Saturday morning we were up early, enjoying the free breakfast at our hotel (me up even earlier for a scheduled run) and discussing the day ahead of us. Our plan was to get to the ski resort early, get our gear and join a beginner's ski lesson so that we would have the afternoon to enjoy the slopes.
We worked our way through the process of buying tickets, getting our ski boots, trying to figure out how to put them on, getting our skis, clumsily carrying them outside, finding the right ski poles and then finally getting out on the snow and coming to the realization that we have absolutely no idea what we are doing.
Prior to this weekend, I had been skiing one time, while I was in college with some friends who had been skiing most of their lives. That day, I skipped the lesson and let my friends "teach me" a few things before they grew incredibly bored and headed off for the hard slopes. The only thing that stuck with me from that day was that I fell down a lot and that falling was the only method I could work out for stopping.
Obviously, this was not the most positive experience I could have had with skiing.
Fresh off the fun we had learning to cross-country ski with my parents, I put the one experience I had with skiing out of my head and went in to this with the mindset of a totally newbie, which let's be honest, I am.
Anyway, we met up with a ski instructor, George, who took us through an hour and a half lesson, where we started out skiing without our skis and by the end we were slowly making our way down the bunny slope in lazy S-shaped turns. We "French-fry-ed" and "Pizza-ed" our way down a mountain and I am happy to report that by the end of the lesson I felt reasonably confident.
With a short break for lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon going up and down the easy slope and Mike and I even worked our way over to the next slope with a mix of easy and intermediate.
It was a very fun day and I really enjoyed learning a new sport. Despite the cold fingers and toes, the long waits for the lift, and the next few days of soreness (what a workout for your thighs and hips!), I had a great time and erased all my previous misconceptions about downhill skiing.
I am really interested in making it back to the mountain one more time before the season ends and definitely going back next year.
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