Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th January
Well, I managed to publish one photo on Sunday, the wonderful view from our balcony. You can't see them in my photo, because the light wasn't right, but we are right opposite the two half pipes; from our balcony, we can watch the snow boarders doing acrobatics. I may try another balcony photo in the morning light and see what I can capture in different light. Since it seemed I could publish a photo or text, but not both, I'll try with two photos and almost no text, and see how that works. If it doesn't, I may have to do photos singly.
I did have my first day on the snow yesterday, and it began well. It was a wonderful blue sky day, in fact it was very hot. I started off, as usual, in the beginners' area, which in this case has two 'magic carpets' and a button lift, so you can get quite high up the hill, though they are rather badly planned; they are on opposite sides of the slope, with a shuffle up the hill between the top of one and the bottom of the next. Anyway, I was able to practise my turns, and seemed to be able to remember what to do; all the walking across the slope was rather tiring, so we bought lift tickets and went high up the hill in the Télécabine - the gondola. Then I skied all the way down and felt quite pleased with my progress. After lunch, we went up slightly higher, but for some reason I was struck with fear and found things quite difficult. I fell over in an extremely steep place, and found myself lying in the cold very wet snow. I'd taken off my anorak since it was so hot, so it was a very wet experience, not to mention quite a slidy procedure getting upright again. I did the rest of the long slope with no difficulty, but my legs were very shaky and my shirt was very wet, so we went home.
On Tuesday, we decided it would be better for me to concentrate on getting my turns right so as to avoid any more lying down in the snow; also, my leg muscles were aching, so I felt it would be better not to tax them too much. The day was even hotter, so we have left off the thermals, and today I wore a fleece rather than my anorak and was still too hot. I only skied in the morning, as my muscles are protesting quite a bit. Of course, we only started in the gym again when we got back from Sicily in October, and my last gym visit was at the end of November before we went to Manchester and I got bronchitis. Now I am both fat and unfit - no wonder my poor body objects! Also, my turns were not as good as they were yesterday, and I found it difficult to get my edges in and my turns are no longer parallel. I have no idea why my skills sometimes seem to go backwards!
I had a nice relaxing afternoon and Paul went off to find all the scary black runs. The wonderful thing about this apartment is the view, it is truly beautiful and is even more so at the moment because the sky is so blue and the light is so wonderful, so there's a lot of pleasure in just sitting and looking. With it being so hot, the snow isn't great, but it's not like spring snow just yet. I miss the lovely crisp powdery snow in Colorado. What we need is a really nice big dump of snow - preferably at night when we are snug indoors!
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