Okay...this is starting to feel like a cartoon...
Skiing Day 2
So, after getting bored with Meet the Fockers, I decide to go to bed so that I could wake up early. I manage to forget to set my alarm, but I realize when I get up that it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. By this point, the battery in my cell phone has run out and my charger doesn't seem to work. Damn. But it's okay. I wake up about the time one of the undergrads comes in from shift. I get up, get ready, and go to breakfast. After the other undergrad (the one who went skiing with me the day before) comes to breakfast, we all pile in the car and head out for day two of our adventure. The post-doc tells me that this day is much clearer than the day before. In addition to being glad because we'll get to ski in better weather, I was disappointed because that meant the other group would have to take shift all night. [Amazingly, I felt sorry for them that day, but I don't feel sorry for myself, today, eventhough there is not a single cloud in the sky.]
Well, anyway, we get to the ski place, and forget all this practice stuff and forget the bunny slope (closed, anyway), we're ready to try the intermediate slopes because we're undaunted. That is until we reach the ski lift. I think everything is going fine, but when I and the undergrad get up to the point, the guy is trying to tell me to move sideways. I don't realize this because all I can hear is, "Mas, mas, mas!" More what? I don't know. So the lift hits me as it comes around and it swings and hits the other girl. Ouch! Cruel machine. So we get away from the lift area. I check on the other girl who is a little rattled and decides to sit down for awhile. I brilliantly decide to get on the same lift and go up to find the post-doc who was already on the lift when we fell. As I go up the lift, I see him skiing down a slope I know to be the hard one. Uh-oh. That means that he thinks I stayed behind with the other girl. I realize at that point that that's what I should have done. Too late now. So, I get up there and think that maybe I should stay where I am. But it could take the post-doc more than an hour to catch up with me, so I get the genius idea that I should ski down the slope and wait for him at the bottom. I look at the map and figure out which slope is the intermediate slope. I ski down that one. "Wow! I'm going way too fast! Okay, don't panic. Just slow down. I can't slow down! Okay, what do you do when you're going too fast?" Poof! I fall. I do this sequence several times. I finally make it to the bottom of the first slope with much falling but without injury, but I realize that it wasn't the smartest thing in the world to have done. I should have stayed at the top because now the post-doc might think that I went down the wrong slope. "Should I wait for him? Yeah. Hopefully, he thinks that I'm smart enough to look at a map and avoid the hard slope while not smart enough to stay where I am." Well, by the time I looked at another map and did battle with putting on my skis (snow on the bottom of the boots can make that difficult), I realize that a lot of time has passed. Plus, my only alternative was to go on one of the other lifts. There is no other way down except to go on a lift and ski down. So, wait, I do. I start looking for a guy with a red jacket and a girl with a yellow one. At one point, I see a guy with a red jacket stop and look back at a girl with a yellow jacket who has fallen. "That has to be they." Nope. Turns out to be someone else. "Darn. Well? How long should I wait? Should I walk back? It's a long way. Let's wait a little longer." At some point, a red jacket is skiing towards me. I recognize him as the post-doc. He skis up chuckling and says that he was worried that I had taken another route. I tell him that I looked at the map figuring that I could find him down here. When I saw other lifts, I realized that he could have gone on any of them at that point, so I decided to stay there. He tells me what I already know: That the only way down is up. He suggests one lift. The one which I had already decided was probably the best idea after looking at a map. I turns out to be the lift with poles. You have to stick the poles between your legs and ski up the slope. Simple enough, right? Wrong. I fell on those stupid poles. Twice. "Damn ski lifts." I mean, I start out okay. I get the pole between my legs and start skiing up, but I wasn't paying attention to where my skis were going, so one of my skis would always disconnect with my boot. Well that's no good, so I fall, trek back to where I can put my skis back on and put them back on. After the second time, the post-doc suggests that we take a normal ski lift to a slightly harder route. This we do without problems. I go down the first slope. "Wow! This one is even steeper than the first one!" Poof! "Okay. Get up." Poof! Eventually, I begin to understand for real why skiers do diagonals and turns: to slow the frick down. After much ado on the first slope, I manage to get the hang of it more, and go down the second slope. This one is not as steep, so I have less trouble, though I still fall a bunch of times. At some point, I fall and decide that since I'm just sitting there, I might as well take a picture. I take a picture of the mountains (which are absolutely beautiful) and the post-doc. Towards the last slope, I start to get the hang of it. But the last slope is as hard as the first slope of the second leg. I fall a bunch of times, but manage to make it back to the base. Yay! I made it! And I'm not dead! Yay!
