Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
 . It reminds me of the time, mid-'70's, when one afternoon sitting around the fireplace in the main lodge after a day of teaching, one of the guests who had been my student that morning said to another around the fire while pointing at me ; "Oh to have the life of a young ski instructor. Play on skis all day, party all night, only to do it all over again the next day..."
If only he knew... we struggle to keep awake to see the 7pm news because we'd been running 30K that day on skinny skis, shouting at our students "Bend your kness, Jack, or you'll fall dow..... See what I mean. Ya gotta bend em if you want some balan..... Sheila! It will work much better if you shift your weight onto your left leg BEFORE you try to pick up your right foot... Bill, try not to plant your pole between your legs when you want to turn.. Jack, your knees, Jack, your knees... (Is this lesson EVER going to end?) Sheila, trees are NOT to be used as brakes... Yes, I know they are convenient and usually around, but not always.... Jack... Your knees, Jack! (God, I wish I had time for a cigarette...) Sheila... Sheila... SHEILA... OK.. WE'LL MEET YOU AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL!!!"
Stitchawl |
or the pint sized rockets that do the tuck, line their skis up parallel, point down hill and SHOOT! down the hill! I can't get that close to the ground to build up that much momentum on the bunny slope!!! quite often I got stuck with the 11-15 year old crowd, because for whatever reason I am more tolerant of adolescents. HOWEVER! whining and crying 14 year olds laid out on the snow that refuse to try to get up on their own, and outweigh me (and I am NOT tiny!) really chap my hide! being a human shield for terrified adult skiers (both male and female) that cannot or will not stop, turn, slow down, etc. even after you have spent DAYS on the flats going over and over and over the whole routine! and my personal favorite heart stopping moment... I had a semi private lesson with 2 10 year olds who were best friends. it was a night lesson, started at 7, ended at 9. we were in week 5 or 6 out of 9 weeks, the boys had been progressing nicely, and other than random snowball fights, wrestling matches on the snow, and so on, they really were not too bad to work with. when I had started them, I had an assistant to ride the lift with us, but as they were doing really well, I usually let them ride together and I would take the chair behind them unless I wanted to go over some fine tuning with them. well.... one night, the quieter of the two boys started squirming in his chair right before the end of the lift. all of a sudden he just dropped from the chair, RIGHT BEFORE the dismount ramp. the lift operator stopped the lift and ran out of the hut around to the pile of snow he had landed in. his buddy was squirming around and I was scared to death that he was ready to drop as well. I was so torn between dropping myself to tend to him and keeping my head! I did stay on the lift.
when I got to the top and skied around to check on him he was absolutely fine and had no explanation whatsoever as to why he did that. talk about heart in throat!
I just not too recently (3 years ago) did the full time thing on the mountain. that was weird! I had grown kids of my own, but my co-workers and in some cases bosses were the same age and younger than my children
but I kept up!
