Chapter 52: Cold Weather and Hot Water

Monday, January 7, 1985

The hotel provided a free continental breakfast with the option to upgrade to a full buffet breakfast. We opted for the buffet. Loading up on carbs might give us a boost now, but we’d pay for it later.

Once we’d finished, we got our gear and headed to the designated meeting place for the group lesson. Everyone in our group had a maroon armband showing us to be part of the Aggie contingent, so it was pretty easy to find ‘our people’ waiting.

They split us up into groups of eight. All four of us stayed together. A quick conversation established the others (Ben, Tracy, Colin, and Amber) were freshmen. Like us (though Angie and Paige didn’t make a point of it), they were two couples.

Our instructor, Colleen, was a twenty-something looking woman who seemed as comfortable on the snow as I would expect an instructor to be.

The first thing she taught us was something none of us had even thought about — sunscreen. Good ski conditions are often clear and sunny. Sunlight reflects very well off snow. People tend to burn, and a bad sunburn can make your whole vacation miserable.

She had some and made sure we put it on, covering all exposed skin.

Once we were adequately protected, she made sure we could put on our skis and — perhaps even more important — get them off again. If your ski gets stuck somehow, knowing how to quickly release your boot from the ski is important!

Prepared and ready, we got out on the snow and made our way (somewhat laboriously) to an area which didn’t even count as a ‘bunny slope.’ There was more elevation at our church in Houston than here, and a sharper incline!

The important things to learn right now were balance, weight transfer, and (in a repeat from ice skating for me) how to stop — which included how to fall safely.

Snow itself was forgiving ... most of the time. Many other things — trees, rocks, other skiers, and so forth — were far less forgiving. So was burying a ski into the snow, where it could drag and injure your foot or leg.

The ideal fall was on your side. Second-best was landing on your butt or your back. Going head over heels was very much not recommended. It increased the chances of back and neck injuries, plus your skis tended to dig into the snow.

In every case, she strongly warned us against trying to catch ourselves with our hands or arms. That’s how you broke hands, wrists, and arms. Similarly, digging one’s skis into the snow created a risk of knee and leg injuries. ‘Relax, don’t fight it, and let yourself fall as naturally as possible’ was easy advice to give, but likely hard advice to follow in the moment. Still, it was very good advice.

She praised us for renting helmets and strongly encouraged the other four to do likewise. Apparently, concussions were a daily occurrence and often ruined someone’s whole trip. As a concussion veteran, I could agree. Angie, another concussion veteran, nodded right along. Her skull fracture was long since healed, but might always leave her just a little more vulnerable to further injury.

Quite a lot of the early part of the intro was a pep talk, but of an odd sort. Her point was: no one ever learns to ski without falling, and anyone who skis well has fallen dozens of times. Falling is part of the sport. It will happen. If you’re not falling very much, you’re probably playing it too safe.

That doesn’t mean to jump in headfirst, just to keep pushing yourself. Don’t just stick to the bunny slopes. Go a little faster, a little harder. Try things. Push it just a bit.

We worked on balance after a few practice falls. There’s an art to balance. Too far forward, and you go head over heels. Too far back, and you fall on your back (and maybe dig your skis in as you do it). Get off-center and you fall on your side (often wise, as long as you don’t stick a ski and twist your leg). Since the angle of the slope is likely to vary, and since you’ll change your own position when turning, you need to constantly be transferring your weight and rebalancing. Staying flexible is key.

Ski poles were as important for balance as they were for actually touching the snow — perhaps more important. She worked with us to show us how best to hold them and use them. That would take a lot of practice, but so would everything.

Stopping was, apparently, not the most straightforward subject. The discussion felt eerily familiar from ice skating. The proper technique shared some similarities, too, both physically and in needing to have basic control before you could really make it work.

Colleen first taught us the ‘snowplow,’ where one made a ‘V’ out of their skis (with the point aimed downslope). That stopped you, but it wasn’t good at higher speeds or if the snow wasn’t well manicured. Crossing your skis was also a risk, and that was bad (shades of ‘Ghostbusters’, fortunately a safe joke to make today).

In a conspiratorial tone, she told us that she wasn’t actually supposed to go beyond the snowplow, but she was, anyway. The second technique was basically to make a turn (which we would have to do anyway, of course), and dig the trailing edge of the ski in a little while keeping both skis parallel. That sort of side stop was a basic technique in ice skating’s ‘hockey stop,’ so the idea came naturally to me. Doing it might not!

