Friends from home

I had a cup of coffee in the Red Pine Lodge this morning. They only charge us exactly $1 for that, which is less than half of the price for guests. I had my spare pair of goggles but I "borrowed" a pair from the lost-and-found to try them out too.

I was second position on Blues as expected but I had a change of heart and decided to leave my kids from yesterday on Green. Even though they’d be with another instructor, I believed my first instinct was right and that was a better class for them. I’d only considered Blue because there were already two instructors assigned on Green by the time I got back yesterday with the pole I rescued.

Jonathan took my three kids today, but I think they may have liked me more. When I asked thirteen-year-old Kevin in front of Jonathan if I was more fun, he said he didn’t want to answer that. There were only three blue kids today, two of them Iain’s returns - so I got no work. There was also a lot of confusion in who should be on which level to get their returns, and several instructors simply swapped colors around between themselves.

I waited around for nearly 45 minutes with nothing to do, before being released. At the same time, 9:45AM a park clinic was leaving, taught by Chris from Australia who also coached my four-day new hire training. I really wanted to borrow a helmet and go to that (I keep forgetting my own helmet at home.) However, my mother’s friend Rinat and her boyfriend called when I was in line-up. I went down to meet them as soon as I was released so I could get them discounted lift tickets.

I met them at the rental shop and gave them eight of my ten half-price vouchers for the four days they wanted to ski here. Rinat also had a package of clothing sent to me from home. I left that and my work jacket in my locker, and went up hoping to still catch some of the park clinic. When I showed up at the rough Alicia said I should check in with the private lessons supervisor, to see if they could use me there in the afternoon. So I had to go back down the gondola to get my coat again. Going up and down that hill so many times I was beginning to feel like Sisyphus!

I just waited around inside the rough to kill the couple of hours until I had to line up for the privates. I watched rental guys and assistants play a board game and munched goldfish crackers until Alicia said I should go get some food from the children’s lunchroom. Everybody knew I wasn’t supposed to be there and Chris who runs the Cats program now asked me not to let the kitchen staff know I wasn’t working on Cats... but I explained Alicia had told me to grab a bite. I was frustrated about wasting my whole morning and wasn’t going to refuse a free lunch.

The coach Chris returned from his park clinic to take an afternoon lesson and I was told they didn’t need me. I was also informed that the south side of the resort had better weather than the cold winds where I was, that coated everybody’s front with ice so we couldn’t see through our goggles. I went back to the rough to change coats again for free ski and I picked up Pablo, an 18-year-old instructor assistant from the southern tip of Chile.

We skied one nice run down 9990 through the cloud that wreathed its peak, and then skied our way over to Dreamcatcher where it was bright and sunny. We did several enjoyable moguls and tree runs this afternoon. Pablo is fast but doesn’t know how to ski moguls as well as me. He preferred to follow me, but said, “Where have you taken me?” by the third steep bumpy forest I led him into. We also found the place below Illusion trail where the snow ramps up into a big wall you can jump off, and onto a steep runoff.

I waited for a group of snowboarders to clear the area, and took the jump so high that I landed with weight on my heels at the very end of the runoff, which turned out to be hardpacked today. I skied off it and up another rise after it with the momentum, looking back and saying, “I thought that was powder!” While I gestured and turned, I caught a ski in the deep snow there and crashed in a comical manner. “I found it!” I exclaimed, pointing down at the snow I fell in. Pablo said I was crazy and he reported that when I jumped one of the snowboarders moved his head, gaping in awe, to follow the arc of my flight. He was happy that I’d finally fallen (even if it wasn’t from the jump) because he’d crashed in the powder a few times and complained his pants were freezing. We both wanted to do that again so we followed the same path and hit that jump a second time, but neither of us fell then. He needed to be back at 3:00PM so we had to rush through Cascade and up the lifts to Icewinder (or Slidewinder) to get him back about 10 minutes late. That’s “on time” for him.

I started heading down when the classes started coming back in. I skied down Silverado and I overbalanced up the hill on a long turn, while trying to remember the words to a song in Hebrew, so I fell down on my left cheek in uniform. At lunchtime I had stuffed the inside pocket of my unform jacket with chips. That helps my skiing: if I keep my upper body strong, don’t flex so much that my knees touch my chest, and don’t crash into my front in uniform, then I don’t crush the chips into crumbs. The chips were mostly unharmed.