First Tracks

Whoever came up with the idea of letting employees try the First Tracks program for free deserves some sort of award. I got there just on time, and we got up the mountain when it was still dark. It was cloudy too and some complained that they wouldn’t see anything with goggles on. It was not snowing when we started skiing but did towards the end of our five or so runs. We split into two groups: Mine had about a dozen to fifteen skiers. They included people from all departments, like Marketing and Human Resources. We only skied on groomed trails with about an inch of fresh powdered snow to make them deliciously smooth to glide on. It felt completely different from how those same runs feel later in the day when everything is tracked out and crowded. A few people commented on how quiet and peaceful it was. By 9 AM, when we finished up and I rushed to work, we were all elated and pumped up to give the best work performance of our lives.

I needed that good mood. It was storming very hard when I stood at my flag and only got more violently stormy all day long, until at the end we ate biting icy snow on the chairlift. Because Alexis, a girl I had yesterday on Reds, came back today, I was assigned to teach Yellows. She was enthusiastic and happy to be back with me, and tried to teach the other kids what she had learned. I was the only one assigned to teach Yellows. I had seven kids today, and I kept all seven of them all day. I had to go inside two or three times to settle administrative problems until I got my whole group checked in: some of the kids didn’t have report cards. Three of them were the three from yesterday that only spoke Spanish. I do not speak Spanish. That was a challenge. The ski school refused to split the groups because they didn’t want to pay for another instructor’s time, but they offered to find a Spanish-speaking instructor to replace me for the afternoon. I seriously considered it but eventually said I would handle it. I had an instructor assistant named Augusto help me for about an hour and a half in the morning to translate and help get them the High Meadow chairlift and down that slope the first time. The three were actually pretty decent skiers already but that first run was a mess because they kept trying to sneak off down the hill while two of my other kids, Alexis and a new boy named Benjamin, kept falling and having serious trouble getting down the green slope. It could have been catastrophic without Augusto’s assistance.

The kids were all cold and whiny after that run, so I took them inside for hot chocolate maybe forty minutes before lunchtime. We couldn’t go into the lunchroom then so we spent a lot of time hunting a table, and after we finally did I carried the hot chocolate for them up three flights of stairs. They argued with each other in Spanish and English, neither group having much idea what the other was saying. They only warmed up and finished their chocolate a few minutes before lunchtime so I took them down to the lunchroom rather than trying to get them into their gear and outside again. At lunch between the seven of them they somehow managed to lose two right gloves, a hat, a pair of skis, and spill about three cups of hot chocolate. We ended up staying inside off the slopes for literally hours today looking around for gear, then giving up and settling on compromises like stealing a mitten from the lost and found. It was frustrating and by the time all of them were gathered up in gear we only had one more run down High Meadow before I thought it would be prudent to pack it in for the day. I rather bring them back ten minutes early than late.

Checking out was easier than yesterday; parents came more prepared with their tags and the kids who couldn’t understand a word I said still waited in a safe area, but I had to collect most of the skis and put them back in the shack that stores them. It still took a long time until I had all of them checked out. All of my kids (or their parents) said they would return tomorrow and asked if I’d be their instructor again. It was scheduled as my day off so I said I could promise nothing, but I harassed and annoyed all my supervisors until they consented to let me work so I could keep teaching my class. I like Alexis’s mother. For one thing, she’s so pretty that whenever I see her I smile warmly; she must think I’m nice or friendly. I don’t think she skis because she wears shoes on the mountain, but she was very protective of her girl and kept braving the cold to try to see her during the day, to bring her warmer mittens or check up on her. She really wanted Alexis to keep skiing with me and said if only she could afford it, she’d be happy to buy her a private lesson with me to ensure that. They miraculously found Alexis’s lost mitten in the lunchroom, where a kid was sitting on it. Chances are he’d been sitting on it the entire day.

The gondola line was even longer and denser today than ever before. Even the single's line had a big line running up to it. Emma, one of the lifties, was standing out there visibly freezing in just the inner soft-shell of her uniform, directing people and trying to be extra cheeky to keep them in good humor. "Anyone looking for a date? Singles line right here! If you're single and want a date, this is the singles line!" She told me her outer coat was soaked through, which is why she was shivering there with a soft-shell and ice in her hair. My coat was also soaked through but I kept it in my locker and took out the inner parts of my ski boots to dry them overnight at home.

At the end of the ski day the buses that came were all half an hour late, and already packed tightly with so many people that they had trouble breathing by the time they showed up to our stop. I gave up trying to squeeze into the first one at 5:30 and waited a little less than an hour in the blizzard before I got on one. Some of my less quick liftie friends waited longer. The people waiting displayed many amusing real-life examples of Game Theory. For example, when someone thought that they heard a bus, everyone went and stood in the snow outside the roofed bus stop. If they’d all stayed in the stop they would all have been warmer and drier but nobody trusted the others not to push ahead of them - and some actually stood in the middle of the street when the bus approached. Some rushed forth to bodily block the bus doors, firmly refusing to move to let people off so they could get in. People can be so stupid. I tried to act as a traffic cop and pull some of them back to at least let people disembark, but as soon as they did those same fools swarmed in one mass to shove and elbow on board.

I remembered tonight that now that I’m in America I can use Pandora again, so I played with that and listened to music all evening.