Life in the Middle Ages: January 2015

Had 5 days of skiing in the past week. This pretty much equals my total skiing for the years 1995 thru 2012. I never was a very good skier. However, I wanted my son to learn. So, starting when he was about 8, we started hitting the little local places.

This is like a lot of things I took up as an adult where I wish I had known how to do this, but wasn't in a position, financially, to try until I was grown up. Even so, I learned on a budget, which meant that I was probably a dangerous and not-very-good skier for most of my life. I was lucky to afford a lift ticket now and then. Forget affording lessons.

I got to where I could go down a hill, hockey stop if going to the left, and that's... well, that's about it. I'd wipe out several times a day on the slopes and when I'd start wiping out every run, I knew it was time to go home.

I wanted my son to learn how to ski properly. So, I frequently would hire a private instructor for him when we'd hit the slopes.

It's been a few years since I did skiing of any kind. So, when a friend asked if I wanted to hit Snowshoe West Virginia for a week, I was pretty eager for it. I haven't had a real vacation in a long, long time and it was time to dust off the skis.

Snowshoe felt like a skiing Disneyland for grownups. Our Hotel room was a short walk to the top of the slopes. It was close enough that you could walk to the hotel and up to the room if your feet got cold or you had to pee. The feet part was pretty important because the week we were there, it was very, very cold. Like single digits and some negative temperatures.

My friend taught me quite a bit. For instance, I didn't know that the symbols for difficulty aren't universal. They're only in relation to that particular location. So, a green slope just means it's the easiest type of slope at that location. A black diamond in one location could easily be a green elsewhere.

At Snowshoe, the greens were pretty challenging, I think. Most of them had a relatively steep drop-off and were on narrow trails.

The first couple of days, I was mostly just trying not to die. My priorities have changed a lot since I was in my 20s.

In my 20s, my priorities for skiing were:

1. Ski all the black diamonds by the end of the day.
2. Ski fast.
3. Turn roughly when I intend to turn.
4. Stop, or if I can't stop, slide to a stop somewhere near the lift line.
5. When I fall, try not to fall on anybody else, and try to keep the yardsale of gear nearby so it won't take me long to gather it up, put it back on and keep flying down the hill.

Now, my priorities are more like:

1. Don't get hurt.
2. Avoid injury.
3. Attempt not to cause myself or others bodily harm.
4. Endeavor to eschew anything that will result in pain.
5. Enjoy skiing.

So, the first two days I was trying to get myself back to where I could ski like I used to: with some semblance of control and ability to stop and turn. By day four, I was pretty much as good as I'd ever been and was really enjoying the greens. Each run might have 1 or 2 places where the hill got a little steep and I'd have to really work to keep my speed under control, but for the most part, I could practice staying parallel and controlling my speed.

On Saturday, I took Logan up to Mt. Holly to try out his new ski gear. His skis are MUCH longer than last year. I also had some concerns about his boots. However, the night before I had him put the boots on to make sure they weren't too big. I didn't know about the skis, though. If they were too long, they'd be hard to control and he might hurt himself.

So, first thing I did was hire an instructor for an hour. Unlike years prior, I paid extra so it would be a private lesson for the two of us. The instructor gave us some great guidance and stuff to work on and then we were on our own.

Mt. Holly, for a little local hill, is pretty nice. It's an hour and a half away from me. There's a closer one: Mt. Brighton, but Brighton is very, very small and very, very crowded. Much like local places near Cleveland like Brandywine. You spend most of your time dodging out of control kids on snowboards. The hill is small. It's sorta dangerous.

Last time I went to Holly, there were absolutely some hills there that were out of my reach, skill-wise. It's bigger, with more runs and is less populated than Mt. Brighton. For a skiier of my skill level at the time, I could have skied there a week and not gotten bored.

I was having difficulty controlling my skis all week and prior to the lesson. There are a lot of reasons for this. For one, they're giant slolom (GS) skis. Probably not appropriate for kid-dodging east of the Rockies. This means they're a little longer than typical recreational skis. Probably intended for folks who ski a little better than I did.

For another, the skis today have different technology than they did in the early 90s when I first tried skiing. The skis are parabolic, now, which makes them much easier to turn. Thing is, to get them to perform, you have to lean forward in your boots, which scares the heck out of me.

The instructor gave me basically one thing to work on: leaning forward in my boots. With the new parabolic skis, this is critical for engaging the front of the ski for turning.

Once I did this, everything that hadn't worked the prior week snapped right into place. My turn to the right was just as good as my turn to the left. I was able to get my skis left and right to dig them in to control speed on very steep grades.

By the mid-afternoon, Logan and I had safely slayed all the runs at Mt. Holly. And by early evening we were starting to get bored with them. My "too long" skis were not a problem at all. (Not at Holly, anyway. Next season, I will be looking for shorter skis. I just saw way too many skiers who probably weren't as good as me, handling much gnarlier stuff in Snowshoe because their skis were so much more nimble and easy to control.)

I thought back to the stuff that gave me fits at Snowshoe, and with my technique the way it is, now, none of it would be tricky at all for me. So, after 4 days in Snowshoe, I was as good as I ever was. After 1 lesson and a day at Mt. Holly, I'm a better skiier than I ever thought I would be.

I doubt I'll be going back to Snowshoe. Honestly, I loved it, but it's just too danged far. For me, it's like an 8 or 9 hour drive under good conditions. Also, a lot of the drive is winding single-lane roads. Boyne is only 4 and a half hours away and from what I can gather, is pretty much the same skiing as Snowshoe. So, my penciled in plan for next year is Boyne for a week with Logan. Depending on what happens with the job and the rest of my life, a trip out west is probably in the not-too-distant future.

I don't think Boyne has the fake village Disneyland atmosphere of Snowshoe, but that's okay. I liked being able to walk out the door of the hotel to a restaurant within a few yards, but honestly, although the food was usually good, the quality was insanely inconsistent. If I did it again, I'd take a cooler of food and nuke a breakfast sandwich and hit the slopes that much earlier. I'll probably follow that plan in Boyne.

Total damage (non financial) is a little tweak on the shoulder, knee and hip. The shoulder is still a little sore. Hip is fine, now. And knee is still just ever so slightly noticeable. All of this happened prior to the lesson. After the lesson, it was the most uneventful (in terms of falling down) skiing of my life. I should have done the lesson so much sooner. Unlike lessons in a lot of other things, the difference was instant and dramatic. I was ten times the skiier by the end of that day as I'd been when I showed up that morning.

Life in the Middle Ages

Sunday, January 11, 2015

The Comedic Stylings of Jimmy Trying to Ski

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Fit at 50 Day One

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