Ski Update

I have been skiing a whole bunch. I had a good skate lesson monday with Nick. I can definitely feel the two of us developing a good rapport with one another. I badger him with all sorts of different ski related questions in between drills and instructions, and he makes me practice/learn how to do things I either don't like to do or don't do very well. Case in point: when descending steep slippery hills on tiny little skis, I tend to snowplow because it makes me nervous, and I don't want to crash. When I had my first lesson with Nick over two years ago, he pointed out that this was far from the fastest way to get down a hill. Monday we practiced getting down hills and around corners without using my favored technique. It's simple really. You just aim for the outside corner of the turn, lean over until you feel like you're about to fall over, and then step around the corner. The problem is that when you have to start leaning over you're going pretty fast, and so it's pretty easy to just fall over before executing the turn. That's what I did. I fell over a lot. But after about half a dozen crashes or so, I started to get the hang of it. We spent the remainder of the lesson going over my skate technique, and I'm really starting to get the hang of it. I'm just glad to be learning the right stuff from the beginning. There's nothing worse than developing a bad habit, repeating it a few thousand times, and then trying to change it. Next week we'll be focusing the lesson on classic skiing, so that'll be a nice change of pace. Lord knows I could use some help there as well. Last night Matt and I went out for nice classic ski at Chestnut. We both brought our headlamps, but the moon was bright enough that we didn't even have to turn them on. The track was rock solid, and we had a ball zipping around the golf course a couple of times. I've got a long (2 hr.) classic ski on tap for this afternoon, and then I think I'll fire up the sauna. Happy Tuesday.