We find the other girl who, by this point, has made quite an impressive snowman. We tell her about the slope and she decides to come with us this time. We get to the first leg. I start skiing along and realize that I really have started to get the hang of it. I'm going slow and I'm not falling. Whew! Vroom! "What was that?" I look for my post-doc and the undergrad. "There's the post-doc. Just ahead of me. Where's the undergrad? Damn! She's down there already? Hehe. That's exactly what I did on this slope. She doesn't know to make diagonals. Ah well. She'll get it." I and the post-doc ski after her. We catch up to her and we all get on the second lift. At the top, I take another picture since I had forgotten last time I was there. Then, we all ski down the slope. Naturally, the undergrad falls a lot. It's good for me because this means that I stop after one or two diagonals to help her, or at least see where she went. About half way down the slope, she starts to get the hang of it, but she typically gets through one diagonal and falls on the second. She's doing even better than I did. I don't think I got there until the second slope. At some point, she falls, and I swerve to go help her. But the course is marked by packed snow and deep snow along the sides. I ski into the deep snow. As I look at my skis and realize that they are under about half a foot of snow, I think, "Okay, how do I get out of this predicament without taking off my skis?" Well, I wasn't about to take off my skis. After the number of times I had fallen and lost skis (or taken off skis to look at maps) and had to put them back on with great difficulty, I wasn't about to do it again. But I certainly couldn't walk out of the deep snow, either. So, I sat down in the snow and using my butt as a fulcrum, I lift my skis out of the snow. Of course, this means that I'm now lying on the snow with my skis above me. Now, I have to get myself out of the snow without putting my skis back in it. This had to have been the funniest sight. Hell, even I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I'm thrashing about with my body and my skis trying to make it back to the slope. My skis are all over the place and pinwheeling through the air. Eventually, I make it back to the slope without taking off my skis. We ski down the remainder of that slope and make it to the second slope of the second leg. This being a more gentle slope, the undergrad has fewer problems, and I don't fall at all. We finally make it to the last slope. She goes down the slope and I lose track of her. I ski down and fall like three times. About halfway down the slope, I start to get the hang of it again, and I ski the remainder without falling anymore. Yay! I did it twice! It is now 3:15. Wow! We had gotten there at like 11:00. That took over four hours! "No wonder I'm hungry." We sit down to eat the food we had brought with us (the cafeteria is expensive), and the post-doc decides that we can ski alone without killing ourselves. He wants to ski a hard course, so we bid him farewell. The other girl wants to ski the last leg of the course we just skiied. I decide that I'm not going to try the poles again, so I want to ski the whole course again. Besides, once you've been through the whole course, what's the point of doing the short one? As I go up the lifts, I watch for the other girl. There she is; hanging on for dear life on the poles. But she hasn't fallen. Ah well. Some people can take them. Some can't. I reach the top and ski the whole course for the third time. I didn't fall as much as I had before, but I still fall quite a bit. On the gentle slopes, I don't fall at all. I get to the bottom, and I see the post-doc again. He says that he's going to get on the poles near the top and ski the course he had originally suggested. I'm tired and by this time, it's 4:30, so I don't have time to ski the whole course again, so I go into the cafeteria. I find a table with much difficulty and get a menu. Right after that, the undergrad comes in. She looks exhausted. I order hot chocolate and we wait for the post-doc. He comes in, gets coffee, and tells me that the poles are difficult. He had also fallen on them. And a bunch of other people had fallen, too. Not such an easy thing after all. We laugh about the trials and tribulations of the day, and then we go home. We're so exhausted that we all sleep like babies until 1 pm or later the next day.
And that's my first skiing experience...Yay!
