Ski New Mexico 1

Halle, Arden, and I took ski lessons the first day we were there.  Arden got the hang of it faster than Halle and me.  The instructor took her down the practice slope (which is pretty steep) within the first hour.  She was able to do this with a harness.  Ok.  Let me rephrase that.  She was able to ski down the steep slope with the harness and her instructor.  Brian tried this with her a few days later and they both snow plowed.  It's harder than it looks to control the reins of a wild animal.


Halle and I had two days of instruction.  We had short skis to begin with so that we could get the feel of skiing before having to bother with long bulky skis.  The problem with the short skis, though, is that they are heavier.  With me not being accustomed to the high altitude, just having run a marathon two days before, and the heavy skis, I pretty much sucked.  I was not confident in my abilities.  I could manage on the baby slope, but once we got to the practice hill I was terrified.  I started out strong and confident, but that quickly faded.  I started going easy but then got up to a high speed and couldn't stop!  My heart was racing because I was going downhill fast and I didn't know how to stop.  I had not yet learned how to fall or pizza-wedge my skis.  And there were a lot of people at the bottom.  I was a bowling ball bound to hit one of those pins.  The unlucky one, a guy in our class, was close to the bottom, and entered in my line of descent.  He had just stood up after falling over.  Poor dude didn't know what was coming.  I rammed full-speed into him, knocking the wind out of him.  We both fell hard.  It was bad.  All of our skis went flying.  And he was pissed!  I apologized profusely, but he still glared at me because I hurt his leg.  At least I didn't take out a kid, right?  ;)

one of my bruises from the fall