Sydney Through The Eyes Of A Rockstar – Thredbo

I…. HATE….. Skiing. I hate it, I HATE it. How is it possible to loathe a sport that much, especially one where you see all these kids whizzing by and then you see serious senior citizens waltzing by and you think OK this can’t be that bad…

But it bloody…. freaking…. IS!!!

I suck, I  absolutely suck at skiing. On your absolute first lesson they expect you to be able to maneuver around all the little kids flitting about. And you are carrying ski poles and have these long Planks Of Death attached to your feet when you really need your feet for balance. Just putting on the restrictive ski boots to begin with left me claustrophobic. What if there is a fire and you need to flee for your life, do they seriously expect you to sit down and spend 5 minutes taking all your crap off?

Rockstar on the bus to the slope where they have the kiddie lessons (yeah he's quite serious about "learning" if it's something he decides he wants to learn.)

The worse part about my first ski attempt is I feel wayyy too old to be falling everywhere inelegantly. When the little kiddies topple, they look sooo adorable. When I do it I look like a loserr. My last spill is so mortifying (and public) the instructor clambers back up, unhooks my boots from the skis, then has me walk the short rest of the way down. When Kings asks if we can get him tomorrow (because we thought Rockstar might like the same teacher) he looks away and says he’s booked solid for the next 2 weeks. Looking at me, “Today was different, today was like a weird vacation day for me where I was free.”

Actually if he hadn’t tried to explain to me direct while kind of not then meeting my eye, when Kings was the one chatting with him because I was still too busy trying not to die with my skis, I would’ve been more inclined to believe it has absolutely nothing to do with me sucking to the point of possibly embarrassing an instructor. But I will never know for sure.

I spend the early part of the evening self-consciously having Giant Pity Party That Shows How Full Of It I Can Be while Kings goes for a massage (which he says is super) after lugging all our bags up several flights of stairs when we checked out of the Mosman apartment. Rockstar of course spends the evening wanting a second ski lesson.

Round two.

Get over yourself, Aileen. So what if your ski instructor really did give up on you/ was embarrassed at your ridiculous flopping about/ whatever. If you did not suck you would not need lessons. In the meantime the people who laugh can go to hell. Scr*w them. You will never see them again. In fact those who laugh probably have too much ego to try and learn the ski/ snowboard equivalent of whatever is hard for them.

So. Snowboard lesson.

“Those boots are sick.” It’s one of the guys at the board-rentals. He means my DSquareds. For the record, they’re excellent. (I also sprayed a whole can of waterproofing over them just in case, but well they held out considering we had a lot of rainy weather, not say, soft powdery snow.) The guy at the board-rentals is…. Extremely kind. I tell him I’m terrified- first snowboard lesson you already take the ski lift up and come down the steeper slope. (Apparently for snowboard they always do this here.)

I have never been on a ski lift in my life.

I have never been on a ski slope in my life.

I have never been strapped on a snowboard in my life. I’m not sure I’ve even seen one that closely before.

And I am no spring chicken to be trying this now in front of all these people.

View from ski lift

I’m not really scared of falling in the snow and I’m not afraid of heights but I had a serious fear of collisions with the ski poles and Planks of Death and many people are whizzing down at what looks like warp speed – that includes lotsa kids. Anyone collide with my Rockstar I would take their head off. Skis and poles flitting around me as I flounder helplessly/ skid off out of control are seriously frightening to me. Yeah these people are in control of their skis and boards – but I’m not.

Yesterday when I put on ski boots for the first time my throat closed up with serious claustrophobic-ish reaction to having my feet strapped down tightly into heavy clunky boots that are seriously so hard to walk in you might want to tackle stairs sideways like a crab. That was before we even put the skis on them.

“Please warn your instructor I really suck,” I tell the girl doing the booking. “And she should keep me away from most other people, especially children. Oh, and please give me a girl instructor.” Because I expect to cling to her for dear life, or possibly in some other way totally humiliate myself like throw up in the snow and for some reason I would prefer to throw up in front of a girl. Whatever makes me try harder. So in this case a girl is going to make me push myself harder. Because I won’t be as afraid of pushing myself til I throw up if it comes too it (it  doesn’t tho, but still this is what was going on in my head).

Happy Family Pic

I fall maybe 25 times today. Seriously. Definitely more than 20. But maybe not 30. I fall like, 8 times, coming down the steep slope you have to access with a ski lift. I fall (kind of) getting off the ski lift on my board. I fall when I don’t want to hit anyone else especially all the kids and simply can’t stop in time. I fall because my board slides before I can get my boot out of it (and goes right into a neatly lined up kiddie class, clattering into their skis and gently bumping one child- their instructor is loud, “If you don’t know how to stop, then fall!” No sweat, I’m good at that. Had she been Rockstar’s instructor I would’ve wanted her to take the head off the idiot sliding into her children. I just wish my own instructor would help me get the hell out of there faster though.

The kids all stare at me wordlessly for what feels like an eternity of minutes as I flail about struggling to get up. In case you’re wondering, no one helps you up unless you are a child, because you have to learn to do it yourself. And it is exhausting to get up while your feet are strapped to the board on the slippery snow.)

Oh, and I also fall into the hole next to the conveyor belt transporting skiers and boarders about on flatter slopes.

The only other embarrassing spill I note (because we always think our own situation is the worst right) is by a guy who boards head-on into the conveyer belt. One of staff wearing the resort colors remarks “That was embarrassing.” (Which is how the idea I might have embarrassed my previous instructor got reinforced.)

Then I fall, I fall, and then I fall some more.

But then I don’t care. I don’t give a freak.

Rare pic of me not falling

At some point I wanted to prove to myself I hadn’t gotten so old I couldn’t still swallow my ego and look really stupid trying to do something I know to be completely out of my comfort zone. And I realize how that last is a bit oxymoronic.

The next morning I wake with trepidation. Like when you don’t get up immediately from a bad fall and gingerly see what hurts.

It……. hurts a lot less than I expected. Though my right hand is swollen, with one finger about double its original size. Couldn’t type for about a day but that was it.

Ps: On Day 3 I still fell a lot but now I love snowboarding!

Me n my snowboarding instructor... Who is now also my Facebook Friend!

(It turns out Rockstar takes to being instructed in skis quite well – he can maneuver, turn and stop by his second lesson. Others keep asking how old he is. We are surprisingly and extremely proud – but I have to also remind myself it’s probably partly cos a lot of Caucasians think he’s younger than he is and even when we tell them his real age he still surpasses their expectations because visually they just find him very small and cute. But there is that he did far better than I or Kings’ first attempts.)

As for the Board-rentals Guy, I wish I’d caught his name. When I went back the next day I didn’t see his mustache anywhere. It probably wasn’t a big deal to him, those few kind words before my first time on the snowboard – but it was a big deal to me. Just another reminder how important little acts of kindness that cost us nothing can be. If I ever see that mustache again, I’m buying it a drink in Hong Kong.