My first Skiing experience

Preparation:

We only prepared with renting gear and meal prepping for the day trip to Sierra at Tahoe resort. Our friends Pragyan and Abhishek had a season pass and they invited me and Christoph for skiing on their BFF pass. We rented - Bib, skis, boots, helmet and poles. We purchased ski gloves and Buff. Christoph prepared butter chicken and chicken tikka masala with Spinach and rice burritos, and PBJ sandwiches, packed trail mix and granola bars and bananas. We were staying over at our friends place because we planned to leave early at 5am.

Journey:

Since we packed the car the night before, it was easy to leave early in the morning, thanks to Christoph for pursing us to listen to make this happen on schedule. We woke up at 4:20am, freshened up and left at 5am from Milpitas. It took us 3 hours to reach the Resort, reached at 8pm. It was a beautiful weather, clear sky, lot of sunshine, not too cold and windy. It was nice to see snow covered mountains and trees, as Pragyan Di said - feels like a Winter Wonderland.

Resort:

We had some snacks, I had a PBJ sandwich and headed to the resort for checking in and getting freshened up. The bathrooms were nice and warm and the registration counter got our signatures on the waiver and it took us 80$ per person as BFFs for the day pass. After we signed waiver and paid the fees, we head back to our car to get dressed for skiing.

Skiing - first half:

I was trying to learn with Christoph how to navigate in snow, sideways, taking small steps with the skis. That is when Abhishek realised that I have not worn my shoes properly and that my pant was inside the shoes.
The shoes felt really tight, it was very difficult to make any movement with legs. I tried to learn to - walk sideways, balance standing, slide around, make a pizza and stop without overlapping skis on to each other - it felt all very painful at that moment.
Christoph was very patient with me when I tried to learn all these things and every time I failed, I was giving up. Abhishek and Pragyan Di, helped me get some confidence that I can slide and making a pizza should help in slowing down and stopping.
I tried sliding down and before I saw it coming, before I could stop myself, I was in a pit and I fell. That time I learnt that falling is the worst because it is so painful to stand back up with the skis on. The solution for me was to remove any one of the skis and then stand only on the shoes. That was nice. The struggle then was to put them back on.
Then we tried these things multiple times and I failed and failed and I kept failing and Christoph still tried helping me. I felt guilty about not letting him have fun and that I was not making good progress. Part of it was because I was not confident about my legs and was too fearful that I will break my body and become crippled.
He picked me up many times when I fell so that I don't have to remove my skis to stand up and I appreciated this a ton more when he said that "This is my good shoulder, use it to stand back up". I was nowhere close to liking this experience of making him feel miserable, I was kind of used to suffering and fearing, haha. No matter how hard I tried, how hard I squat and bend my knees, spread my legs to balance, I couldn't make the pizza workout and fell and slid everywhere.
We decided to use the slider and it had a long queue. I could sense and hear from him that he was not liking it and that he was getting a little impatient with the arrangement. I zoned out worrying about this. He kept trying to make me feel that he is doing this by choice because this is something that we both can do together and stay around each other. Sweet.
Slider experience was a little better and less miserable, it started getting crowded there. He discovered a new slider that goes beyond this and it had less crowd, it was easy to practice in that place just by ourselves. I enjoyed it a little more. He tried teaching me how to make turns, that is where I started failing more again.
It was at this point that he confessed that - "This is not what skiing is supposed to be, it is supposed to be fun, going through the elevators and sliding down the mountain, it is not standing and walking and stopping so frequently". I felt bad again and we decided to go back to the resort for lunch break.
It was nice to see so many people trying to ski - small children, adults, old people, parents, college students, all kids of people. The environment was nice for skiing enthusiasts. We laid in the snow patch near benches for some time until our friends came back from skiing. They wanted to know how was it. I said it was the worst thing I tried and I don't want to do this ever again.
Walking back with the shoes was a little struggle and I was counting numbers to distract myself from the pain. Counted till ~250.
They were disappointed to listen to that but they gave me hope that I can do better and it feels like this in the beginning. They asked Christoph to have fun this time and Abhishek stayed with me to teach me. Lunch was so delicious - Chicken tikka masala roll and a banana and some m&m chocolates from trail mix.

Skiing - second half:

Some lessons learnt were implemented right there -
1. Loosen the shoes a little bit
2. Remove the pants from inside the socks and shoes
3. Remove cap which was an extra layer on head
Energy from food and water felt rejuvenating.
I started again with a new mindset but did not forget the previous suffering. The energy in food helped me to feel like I can live again and try again.
Abhishek also seemed a little impatient with the queue for the slider. There were a lot more people than before, I guess everyone was returning from their lunch break.
I tried to convince him that it is not so bad once we go beyond this slider, I promise. He could only listen. We discussed how he got into skiing - one of his friends took a class to learn skiing, and then a bunch of guys all learnt from him and overtime they got better and better, when they were in Colorado. That was good to hear, learning something as a group can be an exciting experience.
We reached the highest slider, the view was so pretty - the sky was blue, snow was white, all clear and so much sunlight. A storm was predicted to start at 4pm there. That was evident because now the wind had started gushing more strongly and made the snow fly with it too, it was flowing towards us.
Abhishek started my training by asking me how much do I know already - I said that I am able to make a pizza, and slide a little bit, I cannot move. He said okay show me. I showed him and he said this is great. Can you slide a little more, I tried and I lost myself to the speed and in order to stop, I fell down. He said, okay, let's start with controlling the speed - try to slide down making a pizza. It was a success, I was able to do it for 5 seconds and then needed a hard stop. Then we tried to increase it to 7 seconds and failed, so went back to doing it for 5 seconds at a time.
When I used to randomly slide around, he taught me that I can use the poles to stop myself from sliding my planting them in the direction of slide and pushing myself in the opposite direction. This was a great tip to learn, I was able to stop myself from sliding around almost every time after that.
Next challenge was to keep sliding slowly and immediately stopping. When I wanted to stop, I was taking a whole long stride to stop completely. I was doing a really hard bending of my knees in the pizza position, putting all my strength into getting the position right, and still I was not able to stop immediately.
Abhishek noticed that I am fearing for no reason and that is stopping me from enjoying skiing. He made me believe in my self and gave me positive affirmation that I have done excellent so far and have made great progress and that I am good at listening and implementing the instructions.
The confidence helped me get out some fear out of me and to give a more confident attempt.
That realisation helped me learn that - instead of putting so much strain on my knees for bending, I should put the pressure on my skis using the legs, putting strength in the legs to stop from sliding down.
This consciousness was so enlightening that I was able to immediately stop now. I was able to slide and stop in time, control my speed, change direction a little. I got it on vide, Abhishek was so happy that I was able to learn and enjoy this experience and that his efforts did not go to waste. It was all worth it.
I was able to go down to the resort by myself! Abhishek still kept an eye and gave me direction, but that was great to do it independently.
Try try till you succeed! Told this story to Pragyan Di and Christoph and they were happy too. When we met them back at the resort cafe.
Way back - it was a beautiful feeling, I could not sleep, I kept looking at the mountains and trees and feeling nice.
Without my friends, I wouldn't have experienced this and learnt something new, gained some confidence. <3 Thank you all.

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