The Winter Experience- The Beginnings

Pippin

Pippin

Active member
The beginnings- the pleasure skiing brings me, and how i got to where i am today.

From my NS blog: https://www.newschoolers.com/web/content/blogs/member_id/91259/

Okay rewind back to when I

was in grade 6, back to the kid I was with a pre-pubescent squawky voice.

Growing up in the big metropolis of Toronto, yes I was a born and bred city

slicker. It all began as a school trip, it was late January, the place-Horseshoe

Valley, a fine specimen of a hill with the ridiculous vertical rise of 95

metres, and the longest run being 671 metres. The condition in Southern Ontario are like no other, with

beautiful shiny ice strips and patches right around every corner of groomers,

it was easy to see myself as a bobsledder of skiies.

But I digress,

arriving with +100 gapers from my school, myself included, in grade 6, the

dilemma of properly fitting boots to a hundred plus kids caused chaos and

havoc, but I persevered as one of the first kids out the door with ski, poles

and all-goggles not included.

Now with the

TDSB (Toronto District School Board)- strict son of a guns- you have to get

stickers: red, blue, green being the final one to allow you to different part

of the hill.

I am not sure

how but I managed to slide my ass down the icy sloops to achieve my green

sticker, allowing full mountain (really?) privileges.

The rest of the

day consisted of races and yardsales, many, and the day that started my

joy and

passion for skiing. Just out on the snow, having a great time with

friends, and

isn’t that the whole point of skiing, let alone life. The seed was

planted, in

a metaphorical sense, and from that day on I’ve been thinking,

dreaming,

talking, watching and writing about skiing. I remember the nights

before i would go skiing, i would be so pumped, and stoked just

thinking about ripping lines, a long time before the park picture came

into my head.

Just the feel

when you know you are the first one down a run, or a line, even if it is a

groomer. The fresh S’s are carved, imprinted into one of Mother Nature’s greats

gifts to mankind (fire is so overrated), soon to be washed out by others.

Aptly describing

what skiing is, and means to me, can only be done successfully by looking at

the smile that gleams across my face at the end of an epic line, or newly

learned trick.

Since that day

long ago in the 6th grade, I have skied everywhere in Southern Ontario,

including the private resorts. My first full year (a ski year in Ontario is

roughly 4.5 months) consisted of Sunday lessons. Lessons might sound lame, but

to me it meant guaranteed skiing at least once a week. And hey, lessons

were only half a day so I could spend the 2nd half, doing whatever

the hell my heart desired. My skiing has even led my family to Quebec to ski a

small portion of their great mountains, and out west to Colorado, a trip of a

lifetime. (If you ever find yourself in Copper with nothing do, hit up the free

cat skiing, as it will put the cherry atop almost all ski trips)

Although my pow

day can be counted on one hand, I still cringe( I’ve got therapy for the

cutting) when the skies are full of

falling flakes and I’m stuck at the prison, the government officials like to

refer to as “school”. Maybe my time has come to just move out west and start my

dream as a ski bum.

Bonus: I was

writing this at work (its Saturday, I work at Booster Juice, who the hell would

want healthy juice on a Saturday, so I had lots of time on my hands).

My co-worker

asks what I was writing and I stated I was writing for a ski blog that I had

and it was for the “newschool” style of skiing. I asked her if she knew what

freeskiing was, and I kid you not, she says:

“Is that where

you ski without poles”

Trevor Boris from Video on Trial was one of our only customers today,

he just told us that he had finished his Just for Laughs in Montreal

the other day, and yeah, and the dude has a MAN PURSE.

Hope your having a great weekend NS!
 
sick story, when you said something about a cherry you made me want ice cream. imagine that!

anyways, steal the man purse

peace!
 
thanks mski and Kjones, i couldn't just right a small paragraph about what skiing is to me so that why is a good bit in length
 
Cool story hansel. Our school used to go skiing until some bitch got lost in a gladed run and had her parents sent in a complaint. But seriously dude you met Trevor Boris, sick. what'd he order?
 
that was very touching and it made me super happy and pretty stoked on living (even in ontario where our pain is endless...).

thank you.
 
i hate getting up in the morning during the winter, hearing that it's -5 Celsius at the hill and puking out a centimeter a minute, and then having to get ready for school instead of a sick day of skiing.

i liked your story.
 
that man just stole my... leather thing with the straps, its eruopean. you mean a purse? YES OKAY I CARRY A PURSE, JERRY SEINFELD CARRY'S A PURSE!!!
 
living. the name of the game. whatever.

it makes all the "important" things meaningless and the "little" things monumental. if you know what i'm talking about, then you get it.
 
The first time I went skiing was in the 7th grade. I was your typical little middle schooler, loved starwars and still a little intimidated by girls, and not, by any means, a "cool" kid. It was with my little brother's boyscout troop. It was an overnight trip to 7 Springs resort, in Souther PA, which is a great mountain, as southern PA goes. Being from southern California, I was expecting something similar to the jagged snowcapped peaks of the sierras. What I got was much different, but I still had the time of my life. With my 140 rental skis and Costco Snowpants, I was about as gaper as they come. I left my goggles at home (which turned out to be Oakley H20 frames that I had found somewhere) so I borrowed my friends' mom's pair. Nothing shouts steeze like a pair of vintage, pink and purple Smiths.

I remember taking a lesson with a whole bunch of grown ups that obviously had been chained to a computer desk for the last 10 or so years, and it took an hour and a half to teach them what me and my brother could have learned in 15 minutes. I later found out that I knack for skiing. My balance and positioning came naturally. Having the balls for it was a little different. I am cautious by nature, always learning in steps. I ate a fair amount of snow, but by the end of the day, I learned my parallel turns, and had effectively navigated down two mogul fields, at a respectable speed of course.

The rest of the weekend was a blur. But skiing grabbed something inside of me, and it wouldn't let go. I took a few day trips over the next two years, but it wasn't until my parents took our family for a week in Lake Tahoe and the employee at Tahoe Dave's helped me talk my 'rents into letting my demo some Fugatives when I finally caught on. It was the speed, the pin point precision, the feeling after my first cliff drop, the shiver than goes down your spine when approaching that "huge" (relative of course) kicker.

And of course the feeling of achievement, as you look over your shoulder after the last run of the day.

That is what I fell in love with. Now it's all I think about. My snowboarder brother is more interested in PacSun, Abercrombie, and middleschool girls to understand how I spent almost all summer on a skiing website. He also gives me crap about pointing out claims and yelling FIRST. Really the only thing we agree on is surfing. But once we are out on the mountain it all changes. He is a significantly better at snowboarding then I am at skiing(trick-wise at least) but having someone to ride with and help you progress makes all the difference.

I guess I get alot of crap for skiing and rollerblading. A friend of mine(typical skater/snowboarder) told me that I "had it all backwards," and that, "that stuff wasn't cool." I'm sure you hear that all the time too, but I always remind myself that no one is "normal." There is no standard to compare yourself too. All that matters is that you live the life that you love, and love the life that you live.

 
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