Snow Bunny, Part II

Hoping that I learned something from my last venture into snow sports, I went with the family again to the snow this weekend. Following my daughter's sage advice, I decided to strap a board to each foot this time, rather than just one board shared between the two.

And boy, did it work out better! (I told you she was wise.)

I must say, the technological advances in skiing since I last tried this are quite amazing and worthwhile. Step-in bindings are worth their weight in gold, and although the boots are a hassle to put on, they are much more comfortable.

Amazingly, after something like three decades away, I put on the skis and headed out to the hill, and it was as if I'd never left: I picked up right where I'd left off. Which is not to say I was any good at it, but my skills (and flaws) were almost exactly as they had been when I was a teenager.

But I did have to tell my wife, as we paused midway down our first scoot down the bunny hill (we were shadowing our daughter's lesson), that I'd already had more fun in the first few minutes that day than I had in the whole day of snowboarding lessons.

After a couple of hours of messing around, I took a two-hour private lesson with a really terrific teacher. She listened to what I wanted, and within mere minutes had corrected my worst flaws, and suddenly I was parallel skiing. Just that easy. We spent the rest of the time doing some drills and little refinements, but truly, within just a few minutes, I went from sloppy snowplowing to fairly competent parallel skiing. It was great! I suppose if I'd been able to make that leap as a kid, I might have kept skiing all along.

Anyway, it was great fun, and not nearly as hard on my body as being repeatedly slammed by the snowboard. I guess I'm just Old School.