Sports

2008 Class Ski Trip

Usually, I’m not kind of nervous and very excited at the same time, but now is one of those exceptions. The reason for that is that I am going skiing this week! On Wednesday, January 2, 2008, my class (all of 8 people, including our teacher) will be driving up to the Catamount ski area in Upper New York and Massachusetts (on the state border).

This year, I have a number of new pieces of ski apparel, listed as follows:

• Rossignol ski pants
• Under Armour ColdGear mock-neck
• Falke ski socks
• LL Bean 3-in-1 parka
• The North Face Thresher hydration pack (hopefully the one-half hour I spent washing it out got rind of the nasty chemical taste)

This trip is really supposed to be a snowboarding trip, where my classmates will learn to snowboard (possibly without professional instruction). However, I opted to continue skiing, for two reasons:

• Skiing is usually significantly cheaper.
• Since I already know how to ski, why waste a trip on trying something I might not like?

In conclusion, I have a strong feeling that this will be one of the best ski trips of my (very young) life, based on the current weather forecast and my experience with skiing.

Ski Trip 2007

After all these months of waiting, my school took us skiing last week (as I posted about earlier). It’s a little disappointing to say that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy myself, partly because of the lack of rest before hand. But at least I did go skiing, which I am very thankful for being able to do.

Interstate 80 (I-80 from now on) is a marvelous highway. It goes all the way from the George Washington Bridge (in New York / New Jersey) to California, and covers significant territory in between. I-80 also is one of the most common routes to the Pocono Mountains from New York. Fortunately, this super-highway was practically empty on Thursday morning, like it usually is at that time of day.

This trip was a bit different to me, because after I got dressed and picked up my gear for the day, I was able to hit the slopes right away (which is exactly what I did). I don’t know whether this particular set of steps was efficient or not, but either way it would have taken some time to get all ready:

1. Fill out rental form, pick up boots, and try them on.
2. Go down to changing room, change, come back up.
3. Get the rest of the gear.
4. Find a locker, take out and put away various things.
5. Hit the slopes!

I started off on Camelback’s Coolmoor beginner trail with a few warm-up runs, and then went over to The Birches and The Meadows. This was the majority of my excitement for the day, which included a few runs with my friends.

I learned a bit more about controlling speed, which is essential on any trail other than the bunny slopes. I figured out an inefficient but effective way to get absolute control over how fast I’m going. With this technique, one ski is at an angle, with the other ski pointing straight down the hill and positioned slightly behind the angled ski. With the application of pressure on the tilted ski, you directly control your speed, but if you want to go faster, the straight ski allows it to happen.

This trick helped me make it down trails in one piece, but it came with an at-first unexpected side effect. It takes a lot of effort to keep the downhill ski in position, most of which I concentrated on my right knee, and I ended up with a bit of aching in that leg as well as the knee for the rest of the day. Stupidly, I didn’t take a lesson this trip (anytime I saw a ski school instructor, they were working with someone, and when I managed to find any other employee, it was for something else), so I didn’t officially learn anything new. I still feel a bit depressed about this mistake.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was really out of it. I ate somewhat slowly, constantly sighing at my level of “wiped out-ness”. Skiing, with or without made up techniques, is really a tiring sport, using muscle groups one never knew existed. Add the adrenaline rushes (after just avoiding falls) to the mix, and you’ve got one exhausted skier.

I didn’t do a whole lot after lunch. I sat around in the lodge, talking with my principal, and staring at the nice scenery outside the windows. I did manage to make two or three more runs later on, but they were kind of bad. My knee was about to crumble (not literally), and I felt like I could fall asleep while watching the trees go by on The Meadows.

For dinner, my class set up for a barbecue in the farthest parking lot. We had hot dogs and burgers, with pickles and soda on the side. I did enjoy this, even with the finger-freezing winds present at the time. We ate the food basically straight of the grill, decreasing the total time it spent in cold air, and helping to make sure we were able to get back home on the van with the rest of the school (I think my principal would have left without us if I didn’t have the key to the van, which I had used earlier to get something).

