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Published: February 2nd 2009
Learning to snowplough
Maria (foreground), Mark (in orange), Chris (stationery) and Marie (heading downslope), along with our instructor Chris (blue jacket)Doesn't time fly? Can't believe it's 9 days since I last posted... although to be fair, it's been mostly skiing which I'm sure you'd get bored of very quickly if I were to update daily!
As you know, after a week of Ed pushing us hard and skiing us all over the mountain, I took the opportunity to take last Friday off and mooch around. The relaxing effects of the day were slightly destroyed by going out that evening, drinking far too many vodka Red Bulls and Jaeger Bombs, mincing around the dancefloor at Maxx Fish (local nightclub) and then not being able to sleep until 9.30am on Saturday due to the exceptionally high caffeine intake!! Saturday was, as you might imagine, a bit of a write off... So it was just as well that Em and Fez suggested we skip meeting late on Saturday night when they arrived and get together on Sunday morning instead. Although that was after I decided to go to the cinema to keep myself awake - saw Slumdog Millionaire which was a really good film, beautifully shot and with a great soundtrack. The Bollywood moment at the end was a little odd, but I
Thursday at Merlins
Makes the Fernie ski shot look a little silly... won't spoil that for you! Sunday was a day of not much rest as I showed Em and Fez selected bits of the hills. We even did the Peak 2 Peak which was a first for me (despite almost 3 weeks in resort!).
Unfortunately I missed a day of school this week - my cold come back with a vengeance on Monday (now nearly gone thankfully), and then I got a phone call from home with some very sad news about grandma. Whilst the news wasn't entirely unexpected, it was fairly sudden and made me feel a very long way away from my family. Thank goodness for skype video calling!
This week we've been
training hard with our latest instructor, Chris. Not much skiing has been done (which has been frustrating at times), but lots of information about the teaching of skiing, and lots of practice of snowploughs! This is all in preparation for our level 1 course which starts (gulp!) tomorrow... I really don't feel at all ready for it, despite all the cramming from the manual. Apparently I should be fine on the teaching side, but elements of my skiing could be marginal... So I'm really going
It's snowing!
And I'm sitting in my bed watching through the window to have to pull it out of the bag if I'm going to pass. Everybody keep their fingers crossed please :-) Comedy moment from school this week was provided by me I'm afraid... had a small injury to my knee so was trying to remove my second ski in some fairly powdery snow. Was having difficulty so classmate Chris came to my rescue, only to release me from it just as I was leant so far forwards that I ended up faceplanting in the snow, to the great amusement of everyone else... No harm done - actually would have liked to see it myself!
Also this week my second visitor arrived! Dave got here late on Thursday night to find me fairly well stuck into apres ski... Well it was the end of school for the week! Friday witnessed my second orientation tour of the mountain for his benefit and an unfortunate incident with black ice on the way home from dinner... It had been raining during the afternoon and the temperature suddenly dropped which meant that the entire village was turned into a death trap. The whole population were sliding around like kids on ice and no sign
of the gritters. Walking home, I heard a thump-thud from behind me... turned round to find Dave flat on his back on the pavement - his feet had come out from under him and he'd landed on his backside and cracked his head on the concrete. Not a good start to his holiday. So the rest of the weekend's skiing has been a little curtailed for Dave due to a combination of sore back and neck and variable snow conditions. At least it started snowing yesterday so we should hopefully have good groomed conditions for the start of the course tomorrow, and for Em and Fez's last few days here.
Off to see the Fire and Ice show tonight (something else I haven't done in the last 3 and a half weeks!) and may actually manage to meet up with Alison finally. I've even met one of her classmates on the lift randomly, but not managed to see her!
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Avi
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Surrey Ski
Maybe the bright side for Dave is that given the current snow->slush->ice he probably would've achieved the same injury at home, so at least he's on his arse somewhere exotic. The snow here has brought a ski resort feeling to Surrey, complete with strangers stopping to chat as they slide past each other on the pavements (on Monday at least - it was back to grumpy normal on Tuesday). Am going to set up a ski resort here. All I need is a length of rope to haul people up to the top of the Downs, some small boys to do the hauling, then I can rake the cash in...