Me and two buddys went up to Vale Navada on Saturday to try out the slopes for the first time since the Best-Worst-Weekend-Ever a few weeks back and we were not disappointed. In the sun the temperature rose nearly to 65 degrees (that's my guess anyway) but the snow kept a constant fluffy powder all morning into the early afternoon.
Back on the East coast I'm what they call an "expert" skier (no need to be awed, I'll be signing autographs later), but that in no way translated into anything similar here in the powder. The mountains here have qualities very different from eastern slopes, consisting mainly of the lack of trees (and more altitude, and more size, and more awesomeness). In the North East skiers and boarders have to stay mostly on the groomed trails of the mountain, every now and again being allowed to drift into 'glades' trails between trees. Here there are no such restrictions. The main trails are so large that they are called 'roads' and what they call 'trails' are tiny (about the size of trails in the N.E.) connectors between roads. The rest of the mountain is free game.
One of the guys I went with - Lee (left) - would be considered far slower of a skier than me if we were to have a straight out battle down the slopes of, say, Attatash or Cranmore, but here he destroyed me. In fact, I started off trying to get my yah-yahs out by blasting down the main road and promptly caught an edge and yardsaled my ass all over my first run. That was embarrassing... Not only were my DINs way lower than I was used to, but without having skied regularly in four years I was similar to my 53 year old father deciding to commando roll out of a speeding boat because he had been good at it in his 20s in the military... it was a bad scene...Lee and Justin (the boarder of the group) pulled up, laughed, and as I rubbed the bruise out of my pride we set off for ungroomed trails.
Oh yea, I was talking about Lee being slower... anyway, once we got off the main road he pulled us high up and we skirted along the side of the mountain way above where other skiers regularly go. We followed this line for about five minutes before suddenly Lee decided to blast ahead and launch off a four foot ledge onto a nearly vertical slope. It looked pretty awesome. What I did, did not. I followed him, 'launched' (read: flopped) off the ledge, landed on the back of my skis which promptly popped off my boots and tumbled head over heels down the rest of the hill.
That is a pretty good sum up of the first half of my day.
Now don't get me wrong, I got better. Learning to ski on powder is actually far easier than learning to carve on hard-pack, so I caught on quickly. I never ceased to face plant myself up and down the mountain, but I did it with less regularity and in more diverse situations. No longer was I eating it only on the descents, I ate it on some of the ascents too! Actually by the end of the day I was bombing down the mountain, launching myself off ledges and landing it, and shooting my way down nearly vertical slopes without too much trouble... I just wish I had another day to show off, it took nearly seven hours for me to get good again, I'm sure after another seven I'd be jumping outta choppers.
**************
Wow... everyone in this house is a horrible singer.....
**************
So, there are a lot of words here that I don't think should have easily made their way into common usage. The one I'd like to focus on today is the little phrase "chiquitito." This cutesie sounding word sounds like it would be used to describe baby kittens (which would have to be young indeed to be baby kittens vs. regular ones) or something similarly melty-your-heartish. In fact, this word can be used to describe such things, but really it simply means 'small.' Against my initial assumption, it doesn't make a big bulky guy less manly to describe something as chiquitito while in Chile (used in Columbia will promptly have said muscle man abducted and held for ransom from the TelleTubbies). I went yesterday to buy this killer mid-size hiking pack and the dude in the store, when I described that I wanted something a little less hike-around-the-world-without-refillingish than my massive bag back home, he said "necesitas una mas chiquitito, si?"
I punched him in the face before I realized what he was talking about...
I just don't understand why something that sounds like what my mom would name one of our cats would make its way into regular vocabulary; especially in such a machismo society...
I guess it's just a mystery for another day.
Peace out, cub scouts.
No comments:
Post a Comment