Wheee! (Part 2)
Apr. 8th, 2007 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjWhen I saw the sign indicating that trails would close and rental equipment must be returned by 4:30 pm, a small part of my brain whined, 'What a cheat -- that's hardly a whole day!' The much larger, more intelligent, part of my brain burst out laughing and said, 'Hah! You won't make it anywhere near that late!' As it happened, I was out on the trails until nearl 3pm, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The beginner's package includes rental equipment, a one-day trail pass, and a lesson. Since the lesson didn't start until 10:30, that gave me half an hour after picking up my equipment to circle around on the bunny track with the stated intention of getting half of my falling down over with before the class. I succeeded -- in fact I got 80% of my falling down over with ahead of time, only falling once during class and not at all after that on my own. (Not that I didn't try several times.) It being the end of the season, there was only one other student, so it was almost as good as a private lesson. The teacher started out by asking what we wanted to get out of the class. The other student sort of waved her hands around in a "what do you think?" motion. I said, "I want to learn proper kinesthetics." The teacher rolled his eyes with an "oh, a wise-guy" effect, but at least he didn't ask what the word meant. At any rate, we got some very detailed feedback and advice in the next hour-and-a-bit and then we were out on our own.
The most important thing I learned was that I was unlikely to mess myself up by putting my center of balance too far forward. Too far back, on the other hand .... It took me most of the day to convince my heels that they were not, in fact, fastened down, and to convince my ankles that they were not, in fact, in strait-jacketing downhill boots. But in the last hour or so I was really getting into the whole sliding stride thing. The arms got more of a workout than I expected. On the elliptical machine at the gym I mostly use the hand-holds just for balance, which is clearly not the best preparation for skiing.
By quarter of three, I'd gone over every open trail at the site twice -- a lot of them were closed due to (lack of) snow conditions -- and I could feel myself at the point of "if I stop moving now, I'll never get started again." It probably didn't help that I didn't take a real lunch break, but when I headed to the snack bar after my first time around the whole site, it was occupied by the aftermath of the local end-of-season amateur ski race and I didn't feel like hanging out very long. So overall I got in about 4.5 hours of solid skiing before heading back to turn in the equipment. I had a nice chat with the fellow at the rental desk (about linguistics, of all things), which was a mistake because my legs had started to seize up when I stopped moving. Fortunately the lodge was about half a mile up the road, so by the time I got to my room I'd walked most of the kinks out.
Made an appointment for a massage the next morning right after breakfast then took a hot shower and lazed around until dinner time. The duck (see previous entry) was just as good as the menu looked, but dinner was a bit odd because everyone else at the place was local and knew each other and it ended up feeling like I'd crashed a private party. I ordered the creme caramel for dessert which turns out to have been a mistake. Not only did it take them over half an hour to get it to me (which, to be fair, is probably because I was ordering dessert about the same time that most other people's entrees were coming out) but it was microscopic and badly over-cooked.
I had seriously thought about not taking the laptop with me on the principle that I was trying to get away from my everyday routine, but the local cable tv service was on the fritz, I couldn't pick up any decent radio stations, and I'd finished reading the one book I brought with me Friday evening and none of the local gift shops sold anything but local-interest non-fiction. So thanks to the miracle of free wireless, I not only had mail and newsgroups and whatnot to read, but I could pull up a podcast of last weekend's Wait wait don't tell me on iTunes for bedtime entertainment.
This morning it was pretty much just pack, eat breakfast, check out, and then a heavenly hour under the hands of the resident masseuse at the Bear Creek Lodge. She worked most of the rest of the kinks out, although my legs are in pretty good shape. (The one skiing motion that felt like it was using leg muscles I hadn't properly prepared turns out to have been a sign of bad style. Once I started remembering to shift my weight completely between legs, rather than dragging the back leg, that problem cleared up.) My shoulders are a bit more than one session can take care of, but she did her best.
