[chaz longue]

LisaMc46 -

I taught skiing 30 days a year for 19 years. I'm as certain of this as anything I learned during the time I taught: It's much more fun, and many many times faster, to have a non family member teach you (or anybody else) to ski. It's also not easy to understand why you'd even want to ski - if you don't ski: To a non skier it looks like it's all about thrills and speed - particularly if you watch kids ski. But there are a lot of things to enjoy about skiing which have little to do with the kind of thrills people on sleds (to cite an example of something which is essentially about the thrill of moving quickly) experience.

One of my favorite assignments was always the non skiing spouse who'd come for a lesson or two, very reluctant and a little grumpy about the whole idea. Often he or she had been taken to the top of the practice slope and told "it's easy...TURN!" by a spouse, only to end up walking down in tears. The fact is that people who can ski simply can't remember how they do it, and can't remember what it's like to be unable to ski. But there are skills which can be learned on flat ground, before using a lift, which make it easy to learn. In a couple of hours, a good instructor can show a non skier how to glide in a wedge, make turns (at walking speed!), and stop at will - and the result is often a big laugh of relief and a "wow...that is so cool...I had no idea!". Then the fun starts, because over the next few days, the instructor can begin to show the new skier around, and that's part of the fun - because just around the bend on any beginner trail, is a new little view, another fork in the road, and a chance to get better at making turns.

I had a family who I used to teach. The father came to me and took lessons for season after season. He asked me to teach his kids, who became ski instructors, and in the case of one daughter, a ski racer. We'd be skiing along and occasionally we'd come across a couple, struggling with trying to teach and learn. My friend would say something like: "Hey - There's a D.I.P. ("divorce in progress")...you've got your uniform on... let's go have a little chat..." We'd ski over and politely jaw a bit, acting like we were clueless and hadn't seeen them squabbling... and if they seemed to recover sufficiently, I'd offer a pointer, show them how to put a ski on the easy way, rather than the way people instinctively try to do it...even suggest they take another try after a break...on the practice slope, not on the trial they were on...

My friend really enjoyed skiing, and I felt lucky to have found him. He worked hard, travelling internationally for business, seldome getting a break. Every once and a while he'd say "You know what I love about this? I haven't though of work once today!".

One Autumn he showed up and we got on the chair lift for the first time and I asked how his Summer was. He asked if I could keep a secret. After which he said he'd put a group of 4 people together to buy the resort. Which they did. Sadly, my friend died shortly after he and his friends bought the resort. He never got a chance to see the changes he'd envisioned made.

Lisa, you say you'd love to ski with your kids, but you're just too chicken to learn, and you feel like you're too old. Nonsense! I ski with a group of retired folks, most of whom are decades older than I (I'm 53) And why wait until next year when it's Winter? Why not do it now, while it's warm? If you said you didn't care to ski, I'd let the opportunity pass. But life's too short!