Parallel Ski Universe

I never thought I could be a good skier. My feet turned in when I was a child, my doctor diagnosed me as pigeon-toed, and my grandfather was a shoe salesman who was able to accommodate the diagnosis. He customized heavy corrective shoes in the shop at the back of his store that were designed to point me straight ahead.

The doctor said that walking on the beach would also be good for me and I got to do that once a year. My teacher once remarked that I looked like I was falling apart when I ran. Well, if I didn’t have grace at least I had speed. A little toe-in can be of some advantage to a sprinter. Some girls take ballet for the malady, but the dance school that I walked by everyday on the way to the school bus stop remained an exotic mystery to me behind a dark store façade. I knew of no one who took dance lessons. That sort of thing took place in the fictional world of books and TV.

Real progress on my bird gait began to be made once I started looking at my feet as I walked. It became a life habit. Was that girl walking across campus deep in thought? No, just looking at her feet. Or maybe she was deep in thought. Thoughts can come to you when you’re looking at your feet.

The shoes were usually a dark maroonish red. Today they would be something funky out of AbbaDabba’s but back then I pleaded again and again for shiny white, pink or black, pointy-toed shoes with little heels. I tried to show my mom how well I could walk in them while they were still attached to each other in the store.

One magical day in adolescence I did get cheap little patent plastic shoes and my feet marched relatively straight. Still, it was with some misgiving, decades later, that I tried to ski when we moved to the Northwest. If I put on skis and my feet turned in, then by the time the angle extended to the end of the skis they would be crossing each other. Every picture that I had seen of skiers showed the skis in parallel lines. I didn’t know if my body could handle the geometry.

I found that it wasn’t so hard after all to keep the skis in a straight line, but the only way I was able to stop was to fall over. Then I took a lesson. You’re supposed to point the ends of your skis together in the snowplow or pizza wedge. That’s how you control your speed and stop. I was a natural!

Before the lesson my shins would throb with pain. The bunny hill lift operator said it came with the territory. I took two short runs and had to rest on the snow. It was difficult to find a comfortable position. I sat down and leaned way back propping my skis in the snow in a crisscross fashion to take some of the tension off my boots and shins. Soon someone came by to ask me if I was alright. The position I was in was the international sign for distress. Again, a natural!

At the beginning of my first lesson which was attended by me and two little kids, I asked how I could stand comfortably and not have my boots hurt so much. The trick is to not stand up straight but lean forward in your boot. The instructors asked us if we had our pants legs tucked inside our boots. That would be a bad thing, creating uncomfortable friction between the leg and the boot. I leaned over to pull the pants up out of one boot while the instructor helped the kids adjust theirs. Another instructor bent down to adjust my boot straps while the first instructor, finished with the kids, started working on my other pants leg. There they were, two men bowing at my feet, one on the left and one on the right. (That hadn’t happened since my nurse and my husband put my socks on after my surgery). The instructor to the left must have seen the leg stubble because he stopped, looked up and said that I was probably old enough to do that myself. Later that day, on my own, as I was swishing back and forth, finishing a run, I caught the eye of the stubble instructor. “You’re doing very well,” he said. I fell over.

At the second and third lesson I learned that you are supposed to advance to where you can point your skies in a straight line, in a parallel arrangement, even while making turns. Next year I am going to snowboard. The alignment of the feet is predetermined.

Posted by cindy at July 4, 2006 05:50 PM

Comments

Nice, ver' nice.

Posted by: Calamity Jane at July 5, 2006 08:04 AM

hehehe I giggled like a school girl at this one.

Posted by: Jeremy at July 10, 2006 09:21 PM

haha hee, Great Pictures, You look like a semi-pro :-)

Posted by: bibah at July 28, 2006 03:29 PM