It's All Downhill

Holy cow - where to begin? How about the beginning:

Janneke got up absurdly early - 6:23 or so. I stayed abed until well after seven, then quickly ate, walked the dog, and then herded the kids outside to the car. (Q woke up fresh as a daisy, no sign of fever or nausea. And T had been hyper-psyched for days, mostly about the hot dog we had ordered for her for her included mid-day lunch.) We were on our way to Jiminy by 8:15 or so, and headed off to the Skiwee area. It was really very well run - they have this set of stairs the kids walk up so the workers can access their feet without having to bend over, a sizing machine, and bajillions of bright red ski boots and tiny little skis. Down the other side of the stairs, and off to a holding area where - I am not exaggerating - probably sixty young ski instructors awaited in their matching parkas, ready to impart onto the young their wisdom in the sliding arts. We had one moment of wondering what to do, when suddenly all the instructors began to file out the back door, and we milled out with them and when they came to a general halt, we did too. Within three minutes, a tall young man had come up to T and said, "What's your name? How old are you? Have you ever skied before? No? Great! Come on, let's get started!" And off she trundled, with nary a look back. Just about precisely the same thing happened to Q not twenty seconds later, and that was it! They were off, to be cared for and instructed until 3:00.

Janneke and I looked at each other, as if things couldn't possibly be that simple. But it was! We were on our own! Off to the rental counter, where the speed and efficiency of the Skiwee counter was duplicated, only on an adult scale. (They even had the stairs up to the counter.) We put on the boots and headed to the lockers, where we dumped our stuff, and then hit the snow.

Those boots are weird. They're great when you're skiing, but there's just no damn way to comfortably walk in them. Most of you know this, probably, but I didn't. And walking with the skis on isn't much easier - if there's no hill to slide down, you're left to flounder and thrash your way in whichever direction circumstances dictate. And there's just no way to do it. Janneke can do it, but she's cheating somehow. Because nothing she does works for me. If you calculate the calories expended per meter of actual self-transportation on a flat surface, Janneke is probably fifty times as efficient as I am. I think she has a jet pack around her waist.

She took me down the pee-wee hill where Q and T were about the begin their lessons, for a quick lesson of my own. I did the snowplow, the pizza slice, or however you prefer to call it, to the bottom, and then took the kiddie-speed chairlift up the hill. And we took one more run; then we were ready for the novice slope.

The long and the short of it is this: I did not fall down. I plowed and slipped and snurked my way down, and came to a halt not far from where we had begun. Janneke was tickled with my success, as was I, and we went up again. And down again.

I did not fall down.

We took the chairlift up again, slid downhill and across the hill some fifty yards to another chairlift, which we took to its terminus. And then we skied from that point back down to the point from which we had originally begun.

I did not fall down.

We did some variation of this up until 11:45 or so. Up and down, up and down. My skis went more and more parallel; my turns began to take on a distinctly un-snowplow-like caharacter; my speed increased; I skittered across ice and over bumps; swarms of oblivious mothers and children wove around me at not nearly safe enough a remove; physics conspired to make the snowplow, even in desperation, insufficient to keep me from colliding with a skier below, forcing me to turn desperately to the right, which made me go far too fast for my liking, necessating a desperate turn to the left and more and more snowplowing, hoping to keep this momentum-building snowball from leaving dozens and dozens of broken innocents in my wake. But I did not run them down.

And I did not fall down.

Over the course of the entire day, skiing from around 10:00 to around 3:00, with a forty-minute break for lunch, I did not fall down.

While skiing.

Without distractions.

OK, so I fell down three times - but each was very exceptional. The first was when we were down visiting Q and T, catching some film of them as they got their lessons, and I quick went to the top in the chair lift - Q was ahead of me on the lift, and Janneke had wanted me to alert her when Q was coming down. I saw him about to start, and said to myself, "I'm a natural at this - I'll use the momentum of the lift, swoop down around the novices at the top of the bunny slope, and zoom to the bottom and alert Janneke." But in trying to negotiate the turn at a near-complete stop, with toddlers and moms shooting their skis out near me, I decided I was unprepared for the circumstances. And I decided this because trying to turn slowly is a lot different from turning fast, which I found out because I tried to turn, and down I went. I remember thinking that it was surprising, but should not have been - that I had done something stupid. But I was miffed, because I had begun to think how cool it would be to say I never fell down. Rats.

