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BY BOB WILLIAMS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
SKIING AND SNOWBOARDING
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. — Ski enthusiast Jack Lyons hasn't missed a ski season in nearly 50 years. But these days Lyons, who is 65 years old, simply lolls on a beach rather than schussing the slopes, as yet another ski season passes — this time without him.
Like a growing number of middle-aged skiers, Lyons is learning that, although the mind is willing, the body isn't. Thus, he now spends his winters reading about the sport he loves, and watching it on television, rather than participating.
"Last year my right leg began to act up," says Lyons, a retired police captain who lives in Staten Island and who is spending a month here in this southern Florida city on the Gulf of Mexico. "With the constant wear and tear of jogging and skiing, it looks as if the meniscus in my knee is shot. I get in half a run, and it begins to swell."
What began for Lyons as an exciting day trip to Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl back in the early 1960s, and continued over the years with vacation jaunts to ski areas throughout the United States and Europe, is quietly rolling to a close — as it is for legions of ailing senior citizen skiers who discovered the sport as vibrant, physically fit young men and women."Five of us went up to Hunter in a car, and I was the only one who came back without an injury, and that was due to sheer luck," recalls Lyons of his introduction to the new recreational sport sweeping the nation. "We were 17 years old, so we figured we'd teach ourselves to ski. After all, we reasoned, what could happen?
The excited quintet quickly hit the slopes. One by one they dropped out because of injury.
Before long the group of five was down to two — Lyons and one friend. "But that sharp turn on the Belt Parkway," he recalled. "My friend went right over the side. They had to use a crane to get him out."
Despite injuries, Lyons and his buddies loved the experience. "In the beginning we took a lot of day trips to Bear Mountain and Hunter," adds Lyons, who was born and raised in Brooklyn.
But the winter excitement came to a halt in 1966. Lyons was pressed into military service and spent a few years on the aircraft carrier USS Independence. He worked 18-hour shifts on the flight deck launching and recovering aircraft — and dreaming about skiing. As luck would have it, though, when the carrier hit a European port for leave, among the rest and recuperation trips organized for crewman was — you guessed it — a ski trip to the French Alps. Lyons was ecstatic!
After service, Lyons resumed his growing interest in skiing, eventually introducing his wife, Lorraine, and four sons to the downhill sport.
"I finally learned to ski correctly at Gray Rocks, near Mt. Tremblant, in Canada," Lyons says. "That ski school made the difference because I began to get rid of bad ski habits I had acquired.
Then, about 12 years ago Lyons joined the Staten Island Ski Club, which is a member of the New Jersey Ski Council — and began to take what he called big ski trips. He's skied Aspen, Vail, Brekenridge, Steamboat Springs, Jackson Hole, Sun Valley and Taos out west, and many ski areas in the northeast. He was now retired, so he had even more time to ski.
"You could tell we were getting older," Lyons said of his skiing friends. "We'd all get out of the car at the slopes with our CPAP machines (continuous positive airway pressure) for our sleep apnea."
(Lyons isn't alone. The National Health, Lung and Blood Institute says that an estimated 12-18 million Americans have moderate to severe sleeping disordered breathing.)
Then, last year, Lyons' leg began to act up.
"I didn't ski at all this season. My doctor says that with treatment there's a good chance I can get back," says Lyons, shaking his head. "But he says no more heavy skiing. That's over."
Ski enthusiast Jack Lyons, who's spent most of his life skiing the big ones, admits he has trouble today just getting out of a chair.
"Years ago we'd meet friends in bars when we were looking to pick up women," Lyons says of his senior citizen ski buddies. "Today we meet friends in the doctor's office when we pick up our prescriptions!"
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Technology on the slopes: the iPhone is turning snowsports enthusiasts into iSkiers
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Give up skiing? no way!