After this trip, I really thanked myself for buying my Smith Universal Helmet Helper, which currently is a bit difficult to find. If it wasn’t for the five dollar piece of plastic that extends a goggle strap, my eyes would have been stressed out too.

Lessons for next trip: Do more, and stick with the group. For the former part of that statement, I mean that I want to try even more trails, and take a good lesson, and for the latter, I am saying that I should stay with my friends most of the time. But for any trip, the main goal is simple: Have fun!

Getting Hyped For Skiing

With my school’s annual ski trip coming up, I’m getting pretty excited. I am assuming that we are going back to Camelback Mountain, which got a halfpipe and a redesigned Web site this this year. I have all of my gear ready, and I’m eagerly awaiting the trip up on February 15.

My plans for the trip include taking the next step in learning to ski, covering more trails, covering harder trails, and skiing along with my friends (instead of going solo most of the time). I want to become proficient in skiing, and maybe these are the steps I need to take to get there.

Recently I have learned a little more about skiing in general, and also about skiing in the West. With my Backcountry.com shipment came a little notice about a sweepstakes for a Utah ski vacation, which I immediately entered. Stupidly, I forgot to check the box requesting to receive a vacation planner, so I had to request that separately. After reading the nicely formatted magazine, I learned that Utah has “The Greatest Snow On Earth®,” and more than 500 inches of it in recent years. I also found out that powder skiing is a widely appreciated sport; I think that corduroy (aka groomed) skiing is my best choice, especially for the relative beginner that I am.

Finally Have All Presents

Today marks the absolute completion of the present stream of the 2006 holiday season. Yesterday I received yet another fifty dollars; this will not be spent on anything immediately. I decided that I should end my spending spree, which took place upon today’s arrival of the Smith Helmet Helper that I had several troubles ordering (one store didn’t like my Amex Gift Card at all, and the one that did take it at first gave me a slight problem, but my order was fully processed the next night) and a keyboard extension cable (which the need for surfaced after the re-do of my room).

The helmet helper was pretty much what the stores say it is. It is a flap of rubber with plastic clips on the ends, and it replaces the buckle on Smith ski goggles while lengthening the strap to allow the goggles to better fit over a helmet. Installing it was a snap, and the pressure against my glasses (oh thank goodness for the OTG goggles I have) that I experienced without the helmet helper was non-existent. I am happy with the product itself, but I feel that the shipping charge ($7.02 for a $4.95 item) was a bit excessive, especially because it took over a week for Brown aka UPS to make it to my house.

The keyboard extension cable is just that - a cable with a PS/2 male and female connector on opposite ends. Not much to say; I just shut down my computer, connected the cable between the original keyboard cable and my computer, and viola, done. Now i don’t have totake my keyboard out of the drawer before closing it – a royal pain.

Who said the holidays ended in December? Not me. Especially when delivery companies take their lazy time.

Present Collection Almost Complete

The delivery of my iriver accessory kit today (Saturday; which surprises me, since I haven’t seen UPS deliver on Saturday before) marks yet another item on my present list for this holiday season. So far I have received or bought the following items with money I received:

• iriver Clix / U10 Accessory kit (includes a pretty decent silicon case, belt clip, neck strap that is really difficult to get on the case, arm band which I will never use and screen protectors with a good microfiber cloth)
• Carrera ski helmet (pretty comfortable, not shaped for my head but the insertable pads provides some compensation)
• Black Diamond gloves (not too light and not too heavy, and have good dexterity)
• Lowe Alpine goggle case (kind of tight for big goggles like my Smith Cariboo OTG)
• Smartwool Snow Rider socks (intended for snowboarders but should suffice for skiing too; one really thick pair of socks)
• About $135 in cash

For now I’m pretty happy with what I got. However, there are two more things on my wish list:

• Smith Universal Helmet Helper – lengthens a goggle’s strap by a few inches to fit comfortably over a helmet without stretching the strap or squeezing your eyes out :-P
• A simple USB wall charger that no store in NYC other than some schlock place on Fifth Avenue seems to carry

I’ll post again when my cache has been filled. Somehow it seems like it’s so difficult to get my hands on those little things.