Daley Ponderings

We had a little  trouble getting our tickets - it is always hard to find the ski club people, and I was incorrectly asking for Carnegie Mellon instead of the Bettis ski club.  Bettis has a number of subgroups as far as the ski club is concerned.  I think the price is also higher than last year, though maybe I didn't notice as much last year since Heather wasn't skiing, Jonathan didn't need a ticket, and I didn't need skis.

Jonathan got his skis on first and went off walking by himself saying, "See, I already know how to ski."

We tried out the "Edge Wedgie" that my parents' friend Jay Crowley (a ski instructor) recommended for us.  Jonathan didn't really like it, "it feels weird".  But, he did use it a little bit, and it definitely improved the placement of his skis.  The edge wedgie holds the tips of your skis together with a small rubber cord, thus forcing you to be straight or in an A shape, rather than a V, that Jonathan tends to do.  When he is going slow, it isn't a problem, but he did fall at least once due to putting his feet in a V, and then ending up in a split as the skis went farther and farther apart.

He was quite interested in the ski lifts, and on our way back to the lodge, after declaring that he was cold, he saw the lifts and asked to get on one.  Heather and I talked about it for a while, and explained that it would be cold up there, and that we would have to ski down quickly, but he insisted that he would like to do it.  He loved the chairlift ride, though when we got to the top and were discussing which trail to take down, he started walking back towards the chairlift saying, "I want to go back."  After explaining that the only way down was to ski and that he had insisted that he wanted to come up, even though I thought he might not like it, he did agree that he still wanted to ski down.

So, off we went, and he was thrilled by the speed and exclaimed, "We're going so fast that Mommy can't catch up with us!"  I just held onto his hand as we went down.  There was one crowded spot right on a turn, and I realized I was going faster than would work (Jonathan was on the outside of the turn) and so he started to fall, but I just picked him up and we went down in that manner until the crowd cleared up.  We tried skiing with him in between my legs, but it is harder on my back and it is also harder for him to really ski rather than be supported by me.  After we got close to the bottom and Jonathan asked to go faster, I lost my grip on him (his hand came out of his mitten) and so got some snow in his face, and then on his bare hand so he wasn't happy about that.

We went in for the pizza party, but Jonathan said that he wanted to go back out again, though not on the chairlift, so we did a couple of runs on the small slope, and then walked around a lot while Heather and Sanda went up to the top a bunch of times. After a while, I got tired of walking around with Jonathan on his skis, so I put on my skis and Noah was able to sleep comfortably (and warmly) in the sling inside my jacket, and then Jonathan and I could have more fun skiing together.  It wasn't that hard at all on the small slope to keep my balance, though there were plenty of strange looks at the feet sticking out of the bottom of my jacket.

The plan had been for Heather and I to do a couple runs after Sanda was done, but Jonathan decided he would rather go up with us instead of going inside, so we did one run more all together (though without Noah - even though Jonathan thought that we could ski with Noah in the sling). I was transferring Noah to Sanda and had left Jonathan at the top of the slope - he didn't want to go down by himself to meet up with Heather.  I am not sure what happened, but on the way back to get him, I saw a girl in the process of taking him down the slope.  I am not sure how much he asked for it, or how much she prompted him to go down to Heather.  We went up to the top of the mountain again and down without incident.

We were tired by the time we got home, but we had a fun day together.