Ski Sunday

Remember Ski Sunday?* Well, we had our very own Ski Sunday yesterday.

Yesterday, on our fourth attempt, we managed make it to the Whakapapa skifield on Mount Ruapehu, New Zealand's most active volacano. Our previous attempts have been scuppered by adverse weather conditions, virulent viruses and landslides. When we got up early yesterday morning we were half expecting to hear news reports that Ruapehu had erupted during the night. Fortunately, the mountain was still intact and there wasn't even a hint of black cloud rising from it. We decided it was probably saving the show for when we got there. The road north out of Wanganui was still closed due to landslides, so we had to take the long route to get there, and the journey took three hours instead of the usual two.

Iain had never skied before, and although I had it didn't really count. It was during a trip to France with some school friends at the age of 17. Everyone else could ski, so they went on up the mountain and left me on the kiddies' slope for three hours. I probably only managed about three minutes upright.

Yesterday Iain and I had a two-hour lesson to introduce us to the basics. It was great fun, but I was a bit alarmed when our instructor said we'd finish the lesson by skiing all the way down to the bottom of the slope. It was about twenty times as far as we'd skied so far and at least three times as steep. We all fell over several times on the way down, but amazingly no-one got injured.

Over the course of the day our skiing superhero personae** revealed themselves. They are Random Flailing Man and Abject Terror Woman. It struck me that we approached the challenge of learning to ski the way we approach life in general. I'm overly cautious, overly analytical, and need time to recover after a knock. Iain's less timid, more relaxed and gets up again straight after a fall. Guess who made better progress with skiing?

There was one after-effect of skiing that we weren't prepared for. The smelly feet. After spending five hours in plastic boots that had previously been worn by hundreds of other people, our feet stank. I've washed my socks three times so far and they still smell. I'm seriously thinking of throwing them away.

We took some photos of our skiing adventure with a single use camera, and we'll post some as soon as we get them developed.

Helen

*I bet you'll have the theme tune playing in your head for days.
** The Burton crowd will know what we're on about!