Jas wound up being the first to actually ‘ski’ down a ‘slope.’ Sure, the slope was only a few feet high and very gentle, but she managed the whole thing successfully, even stopping. Ben and Tracy did not. Angie did, and Paige very nearly did but fell on the stop. I was next, and got the stop mostly right. Colin and Amber, perhaps learning from our mistakes, both made wobbly but triumphant trips.

We repeated the whole thing several times until everyone was comfortable.

It hadn’t felt all that long, but by the time we’d finished it was already twelve-thirty. Colleen sent us back for lunch and told us she’d see us at one-thirty.

We sat with the others over lunch. Ben and Tracy turned out to be business majors, so we would probably see them later. We got into a long discussion about what classes we’d avoided as part of explaining why we hadn’t crossed paths before. Colin was an electrical engineering major, while Amber was in elementary education.

None of them seemed to recognize Angie or Paige’s names. That hardly surprised me. They were ‘celebrities’ within a very small subset of the campus population. Most people probably had never heard about either Memorial Prom, after all.

Angie and Paige downplayed things just a bit, too. No overt kisses or anything, just the occasional hug, which would have been in character for the platonic sort of ‘girlfriends.’ Indeed, Amber used that word in saying several of her ‘girlfriends’ were along on this trip.

Lunch was chili (the kind with beans, which I preferred, but Ben, Colin, and Tracy scoffed at as being ‘not real chili’ — though they ate plenty of it), cornbread, and salad. Everything but the salad was plenty warm, which really helped after being outside in the chilly air.

We hadn’t gotten that cold, really, which was a testament to how good our winter gear was. In fact, we all had to ditch a layer. With the temperature warming up, and likely a more physical afternoon, we’d overheat if we didn’t.

In the afternoon, we ‘graduated’ to the bunny slopes. They had several, and we weren’t on the easiest of the easy. That one was listed as being for children under six. I hoped we wouldn’t need to move over there!

With these we could build up some actual speed. We could also crash, and crash we did. Jas, going first again, got her weight too far behind her and wound up on her back. Ben avoided that by going right over his skis and face-planting. Tracy was the first to make it all the way to the end, a feat Collin almost repeated before falling in the last ten feet.

Amber repeated Tracy’s success, and then so did Paige. I went next, and became the first of the guys to stay upright the whole way. Angie made it, too.

According to Colleen, we’d done ‘quite well’ for complete amateurs.

The other thing we could practice was ski lifts. Not that these were real lifts — they weren’t. They were designed like a real lift, though. As we learned, getting off the lift without hurting yourself or anyone else, and without making a nuisance of yourself, is itself a skill.

We half slid, half trudged our way to and from the lift — moving around on skis is not easy for novices! — and tried it all again.

And again, and yet again.

By the time it was four-thirty, the sun was setting and we’d moved up to a slightly harder bunny slope, with everyone making it down safely.

We declared victory and headed to dinner.

Our little group split up at dinner, with promises to see each other in the morning. Before we separated, we exchanged room numbers here and phone numbers in College Station. They were all quite impressed to find out we lived in a house and not one of the dorms. All of them were in the Commons dorms (near the golf course and Chemistry). That’s where several of them had met.

After dinner, and after calling our parents and Cammie and updating them, we took advantage of something ski lodges (even motel-like ones) made a point of having: hot tubs. We were all sore from the exertion, which stressed muscles we didn’t use commonly, and soaking seemed like a good idea. Fortunately, we’d heeded the Mayrinks’ advice and brought our bathing suits. This wasn’t the Winterfords’ hot tub, after all!

Everyone changed into their bathing suits, put on robes (thankfully provided by the motel; they’d spent money where it mattered), and headed out to the hot tubs.

Surprisingly or not, they weren’t busy. Most people probably hadn’t been warned to bring suits. It’s not immediately obvious why you would want a bathing suit in Colorado in the winter, after all!

They weren’t empty, either, but I could have imagined them all being overwhelmed by college students. Thankfully not! We weren’t going to have to play ‘how many kids can you cram into a hot tub!’ Or, at least, we weren’t yet.

We wound up sharing a fairly large tub with two other couples. I guessed they were Aggies, and probably seniors, but I’m not an expert at telling how old someone is. They introduced themselves as Tony and Diane and Frank and Sharon. Ang and I immediately exchanged glances about that second couple’s names. Quite the coincidence, if likely meaningless.

Frank caught it and asked about it. Angie replied that her parents were named Frank and Sharon. Sharon, who seemed a bit tipsy, said it sounded like a good omen.

Angie agreed with them. What else was she going to say? It would’ve been pretty mean to say it was, in fact, a terrible omen, if it was an omen at all.