So, after getting bored with Meet the Fockers, I decide to go to bed so that I could wake up early. I manage to forget to set my alarm, but I realize when I get up that it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. By this point, the battery in my cell phone has run out and my charger doesn't seem to work. Damn. But it's okay. I wake up about the time one of the undergrads comes in from shift. I get up, get ready, and go to breakfast. After the other undergrad (the one who went skiing with me the day before) comes to breakfast, we all pile in the car and head out for day two of our adventure. The post-doc tells me that this day is much clearer than the day before. In addition to being glad because we'll get to ski in better weather, I was disappointed because that meant the other group would have to take shift all night. [Amazingly, I felt sorry for them that day, but I don't feel sorry for myself, today, eventhough there is not a single cloud in the sky.]
Well, anyway, we get to the ski place, and forget all this practice stuff and forget the bunny slope (closed, anyway), we're ready to try the intermediate slopes because we're undaunted. That is until we reach the ski lift. I think everything is going fine, but when I and the undergrad get up to the point, the guy is trying to tell me to move sideways. I don't realize this because all I can hear is, "Mas, mas, mas!" More what? I don't know. So the lift hits me as it comes around and it swings and hits the other girl. Ouch! Cruel machine. So we get away from the lift area. I check on the other girl who is a little rattled and decides to sit down for awhile. I brilliantly decide to get on the same lift and go up to find the post-doc who was already on the lift when we fell. As I go up the lift, I see him skiing down a slope I know to be the hard one. Uh-oh. That means that he thinks I stayed behind with the other girl. I realize at that point that that's what I should have done. Too late now. So, I get up there and think that maybe I should stay where I am. But it could take the post-doc more than an hour to catch up with me, so I get the genius idea that I should ski down the slope and wait for him at the bottom. I look at the map and figure out which slope is the intermediate slope. I ski down that one. "Wow! I'm going way too fast! Okay, don't panic. Just slow down. I can't slow down! Okay, what do you do when you're going too fast?" Poof! I fall. I do this sequence several times. I finally make it to the bottom of the first slope with much falling but without injury, but I realize that it wasn't the smartest thing in the world to have done. I should have stayed at the top because now the post-doc might think that I went down the wrong slope. "Should I wait for him? Yeah. Hopefully, he thinks that I'm smart enough to look at a map and avoid the hard slope while not smart enough to stay where I am." Well, by the time I looked at another map and did battle with putting on my skis (snow on the bottom of the boots can make that difficult), I realize that a lot of time has passed. Plus, my only alternative was to go on one of the other lifts. There is no other way down except to go on a lift and ski down. So, wait, I do. I start looking for a guy with a red jacket and a girl with a yellow one. At one point, I see a guy with a red jacket stop and look back at a girl with a yellow jacket who has fallen. "That has to be they." Nope. Turns out to be someone else. "Darn. Well? How long should I wait? Should I walk back? It's a long way. Let's wait a little longer." At some point, a red jacket is skiing towards me. I recognize him as the post-doc. He skis up chuckling and says that he was worried that I had taken another route. I tell him that I looked at the map figuring that I could find him down here. When I saw other lifts, I realized that he could have gone on any of them at that point, so I decided to stay there. He tells me what I already know: That the only way down is up. He suggests one lift. The one which I had already decided was probably the best idea after looking at a map. I turns out to be the lift with poles. You have to stick the poles between your legs and ski up the slope. Simple enough, right? Wrong. I fell on those stupid poles. Twice. "Damn ski lifts." I mean, I start out okay. I get the pole between my legs and start skiing up, but I wasn't paying attention to where my skis were going, so one of my skis would always disconnect with my boot. Well that's no good, so I fall, trek back to where I can put my skis back on and put them back on. After the second time, the post-doc suggests that we take a normal ski lift to a slightly harder route. This we do without problems. I go down the first slope. "Wow! This one is even steeper than the first one!" Poof! "Okay. Get up." Poof! Eventually, I begin to understand for real why skiers do diagonals and turns: to slow the frick down. After much ado on the first slope, I manage to get the hang of it more, and go down the second slope. This one is not as steep, so I have less trouble, though I still fall a bunch of times. At some point, I fall and decide that since I'm just sitting there, I might as well take a picture. I take a picture of the mountains (which are absolutely beautiful) and the post-doc. Towards the last slope, I start to get the hang of it. But the last slope is as hard as the first slope of the second leg. I fall a bunch of times, but manage to make it back to the base. Yay! I made it! And I'm not dead! Yay!
