Skiing

Just got back from a long weekend skiing in Chamonix with the boys from the office. First time I’ve tried skiing, rather than snowboarding. Took about a day to pick it up to the point where it started to be fun and by the end of day three I was having a great time with it, I suspect partly because snow conditions were better suited to skis. Of course there will be an element of “one day to learn, a lifetime to perfect”, but it’s nice to feel I’ve got the option in future. Hopefully, the laissez faire attitude to technique that I picked up from snowboarding will mean that I don’t have to get too tedious about proximity to texbook perfection at any given level and instead the plan is simply to continue to enjoy myself on either skis or board, depending upon conditions and/or inclination on any given day/trip.

Labels: diary, snowboarding, sport

Snowboarding

Having got that out of my system, I do have some better news. I made further progress with my vertigo (or whatever it is) while on my recent ski–trip to Austria. On the first day, I rode a short, exposed open chairlift three times and a long, high covered chairlift twice. On the second day I rode a long open chairlift at a different resort six times. I had to steel myself a bit to get on the first lift on day one (and employed one round of EFT* to assist), but after a bit of initial apprehension quickly got into my stride. Had no problems at all riding the enclosed gondola lifts. This represents improvement on last year and major progress from three years ago, when I could not physically bring myself to get onto a chairlift (I wonder now whether that was a bad reaction to the hypnosis which I undertook following a bout of nerves when riding a lift in 2002?). I am very pleased with myself.

* as taught to me by Alistair Horscroft

Labels: diary, personal, snowboarding