First ski of the year

Skiing has some similarities to playing the violin. It's really easy to do it badly. And, when you do it just right, it feels so amazingly good that you are instantly hooked. You're desperate for the next fix, so you struggle and try and spend and go to all sorts of lengths in search for that perfect instant.

Today was the first ski of the year for the Real Doctor and myself. California has had a series of cold, wet storms blow through, and last night it was cold enough that it snowed down to 3,000 ft in elevation. 7,000 feet up at Donner Pass, where we ski, there was eight feet of snow and the morning temperature was in the teens. We got to the ski area around 10 in the morning, and the temperature was about 25 degrees--absolutely perfect. "Blue wax" conditions like these are rare in California, where klister is the rule for most of the season, so it was a struggle to avoid the irrational exuberance that is normal for the first ski of the year. I am only a little sore.

As they say, if you can walk, you can ski. However, you'll ski very badly. Skiing well is nothing like walking, and my muscles have been forgetting all about how to ski for the last 8 months. So most of the day was spent just trying to remember...hip forward...open up like so...weight over there, then over there...don't look at your skis, look at the trees!...and so on.