Age gap

It was another sunny day; the weather reports say this should go on for a while. I wore my jacket, sunglasses, and sunscreen, but I should have just worn my vest. Just because I mentioned yesterday that we didn't need it, we had a check-in counter outside today. I was there early (didn't want to miss the safety meeting) and set up the heavy tent and table. It's actually pretty busy this weekend. I was assigned first position on Greens even though the kids I had yesterday didn’t return. Whoever did check-in this morning did a good job assigning levels, because all of my kids had skied blue runs before, and were in a good position to learn more advanced things than wedge turns.

I had a big age difference today: I started with three girls, aged 7-13. I was happy to get the 13-year-old and 11-year-old girls to start with because they seemed to know what they were doing. We can often judge in a few seconds what kind of student we have by how well they handle just balancing standing still, how they carry their skis and put them on, things like that. Both of them could match their skis at the end of the turn before the end of the day. I always like the older kids because they tend to pick up complex things more quickly, and cooperate well. I don’t know what people have against teenagers: all they want is respect.

The 7-year-old was in the Cats program last year and her parents proudly said she had skied most blue runs and was familiar with the resort. She struggled to move around on the flats so I thought she’d slow us down, but I eventually captured her attention for long enough to teach her sidestepping. With all of the kids in fact my main task was getting some conversation going, opening lines of communication and trust so to speak. Everything after that was easy, because they were already skilled skiers. I even remembered their names quickly. The little girl Sabrina had a good solid wedge that she didn’t want to try leaving, but she got more sociable and excited as the day went on and we went to harder runs, so the age difference wasn’t really a problem. Maybe I neglected the 13-year-old Madison a little because she was easily the best skier. She’s coming for a private lesson tomorrow so I’ve asked her parents to mention my name so I could teach her.

After a run or two I picked up an 8-year-old boy at the shuttle stop. He was slower than the others so I spent a couple of runs fixing his stance (his skis were too wide) but they all paid attention pretty well and I quickly got them moving at the same pace. Maybe the younger ones just needed a run or two to warm up. This week I have always had really well-behaved kids... Either that or I’m doing something right. It’s a lot easier and more fun for me to teach kids like this. I haven’t gotten any tips, but I’m fine with that tradeoff.

Whenever we went through “Spongebob Forest” we played a game where everyone packs a snowball and throws it at one of the characters as we ski by. (There are a bunch of signs in the shape of characters from a TV show affixed to the trees, which gives the trail its nickname.)

We got up Saddleback well before lunchtime and they had no problems skiing the blue runs there, so we spent most of the day on blues. The snow was nice and soft too. The last time I took them down Kokopelli I took them off piste “in search of adventure” and the younger two crashed a few times in the deeper snow but they all had fun. At the end of the day they insisted on going up there for a last run instead of doing High Meadow, and I thought we could do it without being too late. Of course we got stuck on the chairlift. They preferred Kokopelli but I thought we could get down Snowdancer faster. With two falls, we still made it down the whole run within 15 minutes!

After work I went to buy a backpack and ended up with a $6 laundry bag that may save me five times that much in shipping costs or overweight luggage fees. I plan to stuff the heaviest items that I have in there and take it as carry-on luggage on the flights back. I always have the same cashier at the Wal-Mart (somehow her line is always empty) and she reminded me to use my reusable bag. I gave her a very generous tip because she’s really very good and helpful. I hope this might give me back some good tip karma.