We find the other girl who, by this point, has made quite an impressive snowman. We tell her about the slope and she decides to come with us this time. We get to the first leg. I start skiing along and realize that I really have started to get the hang of it. I'm going slow and I'm not falling. Whew! Vroom! "What was that?" I look for my post-doc and the undergrad. "There's the post-doc. Just ahead of me. Where's the undergrad? Damn! She's down there already? Hehe. That's exactly what I did on this slope. She doesn't know to make diagonals. Ah well. She'll get it." I and the post-doc ski after her. We catch up to her and we all get on the second lift. At the top, I take another picture since I had forgotten last time I was there. Then, we all ski down the slope. Naturally, the undergrad falls a lot. It's good for me because this means that I stop after one or two diagonals to help her, or at least see where she went. About half way down the slope, she starts to get the hang of it, but she typically gets through one diagonal and falls on the second. She's doing even better than I did. I don't think I got there until the second slope. At some point, she falls, and I swerve to go help her. But the course is marked by packed snow and deep snow along the sides. I ski into the deep snow. As I look at my skis and realize that they are under about half a foot of snow, I think, "Okay, how do I get out of this predicament without taking off my skis?" Well, I wasn't about to take off my skis. After the number of times I had fallen and lost skis (or taken off skis to look at maps) and had to put them back on with great difficulty, I wasn't about to do it again. But I certainly couldn't walk out of the deep snow, either. So, I sat down in the snow and using my butt as a fulcrum, I lift my skis out of the snow. Of course, this means that I'm now lying on the snow with my skis above me. Now, I have to get myself out of the snow without putting my skis back in it. This had to have been the funniest sight. Hell, even I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I'm thrashing about with my body and my skis trying to make it back to the slope. My skis are all over the place and pinwheeling through the air. Eventually, I make it back to the slope without taking off my skis. We ski down the remainder of that slope and make it to the second slope of the second leg. This being a more gentle slope, the undergrad has fewer problems, and I don't fall at all. We finally make it to the last slope. She goes down the slope and I lose track of her. I ski down and fall like three times. About halfway down the slope, I start to get the hang of it again, and I ski the remainder without falling anymore. Yay! I did it twice! It is now 3:15. Wow! We had gotten there at like 11:00. That took over four hours! "No wonder I'm hungry." We sit down to eat the food we had brought with us (the cafeteria is expensive), and the post-doc decides that we can ski alone without killing ourselves. He wants to ski a hard course, so we bid him farewell. The other girl wants to ski the last leg of the course we just skiied. I decide that I'm not going to try the poles again, so I want to ski the whole course again. Besides, once you've been through the whole course, what's the point of doing the short one? As I go up the lifts, I watch for the other girl. There she is; hanging on for dear life on the poles. But she hasn't fallen. Ah well. Some people can take them. Some can't. I reach the top and ski the whole course for the third time. I didn't fall as much as I had before, but I still fall quite a bit. On the gentle slopes, I don't fall at all. I get to the bottom, and I see the post-doc again. He says that he's going to get on the poles near the top and ski the course he had originally suggested. I'm tired and by this time, it's 4:30, so I don't have time to ski the whole course again, so I go into the cafeteria. I find a table with much difficulty and get a menu. Right after that, the undergrad comes in. She looks exhausted. I order hot chocolate and we wait for the post-doc. He comes in, gets coffee, and tells me that the poles are difficult. He had also fallen on them. And a bunch of other people had fallen, too. Not such an easy thing after all. We laugh about the trials and tribulations of the day, and then we go home. We're so exhausted that we all sleep like babies until 1 pm or later the next day.
And that's my first skiing experience...Yay!
posted by Saria_Gates at 12:59 PM
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