So Hansel, I gotta cool story for you!

Mr.Huck

Active member
I thought I would take a moment to entertain yall.

Background:

I coach a freestyle/freeride team on the weekends in Vail. My buddy Topher and I have 17 kids that we ski with. The youngest is 8 and the oldest is almost 11. We do park, big mountain and bumps.

Saturday:

Topher couldn't make it Saturday so we got a sub who happened to be Lindsey Vonn's little brother. He rips so I am thinking this is going to be an epic day. Unfortunately, one of our guys was ejecting out of his binding every time he hit a jump and another showed up wearing 2 different sized boots. These things took most of the morning to correct. After lunch, one of the kids on my team is riding up the lift with Reed(the guest coach) and the kid says, "Sometimes I enjoy wearing my mom's panties and her bra, and my friend likes to wear his grandmother's underwear". He (the kid in question) was not messing with Reed; he just felt like sharing. Reed told me about it when we got off the chair, and, after laughing my ass off, I just mentally filed it in the WTF! file. We got down to the park and I told the kid, who is one of the best skiers on the team, to try a switch 3. He had never done or even attempted one before, but drops in, does it and skis it out like a G. At this point I am seriously considering a change of undergarments!

Sunday:

Still no Topher and Reed isn't into subbing again. He probably assumes that we are idiots and are kids are cross dressers. I have another sub coach, Dave. Dave is the only African American ski instructor at Vail, that I know of. I had never talked with him before, but I always got the impression that he thought I was a tool or something. Anyway, he was awesome, and we had a day for the record books. Skied until we puked and then skied some more. The kids were ripping, and there was no discussion about lingerie preference. At one point we lost Dave. It was the first time I ever had to call in for a lost coach, but we found him on the next run.

My son is on the team this year for the first time. It was actually a pretty big deal to get that to happen because you are not supposed to coach your own children. The head of Vail Resorts ski school actually had to sign off on it. Kind of nuts how big of a deal they thought it was. Anyway, my son has never been the most aggressive kid in the group and I am totally cool with that. Sunday, I was leading the kids through a tight tree run, affectionately referred to as WFO (Way dafuck over). I am really feeling it and decide to make the jump to "ludicrous speed". After skiing a section of trees way too fast, I stopped and waited for the kids and Dave to catch up. To my amazement, the first kid to ski up to me was my son, and he was stoked out of his mind. For a dad, there is no bigger WIN.

In the afternoon we met up with the mom of the "sharing" kid from Saturday. It was pretty hard for me to keep from laughing uncontrollably. There was no way I was about to say anything to her about it. On the other hand, his dad and I have been friends for years. I may have to bring this up to him over beers one night. I will post the results of that conversation.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I hope you get some LOLs out of it.

Just call me Gretel!
 
1. the panties comment is absolutely hilarious, and ridiculous. You must post the convo when you tell his dad.

2. that is awesome man. Congrats on the stoke with your son.
 
Haha!

That is a cool story Hansel

Where do you a coach? I did sscv for a while in my younger years, it definitely made me the skier i am today.
 
Meh, the story about the guy shitting his pants during his lesson is better but fuck yeah stoked parenthood!
 
That's cool. I raced for Ski Club when I was 125 lbs and infested with acne. Lot's of stories from era. I coach for the Vail Development Team. We're big, but we have big fun. Were you there during the Amato years. I worked with Lance Rose before he went over to Ski Club.
 
I've thought about applying to be a park instructor before. it sounds like a good gig. How do you like it?
 
Don't get me wrong. I still like to throw down, but the one thing that rivals the feeling of doing something cool for the first time, is helping someone to learn to do something that they never thought they could do. It is such a great feeling that I am hoping that my new facility will let me have that 365 days a year.
 
The smile kids get when they do something new or something scary they didn't want to do makes it all worth it.
 
We ski at Vail. I wear the standard Blue Smurf suit that Vail Instructors wear. Video for effect:

A little addendum regarding the sharing lad:

So he is 10. We had a rail jam yesterday and we haven't skied much park lately due to powder days.

Yesterday we had a chance to mess around on the features before the rail jam. This is the first year that he has ever slid a metal rail. Yesterday I told him to try a Blind 270 off. I showed him once, and he did it perfect on the first attempt. Took me forever to figure out how to do one. Then I told him to do a 270 onto a down box. He did that perfect the first time too. He now has his switch 3's on lock. At the end of the day he says he wants to try a 540. He has never tried one of these before either, but he stomps his first attempt. I have had some really coach-able kids, but this is nuts. I have never been able to just say do this, and have the kid land it the first attempt. So the list of first attempt first successes is switch 3, Blind 270 off, 270 on, 540. I hope the kid doesn't get seriously bummed the first time he doesn't stick something.

I have skied with his mom and dad a few times, but haven't been able to share the undergarment story with them yet. Meanwhile I have started wearing my wife's underwear and definitely feel that progression is happening faster. :-$
 
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