciplines. while i have family and therefore do not entirely control the style of my recreation- liftserved it is.
its also worth saying that the risk mitigations you get out of inbounds are very def not nothing. Being actually good at avy avoidance can be hard and chancey, i must rely on betters there.

Same as I feel about golf resorts v golf as sport

Ah, well, the point about my aunt and uncle was that they are avid skiers who ski some of the best terrain around with little-to-no personal wealth or income, true ski bums-- the dichotomy between their luxury taste (powder skiing in Utah) and their guerrilla approach (hiking up before the sun's up to spoil the plans of some rich tourists) is very appealing to me.

how do you buy a plot of land and build a house w/ no wealth

asking for a me

You go back in time to the 70s, work in service for several years, then purchase ten acres of land up a canyon where there is no power, no water, and no access in the winter (even now it's park off the highway and get on a snowmobile)

I grew up in a place with ridiculous amounts of snow and a small ski area about a five minute drive from my parent's house. Season passes were like $80 when I was a kid and there was always used gear available at local stores and ski swaps.

My sister and I spent basically every single Saturday and Sunday from 1987 until 1993 at the hill (skiing for the first two years and snowboarding for the rest) and it was one of the best and most formative experiences of my life, and if I won the lottery and never had to work again I'd probably spend as many days as I could every skiing (which I've gone back to because snowboarding isn't as much fun and is a lot more work when you're old IMO).

― joygoat, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 1:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this does sound rad. happy for locals & ppl working the mountain who are able to do it on the cheap

fgti thats a great story. there are many varieties of family stories i have heard from friends about getting to mtns, involving so many different kinds of economic roots, from hard rock mining families in ouray, to midwestern educators in minturn, to actual shepherds above gunnison. people get in all places for reasons productive, or extractive, or social, or religious, or aesthetic. It’s...actually interesting to me at least.

Surfing prob would've gone the same way as golfing and skiing if it was as easy to buy up water "real estate" and set up surf resorts

You go back in time to the 70s

ahhhh I had wondered

Surfing prob would've gone the same way as golfing and skiing if it was as easy to buy up water "real estate" and set up surf resorts

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, February 6, 2019 3:42 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A better comparison might be boating in general? Because conditions for surfing are quite rare but water access is available in lots of places. Like skiing, boating has high up-front costs in most cases unless you're a local in which case it's nearly universal--you benefit from full-time access, off-season prices, personal connections to the resource, etc.

Well, yeah. "How can anybody but a rich person possibly have ever bought land?" They're like almost 70, lol. Still skiing, too!

The 2016 Democratic primary was good and the idea of a 'repeat' should not frighten people: two serious, experienced politicians debated a lot of major issues and the party was forced to question and clarify a number of its stances, ultimately shifting the Overton window in a progressive direction; the candidates mostly avoided name-calling and muck-raking; it was shown that a grassroots-based, non-corporate-funded campaign could be a serious contender; a significant number of young people became engaged; there was some bs but it was mostly fair; and, ultimately, the candidate with the broader base of support won, became the first female nominee for a major party, and won the popular vote in the general election, while the losing candidate ended up influencing the ideological direction of the party. The fact that the Democratic nominee won the election in 2008 and not in 2016 had more to do with the earlier election coming after eight years of the most disastrous, unpopular Republican Presidency of my lifetime than with the 08 primary being any less divisive or 'problematic'. The reason we still litigate the 2016 primary more than the 2008 primary (or more than Republicans debate their 2016 primaries) has more to do with who won those general elections than with any properties of the primaries themselves. (I lived in the US during both btw.)