It was definitely fun going solo on this trip, but I think in the future I'd rather ski in company. The gorgeous scenery only takes up part of the attention, and if I work up to a real whole day session it would be nice to have people to talk to. (To say nothing of the safety issues on more remote trails. Not really a problem this time given that the remote trails were all closed.)
The beginner's package includes rental equipment, a one-day trail pass, and a lesson. Since the lesson didn't start until 10:30, that gave me half an hour after picking up my equipment to circle around on the bunny track with the stated intention of getting half of my falling down over with before the class. I succeeded -- in fact I got 80% of my falling down over with ahead of time, only falling once during class and not at all after that on my own. (Not that I didn't try several times.) It being the end of the season, there was only one other student, so it was almost as good as a private lesson. The teacher started out by asking what we wanted to get out of the class. The other student sort of waved her hands around in a "what do you think?" motion. I said, "I want to learn proper kinesthetics." The teacher rolled his eyes with an "oh, a wise-guy" effect, but at least he didn't ask what the word meant. At any rate, we got some very detailed feedback and advice in the next hour-and-a-bit and then we were out on our own.
The most important thing I learned was that I was unlikely to mess myself up by putting my center of balance too far forward. Too far back, on the other hand .... It took me most of the day to convince my heels that they were not, in fact, fastened down, and to convince my ankles that they were not, in fact, in strait-jacketing downhill boots. But in the last hour or so I was really getting into the whole sliding stride thing. The arms got more of a workout than I expected. On the elliptical machine at the gym I mostly use the hand-holds just for balance, which is clearly not the best preparation for skiing.
By quarter of three, I'd gone over every open trail at the site twice -- a lot of them were closed due to (lack of) snow conditions -- and I could feel myself at the point of "if I stop moving now, I'll never get started again." It probably didn't help that I didn't take a real lunch break, but when I headed to the snack bar after my first time around the whole site, it was occupied by the aftermath of the local end-of-season amateur ski race and I didn't feel like hanging out very long. So overall I got in about 4.5 hours of solid skiing before heading back to turn in the equipment. I had a nice chat with the fellow at the rental desk (about linguistics, of all things), which was a mistake because my legs had started to seize up when I stopped moving. Fortunately the lodge was about half a mile up the road, so by the time I got to my room I'd walked most of the kinks out.
Made an appointment for a massage the next morning right after breakfast then took a hot shower and lazed around until dinner time. The duck (see previous entry) was just as good as the menu looked, but dinner was a bit odd because everyone else at the place was local and knew each other and it ended up feeling like I'd crashed a private party. I ordered the creme caramel for dessert which turns out to have been a mistake. Not only did it take them over half an hour to get it to me (which, to be fair, is probably because I was ordering dessert about the same time that most other people's entrees were coming out) but it was microscopic and badly over-cooked.
I had seriously thought about not taking the laptop with me on the principle that I was trying to get away from my everyday routine, but the local cable tv service was on the fritz, I couldn't pick up any decent radio stations, and I'd finished reading the one book I brought with me Friday evening and none of the local gift shops sold anything but local-interest non-fiction. So thanks to the miracle of free wireless, I not only had mail and newsgroups and whatnot to read, but I could pull up a podcast of last weekend's Wait wait don't tell me on iTunes for bedtime entertainment.
This morning it was pretty much just pack, eat breakfast, check out, and then a heavenly hour under the hands of the resident masseuse at the Bear Creek Lodge. She worked most of the rest of the kinks out, although my legs are in pretty good shape. (The one skiing motion that felt like it was using leg muscles I hadn't properly prepared turns out to have been a sign of bad style. Once I started remembering to shift my weight completely between legs, rather than dragging the back leg, that problem cleared up.) My shoulders are a bit more than one session can take care of, but she did her best.
It was definitely fun going solo on this trip, but I think in the future I'd rather ski in company. The gorgeous scenery only takes up part of the attention, and if I work up to a real whole day session it would be nice to have people to talk to. (To say nothing of the safety issues on more remote trails. Not really a problem this time given that the remote trails were all closed.)
