My new skiiing buddy

Me and the fam went up to Tahoe for our first ever solo, non-London family holiday. It was Karam’s spring break and there was NO way we were going to make it through the whole week lounging around the house without any sort of out of town excursion. My main objective was getting the boy Karam up onto the slopes for the first time — I see this as another step in investing in a future best buddy. And an investment is one euphamism for it. Another way of describing it is $300+ dollars for:

• Two 2.5 hour ski lessons @ Squaw
• Ski rentals
• Helmet rentals
• Mittens (one of which he lost during his first lesson, plus he DESPISED them anyway because they’re frickin mittens and he knows he’s not a cat or something)
• North Face gloves (see above)
• Goggles
• Two frog dogs at the end of each day (fantastic invention by the french where you take a nice, crusty baguette, hollow out the middle bready bit using something that looks like an iron stake, then squirt some ketchup and mustard inside the hollowed out cavern before tossing the dog in)

Karam woke up at 7am sharp the first day, 15 minutes before the alarm was set to go off, and I knew right away that he must be excited. (He’s usually the last one up in our house on weekday mornings.) His first words? “Skiing!” We jumped out of bed, got dressed, wolfed down some Cheerios (he had a non-fat chocolate pudding also), and got into Squaw at 8:30am. He and his little crew of “Level 1″ skiiers hit the slopes at 9:45am. He did pretty well in getting his skis on, hopping around, and practicing his pizza wedges. He even did alright on his first couple runs down the slope after taking the “magic carpet” up the hill. I left around 10:45am to give him some space and not have me watching him the whole time, but by the time I came back at 11:45am, all hell had broken loose. He was crying, cold, hungry, frustrated, I’d forgotten his sunblock and he was ready to go home. I’ve never seen him fall apart so badly! He munched down frog dog #1 in the car and that helped a lot, but he pretty much cried all the way home about why I’d bought him mittens in the first place, how the chin strap on the helmet scratched his chin all day, how his goggles were falling down his face all day, how they only gave him juice and n food at snack time, etc etc. And he was SO sick of hearing about doing a “pizza” which means a wedge stop while coming down the hill. He was cute though, and he badly wanted to like skiing because he knew how much I wanted him to ski with me.

Day 1 of Skiing:

He took the next day off, slept in, I made everyone a big breakfast and we hit the hot tub and skipped rocks into the lake and had snowball fights and watched Iron Man on DVD. At the end of the day I asked him if he wanted to take another lesson the next day, and he agonized over it before saying he would do it. But he added, “I’m not too fussed if you want to skip it, Daddy.” Again, my little selfless boy trying to make me happy.

I woke him up the next morning (no self-initiated early wake up this time) and in his drowsy, mostly asleep state his first words were: “My arm is hurting. I can’t ski without my arms.” I eventually woke him up and tried to give him a pep talk about not quiting, how everything in life gets easier if you keep practicing and working at it, how I was SO rubbish at skiing when I was little (a *slight* fib in that I didn’t ski til 19) and now I’m really good (another slight fib, some might say), and how if he really hates it today he won’t have to go back again.

By the grace of god, he ended up making HUGE leaps and bounds on this second day. His pizza stance was solid, he was leaning forward at the right times, and he was much more confident and giving me thumbs ups as he cruised down the hill. I was so happy and proud of him for persevering. At the end of day, as we munched on our frog dogs on the way home, he was shocked to find out that we were driving home to SF later that day and he couldn’t come back the next day to ski. He was upset, but I was thrilled to bits inside, knowing that he’d caught the fever for skiing. By next season, we’ll be on the sloped together!