To most of the people that know me, they understand that I am ... not the most graceful of people. I fall down a lot, trip over things, drop things, and am generally a bit of a klutz. Put me then, on two long strips of wood, on a snowy mountainside, holding onto two sticks and trembling with fear and we only have a recipe for disaster. I am of course, talking about skiing. I was lucky enough, for Christmas, to be given a ski day pass by the family here, as "You can't come to Canada in winter and not going skiing at least once".
I was feeling both excited and terrified (Terracited as I have since dubbed it) as we were driven up the mountain in a creaky, yellow, old school bus. I put on my boots, strapped into my skis and started to walk/waddle the way I had been shown by a friend who came along too. Five minutes later I had not moved forward an inch having just performed the ski edition of the running man. Ten minutes later, I was on my butt in the snow, unable to get up. It was then decided that perhaps I needed an actual lesson, to avoid me spending the day sitting in the snow outside the lodge.
To give the instructor credit he was very patient with me, lifting me up countless times when I would fall over. He taught me how to form a 'pizza' with my skis so in theory I could slide slowly down the slope. He showed me how to hold on to the pulley to be pulled up the mountain and after about an hour I was skiing by myself and had gotten slightly more comfortable.
Then he decided to take me up the T-Bar to a higher and steeper slope. Then everything went wrong again. As it turns out I have immense trouble actually steering myself, also going slowly. I ended up hurtling straight down the mountain, at speeds which were probably not considered safe for the bunny hill. The instructor screaming "Pizza! Pizza!" All the way down. Usually I would be happy to hear anything about pizza, only when faced with trying to stop without causing serious injury, I had to put my thoughts of food on hold and try to figure out a way to stop before I actually hit a child or something. I finally did this by just falling on my butt again. He picked me up and we tried again, only this time I couldn't right my skis and ended up going the whole way down the slope backwards. Strangely enough this was my best run of the day, I didn't fall over once and even managed to stop myself correctly. I can only assume that I just do things better in reverse. When I asked him if it was okay to do things backwards from now on I just got a big laugh in return. My guess is, it's not okay.
Safe to say skiing does not come naturally to me at all. I was later told that "They say you aren't doing it right or trying hard enough, if you aren't falling down a lot." Which made me feel a lot better. Shame it couldn't do much about the five year old's skiing circles around me all day though.
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