January 3, 2007

Happy New Year.

I taught another lesson on New Year’s Day. It was a longer day, but I still spent a lot of time hanging out in the penthouse suite. I taught a group of six ranging from near beginner to advanced. The lesson went very well. The snow conditions were perfect, a couple inches of fresh snow to soften things up and slow things down, perfect for teaching. I felt like I was getting some breakthroughs for almost everyone. I felt pretty good about my ability to find useful pointers, give good demos, and maneuver around. I was spinning and skiing backward, keeping an eye on my widely varying and wandering students. After some good runs on easier terrain, we went back to mid-mountain to try the run we had done the evening before. We figured it would be fun for everyone to see what they had skied in the dark Everyone seemed to be having fun and making progress until the last third. The drop-off along one edge of the relatively easy trail freaked out one of the students. We had to traverse a long way back and forth to get to a point she was ready to ski again. Everyone was ready for lunch by that point so we went back to the penthouse.

After lunch, only one of the advanced skiers wanted to go back out with me, a college age boyfriend to one of the daughters. We were able to ski more advanced terrain and it was fun for me. I kept waiting for him to get tired as it was getting dark and my pork roast was already in the oven at home. I even tried pushing him on a few runs, skiing long challenging stretches until my legs were burning, hoping that my efficiency advantage would overcome his age advantage. It turned out to be a draw. I was having fun anyway, but I finally called last run as we were finally limited to only lighted runs and it was getting really cold.

As we dropped into an expert trail with huge moguls, I was trying to get him to widen out his turns. The deep troughs between moguls makes less experienced skiers try to cut the corner which gets them sucked into the tough and causes them to fall. I demonstrated a couple of wide, slow, sliding turns. As I slid around a trough, my ski hooked on a stick that was poking out through the snow a couple of inches. I got tossed over the next bump. The back sides of the bumps are nearly vertical so I quickly began sliding. With my feet above me, I couldn’t use my skis to arrest the slide and I crashed into the next bump. It was a little terrifying sliding on something that steep, but it was a nice soft stop. It was probably the worst fall I have ever taken in a lesson. It was embarrassing, but at least my student was able to locate the offending stick, verifying that I hadn’t just tripped over an imaginary snow snake.

As we finished the lesson, I was left with an awkward issue. I hadn’t been paid for the day, although I couldn’t really complain about how much I made for the weekend. I wasn’t really looking forward to going up to the suite holding out my hand and asking for money. When we got back to the hotel, I was relieved to see the skis of several group members still in the rack. These needed to be taken in for the evening so I grabbed two pairs and we hauled the skis up to the suite. My normal patrons were not there. The father and the butler had succumbed to the effects of New Year’s celebrations and were sleeping. The mother took charge, but had to scrounge for cash. Some of the kids emptied their pockets and I walked out with another $1070 in miscellaneous bills. If I could just get more of these lessons, I could quit my day job.

I came home and we enjoyed our pork roast with saurkraut and dumplings, our traditional first dinner of the year.

We got more snow today. It was so bad, we were sent home from work early. I think we got at least a foot of new snow. It is now going to be cold for the next few days, highs in the mid teens, maybe. The snow is so deep, even here in Anchorage. The snow is stacked up on the handrail on our deck. It looks like almost two feet of snow stacked on a 2X4. It looks more like a wall than a railing. I am loving it.