19 March - Of Snow & Boots

What we learnt skiing… Well, for a start that we are flexible. I knew that, but there’s a huge satisfaction in not having to do any of those pre-ski courses to get your knees to not buckle under you and to know that if you fall, you will stretch but not break. Much more useful would be to try some suffocating exercises so you know what it will feel like at 3300m or rather, up there it feels fantastic, but when you come down you're practically dead beat.

I also learnt not to be better than my man. A lesson my mother has been preaching for years,but what do you expect, I’ve ignored her. Having reached this age still w/o a longterm partner, I’ve decided to bow down to her olde worlde ways and so pretended to be less able than I actually am on the slopes, so that he wouldn’t have a bruised ego.
It worked. Apart from the time I said I’d go and fetch the camera we left with ski-lift operator and which necessitated a 'go back up and come down again' expedition. This had taken us considerable time on first descent as I waited for my man to come down what was for him a too steep piste (they lie to you in the mountains, they may be blue runs in places, but every first 400 yards is a bloody red one at high altitudes). So before I went off on my own I told him that it would take me a while to come back down and to chill. Of course I came down much faster and was considering repeating the trip up again but he’d been waiting for me at the bottom of the piste and I couldn’t just leave him. My bright green kermit jacket identified me too clearly. I did mumble something about how surprising it was to find my legs again and come down faster and he sweetly (I think) appreciated more my self imposed restraints of earlier.

The best part of skiing of course is taking the ski boots off and being welcomed by the softness of moon boots. Maybe this is an easy way to explain S&M to all those who’ve never tried it. The pain part is not so much pain, it’s anticipation of the pleasure of it ending. And like everything it gets easier so you need more extreme thrills. To give you an example, on your first day inside ski boots you feel like your feet have been crushed and mangled and you walk like a clunky robots. As of the second day you’re walking about like it’s normal and all your toes are wiggling and you could practically skip about. You still look at the snowboarders with their softer gear with some envy. They have it easy. No S&M for them, party people that they are. Dope smokers by and large. But you know that for them the pain is all in the butt. Those falls they take, are all crushing their bottom bones. Nothing specially delightful about that pain.
Anyway, it was too short. Bring on Chile in the Summer or next year's season. The landscape in the Alps is the best there is and as I worked out a while back, why go skiing in January/Feb when your breath freezes when you can be much more comfortable in March/April when it's not a tragedy to lose your hat or gloves?