The second time, Janneke had dared me - well, asked me - to try following exactly in her path. But in trying to stay close enough to keep exact track of her path before the marks were lost in the snow (I had been following some thirty yards behind her), and having to keep an eye on her and her tracks at the same time, I got discombobulated, caught an edge, and went down. Had I not been trying to do that particularly nifty and unnecessary little maneuver, I feel very confident that I would not have fallen.

Because I never did again.

Except at the end of the day, when, having skied the entire length of the mountain, Janneke and I tried to go uphill on our skis to the top of the bunny hill and visit the kids, and the uphill flounder turned out to be too much for me. It really was pretty spectacular - it took me a good minute and a half to stand up, right myself, and get my skis off. It was the first time all day I felt embarrassed, and the first time anything on me hurt except for fatigued muscles. I had been at one point face-down, with the skis pointed out and 100% parallel with the ground, which added up to some difficult angles for the ol' tendons and ligaments. But I did recover, and with that, ended my day of skiing. So, to recap:

I did not fall in the course of an entire day of regular, high-speed, non-dare, downhill skiing.

Janneke did great, too. It was amazing to see her zishing and shooshing ahead of me, balanced and graceful and perfectly confident. I can't know, never having seen myself ski, but I get the feeling I was much more tight and hunched and tentative. But, hey, I feel super about it. What a great way to spend the day.

And the kids went bonkers over the experience. "Te gustO?", I asked Q. "No. Me encantO!", he said. He advanced all the way up to "Racoon", and is on the verge of being a "Black Bear". He came away well-indoctrinated to be a skier and not a snowboarder. "SLOW-boarder," he corrected me when I asked him about it. Oh - and his ski instructor turned out to be Chilean! Although he told us that Q hadn't told him until their very last run together that he spoke Spanish. (Come to think of it, we heard a lot of Spanish up there today - it was practically the only language other than English that we heard. Q's instructor told us there were a few Chileans, a few Argentines, and a Peruvian there working. Nice gig - snow instructor here in this part of the year, and then in Chile in the other part of the year.) Here are the categories Q whupped through in his first day of skiing, thanks to his Chilean instructor:

CHIPMUNK:
Can identify, carry, and put on equipment
Get up unassisted
Can walk and step around on skis
Can side-step or duckwalk uphill
Can balance while sliding on gentle incline

MOOSE:
Can make a wedge
Can descend holding a wedge
Can stop and control speed in a wedge
Can descend varying the size of the wedge

RACCOON:
Can wedge turn in both directions
Can ride a chairlift
Can control speed and direction

T, meanwhile, got up to "Raccoon", and on her next day of lessons, that is where she will start.

She was just as thrilled as Q with the whole day. At one point, we (Janneke and I) skied over to check on their progress, and quickly found Q, about to enter the chairlift, which was a big surprise. We climbed into line behind him, giggling as we watched him - and we looked and looked for T, but couldn't find her - until suddenly, Janneke said "LOOK!" - and T was climbing onto the chairlift with him! With Q's instructor, who hoisted her into place. We were shocked that she could advance that fast. And if I can get on my horse here this evening, you may even see the evidence of it in filmic form.

A long, hot bath awaits, however. If it's a choice between getting a film up and getting the bath in, I have to tell you...You're going to have to wait.

Knee-slappers from the day:

Janneke had never used parabolic skis before today, and never quite could recall just what they were called. At different points she referred to them as "hyperbolic" ("THESE ARE THE BEST SKIS EVER CREATED IN THE HISTORY OF ALL MANKIND! I HAVE NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!") and "bipolar" ("The right ski's awesome. The left one sucks."). We had some good yucks.

And here's the damn video.