HEPENNIG

Well, I got home last night from a week at the snow with the family. I'd never skied before. I'm not particularly coordinated. Because I'd never been before, I didn't quite know what to look for in ski boots, and chose boots that were a little bit tight, and then teamed them with thick socks. On the first morning, standing waiting for the level one class to start, I was in so much pain I couldn't breathe properly. I kept asking my sister, "it really hurts, is this normal", and she'd say, "yes! everyone's boots hurt". Everyone is constantly on the verge of tears? Yes, apparantly. In the first half-hour of my two-hour lesson, my feet gradually went numb, and then I didn't feel anything for two hours, which is kinda scary. At the end of the lesson, I went and sat down in the cafeteria (we were at Smiggins), and took my boots off, then had to go through the pain of the worst pins and needles I've had in a long time. Needless to say, I bailed out of skiing for the rest of the day.

Day two, after getting new, wonderfully comfortable boots, we went to Perisher. As the lessons are not included in the $80 lift passes, my sisters decided thatI'd be fine and they'd take me around the slopes. This was a mistake. There's a new eight-seater chair-lift at Perisher, and I'd never been on a chair-lift at all, and this one has a barrier, and then a magic carpet to struggle through. I fell down at the bottom (and was lifted quickly by a whole bunch of people), then I fell off at the top as well. No, not on the slope where normal people fall, but on the actual platform, so that I had to prostrate myself on the floor so that the chair could pass over my head and the other eight people ski off. So, after that, we then tackled the moutain (bear in mind I'd had almost no experience). I fell down so many times I slid down more of the run than I skiied. My sisters are good skiiers, but they aren't instructors. The one time I got a bit of confidence and went a little bit fast, I was fanging along a long, straight section, and skiied straight into an unmarked puddle, went flying and almost landed head first into another puddle. This was before attempting the t-bar, which noone told me not to sit down on. I sat down. And fell off. Two metres from the start. It was only the thought of the humilation I'd feel catching the chairlift back down the mountain that kept me going. So I fell down it instead. I was half-convinced that I was in a large-scale Truman Show-esque conspiracy to make me believe that people actually enjoyed skiing. I lost count of the number of times I fell once it went over ten. I could not believe how anyone could have fun. I had trouble falling asleep cause I kept picturing myself falling and would tense up my body.

After this, I had to take two days off to recover, since I couldn't walk up or down stairs, and was having diffiulties doing things like drying my hair and tying shoelaces. Fortunately we were had six full days, so I still had two more days to learn to like skiing. And, to my astonishment, I did. I'm not any good at it, and I have sore hands from gripping my stocks way too tight from tension, but I kinda liked it. The lessons from appropriately spunky ski instructors helped, and I'm never going to be a speed demon, but I can go fully sick on the old snow plough turns, and only fell once on each of the last two days, and they weren't bad falls. It also helped that my older sister, who is a particularly good skiier, decided to try snowboarding on the last day, so I was suddenly miss champion skiier, while she was Crappy McCrapp. Now I just have to wait for the bruises and welts on my legs to heal.