Teaching an old dog a new trick

Whenever I reply in the negative to the question, "Do you know how to ski?", I invariably get the same shocked response, "But you grew up in Vancouver!". Apparently anyone living in the Greater Vancouver Regional District and in the vicinity of Whistler is required to have at least some rudimentary skill at skiing. I wish someone had told me that before I naively moved to Vienna, Austria (arguably the land of great skiers--what could I have been thinking!?) and later to Washington DC without ever having donned ski boots.

Anywhoo, on President's Day I decided to take advantage of the holiday to finally try my hand at this alpine sport. I have to admit that part of the appeal was the opportunity and excuse to take my R32 on a cruise in to untraveled territory while at the same time make use of my Magellan Roadmate 2200T.

The Whitetail Resort is just on the other side of the Maryland state border with Pennsylvania and is a 65 mile trip from my place. It was a fun drive and I passed by two speed traps without incident. The weather was great: sunny, mostly clear skies, and it wasn't too cold.

After paying for the lift ticket and rental, I went to line up to pick up ski boots, skis, and ski poles. It was a holiday so it was quite busy and a lot of time was spent waiting in line. It took me a minute to figure out how to put the ski boots on, but I managed and eventually made it out in time to meet a friend who was also taking a lesson for first-time skiers. I won't bore you with details. Suffice to say that the lesson was about 2 hours and that most of my difficulty was in controlling my speed.

I didn't try this one.

After the lesson I continued practicing on the beginner slopes, and by my last two runs I began to understand skiing's appeal. I was able to look up and around instead of directly at the ground in front, and I spent less time discovering the best way to get up off the ground. I did have one fall where I sat up to discover one of my skis was 8-feet up slope. Oops.

I can easily imagine how enjoyable it would be if I ever became proficient enough to try the longer slopes. The great fun of making large S-turns back and forth was hampered by the short length of the beginner slopes.

This was more my speed :o)

There were a few things that detracted from the experience, however. First, the expense. I guess if I skied often enough investing in my own equipment would alleviate that somewhat. Second, ski boots are not the most comfortable foot-wear. That may be due to the nature of rentals, my inexperience, or what have you, but there you go. While I was skiing I didn't notice it so much, but every once in a while I'd get a reminder about how sore the balls of my feet were. At the end of the day, when I took off the boots, the relief was euphoric. Third, waiting in line for the lift was a chore. The lift for the beginner slopes was quite busy, and waiting in line was made worse by the ski boots (see point 2). From what I could see, though, the lifts for the more advanced slopes weren't as crowded. But that may have been a case of the grass is always greener....

Anywhoo, to that age-old question I can now reply, "Yes, I have skied, thank-you-very-much," and hopefully the invariably shocked response will be a thing of the past. I can't say that I have the immediate desire to go out and ski, with the caveat that if skiing were free I'd definitely make plans to go again (I guess I'm too cheap). Nevertheless, skiing is certainly in the back of my mind as something I'd like trying again, someday.