Days of Joy

There are days on the snow, where everything just isn't what it should be. The group class is too big or too mixed. Your private lessons are just expensive baby-sitting jobs. Etc. Then there are days where everything goes so perfectly it's hard to believe.

This past week had one of those perfect days. The day started off with snow falling overnight, down into the valley floor. At some point the snow level rose, make the valley floor super slush filled. Driving in at 5:30am isn't typically a busy time, but this particular day there were plenty of other drivers heading up to the mountains for first tracks. The point of mentioning this is several times during the drive up, the slush took over driving, sending many cars (mine included) into new directions.

At role call, we received word that one of our regional DCLs was on hand for a morning clinic by surprise. Most of us were excited, until we received first calls for classes. Starting from 8am I had two classes back to back which would have me working longer than the DCL clinic was scheduled to last.

Surprisingly though those two classes were a lot of fun. The first, a 7-year old girl, was picking up everything very quickly. By the end of an hour, she had learned to turn well enough to look like a future Super-G racer. So we went up the chair and came down the racing flags, and she rocked it. The next class, a young girl who was skilled in her skiing just not confident in it. Up the chair, and we worked on building her confidence on the runs. I saw her out on the slopes for the rest of the day.

After those two classes I was given a break and told to go get to the upper mountain chair as they were about to open up. Running in to pick up my regular skis, the scheduler looked over and said "go eat now, you're busy the rest of the day". The next class turned out to be a double session with a husband and wife.

The interesting thing about this class, both were former Olympic hopefuls for Poland in skiing. After discovering this tidbit, I had to ask why they were there for lessons and immediately began questioning what I could add to their abilities. Turns out they haven't been skiing in about 10 years due to a rebuilt knee, and they really just wanted to have someone help them learn how the equipment changes altered styles. We spent the next few hours playing in the steeps, trying to break the habit of the tucked knee. Not only did we have a good time, I learned several old tricks for encouraging skiing behaviors.

After that I had a back to back with a former student of mine from my brief instructing session of last season. He's back this season doing some blue squares, and ready to learn how to be more dynamic in his parallel. This brought us back up on the slopes in the fun areas to play and work in.