Hello to all my fans and mortal enemies, how’ve you been? I know, I haven’t been blogging much, but really I’ve been in a mundane cycle of work, legal entanglements, a bit of glass, occasional sleep, repeat.
My elder minion’s been taking ski lessons. We’re realizing he’s definitely the sports kid of our two, but we’re finding he may not be a team sports kind of kid. Don’t get me wrong, he’s got t-ball in the spring, so we’ll see if that goes better than soccer did, but he has a new passion, skiing.
I’m totally behind this one because I love to ski, but don’t get out much. It’ll be nice to have someone to go with, and guess what? He’s pretty good at it.
He’s been taking ski lessons for about 7 weeks now and he’s gotten to a point where he can ride surface lifts and the chair lift, and make it down the hill without falling.
Since he likes it, and I’d like nothing more than to share this with him, we wound up getting equipment for he and I. Once you own the kit, the lift tickets are comparatively cheap. Particularly on a night like this where you can get 2 for 1 tickets after 6 at the local ski bump. Sweet!
Tonight was the first night taking my new equipment out to use (I got used stuff) and…..I found that one of my boots doesn’t fit. I tried and struggled with this thing for 15 minutes before I finally admitted de-feet (HA!). Not wanting to let the minion down on our daddy/son time, I wound up renting boots. Great, right?
Not so much, the rental boots didn’t fit the bindings on my skis. To my son’s credit, he was very calm and understanding, and to my credit, I didn’t scream out any of the obscenities going through my head.
So I asked the rental tech what we could do, he said let’s see the bindings. Oop, they’re Salomon bindings and they aren’t certified to work on them.
Crap.
Luckily someone nearby was kind enough to unofficially tell me how to adjust the distance on the bindings and where to find a screwdriver. Yes, I know this comes with the risk of negating the release mechanism of the binding, but I’m assuming that risk, plus we were on beginner to low end intermediate slopes. Also, I’m intending to get the boot situation remedied and the binding reset.
Finally, we managed to hit the slopes, and I have to say, my minion’s FAST. The kid fell twice, and I managed to only fall once. The kid’s a little comedian too. We were going up the chair lift and every time we got on he’d say, “Now we close the bar…” Finally I asked him if his instructor told him that every time, and the kid dead pans, “No, I’m trying to teach you to be a professional skier like I am.” You just have to laugh.
We managed to ski for a little over an hour. Usually when I start to fall it’s because I’m getting tired, and the run after my tumble I almost went down again, so I cut us off. I really wanted dinner at that point anyway.
Tomorrow, I get to go back to the ski shop and see if I can exchange my boots and get my bindings reset. Yay.
Oh, as a by the way, I’m starting to make fruit fly traps, if you’re interested in such a wonderful item (they work very very well), get in touch!