I did, in fact, survive my ski lesson on Saturday.
We left Fort Collins for Copper Mountain around 5:30a – all five of us snuggled cozily into one car. By 9am I had my lift ticket and was on my way up a lift with Lia for one “couple” run before my actual lesson. That run went about as you’d expect – I snowplowed my way down the entire thing and fell down a lot. This was, for the record, my fourth ever time on a ski slope (and that goes back to Junior High).
It took me an hour to make it down that one green run ( Woodwinds/WW Traverse/Easy Feelin’ off of the High Point lift, for those who care), just in time to drop in for the start of the lesson.
Since I knew how to use the lift and snowplow, that got me moved up one group in the skill levels, so we started right off hitting the lift and learning about parallel turning at the top of a run (Roundabout from the Kokomo lift).
A lot of the body motion in skiing is a foreign idea to me and speed scares me when I don’t have anything even remotely resembling brakes. That said, I survived, made it to the bottom and by the 2nd and 3rd run down that little green slope I was doing ok – no falls!
Before lunch the instructor took us up to some “steeper” (finger-quotes there for the “real” skiers amongst us) terrain (Roundabout from the Lumberjack lift). When we got off the lift it was snowing and blowing pretty decently. “Steeper” means you go faster and going faster means I forgot all the lessons I’d learned about turning in the previous three hours so I crashed. A lot. My legs were done by the time I got to the bottom around 1:30p.
I met back up with everyone else for lunch and two of us called it quits – my legs were not holding me up, and Lee’d taken a good rib-bruiser crash – so we schlepped our gear back to the car, changed into sensible shoes and went back to the bottom of the slope where some Bloody Marys were on the menu.
By this point the snow that’d been flitting in and out throughout the morning had decided it was there to stay, so the rest of the group finally called “done” at 3:30.
I pretty much slept the entire ride home – including dinner at the Dillon Dam Brewery.
My calves and thighs have just about forgiven me by today, but I’ve got a really whopping bone bruise on my interior ankle bone on one foot from the rental ski boots. Hurts.
I’ll do it again – mostly because Lia skis and I enjoy spending time with Lia – but “again” is going to wait until after my eye surgery next month.