Skiing Lessons? Why?

Well, how about because YOU DON'T KNOW HOW!

It was grade 11 and we were at Worsley. Not a big hill, not a difficult hill. Now, Veronica was skiing black diamond (showoff! ;)). Sandra and I -- We even had to dig through the lost and found to find some mismatched gloves. Why we decided skiing was a good idea, I have no idea, but we did. There was sure a lot of good lookin guys there though. That could have had something to do with it.

So, we suit up -- Like I said, we found some mismatched gloves, I had my penguin ear muffs and Sandra had a black face toque and looked like she was about ready to hold up a liquor store. Eventually I told her to roll it up inside the top. Our teacher asked us if we wanted lessons and being as neither of us had ever downhill skied before we decided that would be a good idea. He pointed us in the direction of the bunny hill and off we went... Carrying these heavy skis, wearing these bulky heavy boots, trudging through 3 feet of snow. We got about 10 feet and realized the T-bar was much closer and we decided to wing it.

So we snap on our skis and head toward the t-bar. The guy there gave us a quick talk about how to use it and up the hill we went... we didn't have too much trouble this time, but we'll talk about that later! We got to the top and slipped ourselves off the T-bar almost like pros. We watched everyone in front of us do it and it looked, and proved to be, easy enough. When we got to the top of hill and were getting ready to go down along came a teacher (I think it was Dave Shannon but I am not 100% sure) and he gave us a quick lesson on snow plowing. This was not fast enough for me. Sandra was more than happy to snow plow the entire trip. I on the other hand needed more speed. So I decided to head down the hill and kept the advice of our teacher in mind if I wanted to stop and wait for Sandra. "If you want to stop or slow down, just turn around. You can't ski up-hill." Well, that made all the sense in the world, didn't it? Well, I get to a fairly flat area and decide I want to wait for Sandra and let her know that she didn't need to go so slow. I try to turn around and all the happened was I turned... SHARP... TO THE RIGHT... INTO THE SNOW BANK. Well, now there is about 3 feet of snow on top of my skis, and my bindings turned out to be set on the wrong setting. I couldn't just snap out of them like a beginner should be able to. I was stuck. SERIOUSLY STUCK, and I couldn't even see who was coming down the hill. Surely Sandra would help me get out of the snow bank, but I couldn't see to call her to let her know I was in here!

Well, along comes another teacher who stops and says "How you doin' Vic? Pretty good I see..." and off he goes. Yup, I'm great. I will just sit here and try to get outta the snow... then I hear it! The uncontrollable laughter of my best friend. Some stinkin help she was! She ended up sitting down in the middle of the ski hill and laughing until she cried, yup, at me stuck in the snow. She could not contain herself and the worst part was I couldn't even SEE her! Well, once she almost composed herself she popped off her skis and headed over to see if she could help me. Whew... cause I thought I was a gonner when all I could hear is her laughing. Yep, once she got over to me and realized I wasn't on my knees and that the snow really was that deep and I was stuck worse than she thought... she started laughing again, this time taking me with her. I bet we sat there and laughed for a good 15 minutes (this was not out of the ordinary for us). We were still laughing when that same teacher came sliding along the hill again and stopped to check to see if we were OK, for a second time, which means he had time to go the rest of the way down the hill, back up the T-bar and back down to where we were...

Well, Sandra dug me out and we were back in business. This time I slowed it down a little and taught myself to stop so that I could wander ahead and still be able to stop and wait for Sandra who believed (and probably rightly so) that snowplowing was the right thing to do. Well, we made it down the hill about 4 or 5 times that way and we were getting pretty good... So, onto the T-bar we go and ....... about half way up the trail ....... Sandra falls off! For no apparent reason. This makes the bar unstable and I fall off the other side. So into hysterics we go. There are all kind of people basically skiing right over us and there is nothing we can do about because we can't stop laughing. Oh and there go that couple of cuties! right over top of us, how embarassing! So we get ahold of ourselves and crawl off the T-bar trail and wiggle through a fence and get onto a trail that we have never seen before and we pop on our left skis and then our... errrr... my right ski. For some reason Sandra can't get her ski on. So these cute guys go whipping by us and wave... and holy moly they were cute and we got side tracked. So again she tries for her right ski. No luck. "Will you just look at my ski and see what is wrong..." So I inspect the ski, because I would know if there was something wrong?? "I dunno Sandra, doesn't seem to be anything wrong here." And again the cuties go by... waving again... and we get side tracked again... and start talking about them and how maybe we can find them when we get to the bottom of the hill... and Sandra tries again with her ski... and CAN NOT get the dang thing to snap in... so I decide to watch and see what she is doing wrong... my face to the ground, I am watching her foot as the cuties go sliding by again... again we wave, they wave, we giggle and they disappear around the corner. Oh, the priorities of teenaged girls huh? Well, now she is getting angry and I am finding it funny (which usually wasn't a good mix either way, with us) and she still can't get ski on. AGAIN, here come the cuties... they musta been 19 or 20 and they were HOTT! Well, they finally stop. The one guy says, "What is wrong? We have been down the hill 2 or 3 times and ... " -- "5 BUT WHO'SE COUNTING??" Sandra snaps at him... well, I can't hold it in and I start to laugh my butt off... the guy is clearly offended and the other guy says "I think you have ice on the bottom of your boot let me help you scratch it off." So he scratches the ice off her boot and sure enough the dang thing just pops right in the ski! The guys were nice and they helped us down the rest of the hill because it was NOT one we should have been on... it was a little more difficult, no, WAY more difficult than the ones we were skiing on. Well, turns out, the guys turned tail and ran when we got to the bottom of the hill but we had one more chance to jump the T-bar and ski down the hill. I think it was fairly uneventful except that I think we fell off at the same spot again and headed down the other trail again on our own. We were definately happy when we got on the bus to go home. We'd had a great time, and we LEARNED TO SKI!

Sandra Kathy Uchal

Sandra was my best friend through highschool... One of those relationships that you just can't shake, not even if you wanted to! ;) It lasted a life time... well her life time. Sandra was born on June 18th, 1971 and passed away on December 31, 2005. This is a story book about my time with her. I don't know that it will be in order or that anyone else will be even remotely interested in reading it. But it is all about Sandra. The good, the bad, the ugly and the princess :)