27 February, 2008

Skiing - Tuesday

Today I learned how to turn. An important skill, without which you can't do very much. In the morning lesson we did that with some snow ploughing. What I really needed to work on is keeping my weight forward. I'm still in the habit of leaning backwards when I want to slow down, which doesn't work. So I spent the afternoon practising that. What I've managed to do is get pretty good at both for a beginner. In the lesson I was terrible, and then I started tucking the poles underneath my arms like a professional, and that forced me to lean forward. As long as I then pushed my weight on to my toes everything made sense and worked. I still fell over once, and lost control a few times, but as I now knew what I was supposed to do it was possible get myself out of it without injury to me or the people I came close to hitting.

As for lunch, I went and had that with a group of South Africans. One of the girls in the beginners course I'm in was part of the group so I invited myself along. Tomorrow I'm hoping to go up with some of them to the harder spots, depending on how I go in training. It's all making sense, and as long as it stays that way I should be right. As I have been skiing all day my muscles are a little sore now. The thigh muscle in particular is sore as that is what has been holding (or trying to) hold the skis in place.

As for those people thinking of skiing, you need to have confidence in your ability. Not over-confidence. One of the guys at work has a theory. If you enjoy riding a bike down a hill quickly, without using the brakes unless you have to, then you will like skiing. I enjoy doing that, and I enjoy skiing. Apparently he's asked about 10 people and it's been proven right so far.

Anyway, still no photos. I'm confident I won't fall over tomorrow, so I will be taking my camera with me and getting some shots. It'll probably snow for the next few days and there won't be any decent shots possible, but we'll see.

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