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Google tells me that Flumserberg is a "baby" Alp.
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This past week was pretty eventful for the Williams Family. We hit the gym five days in one week which probably has not happened since high school for me. We were able to scratch a few things off the xmas list and we made the 1.5 hour trek to Flumserberg. As our baby brother says, Flumserberg is a "lil pimp" compared to "big pimps" of the alps. It's basically like driving a BMW when you could drive a Mercedes...seems a bit more fitting seeing that we're a quick train ride from Deutschland. So the wife and I were lil pimpin it in Switzerland this past weekend.
A few quick notes:
My wife is amazing and wonderful but if its one thing that the good lord didn't bless her with is patience.
When asked how many times have you been skiing, my response is usually "....uummm once on a hill in Wisconsin and I did four runs all under two minutes with minimal turning."
Did I mention I've basically never been skiing before.
I was under the impression that "shred some powder" was a good thing and that being "in the powder" implied that one was skiing.
Many of you might remember my fear of flying and heights. Ski lifts, gondolas, funiculars and T-bars did nothing to soothe the soul.
Let's just get to it shall we. But first let me tell you about saturday morning. I decided after going to the gym for four days, it was time to step my workout game up and attend the Body Pump class at our gym. I figured i'd try something different and maybe get pushed by the instructor. I didn't realize it at the time but the class is not only 1 hour long, it also has a 30 minute technical class before the real course starts. I walked in during the tech class and all they were doing was working on technique. In my head, I was thinking, "I got this!" Curls, squats, lunges, push-ups and a stepper. Somehow, I didn't see the instructor. SHE was pushing about 175 pounds, ALL muscle and she asked me if I was fit enough for the class. I politely responded, "no, but I'll try to keep up." She chuckled and told me to grab a bar, two 5 kilo weights, and 2 2.5 kilo weights. I'll be honest, every time I think of "kilo" I think of the movie Scarface or some major drug bust in Northern Mexico/Southern California. And THEN I think, I can easily carry 5 kilos of anything. 5 kilos is about 11 pounds. After the 5 minute warmup, I was sweating and gasping for air. Maybe I should have gone to the tech class. The instructor was mic'd up and I heard her saying, you can grab the 1 kilo weight if you need something lighter. All in thick eastern european accent over the loud speaker. I pretended like I didn't hear her and when she looked at another struggling classmate, I went to get that 1 kilo weight. This class was no joke. Usually if you hit the gym hard you feel it a day or two later but I felt this immediately. My quads, my gluts, my tri's, my pecks...all of it was on fire, not sore just on fire. After barely surviving the East german physical fitness exam, my wife politely informed me that it probably wasn't the BEST idea to do that class a day before skiing. I just survived an hour long boot camp, skiing would be a piece of chocolate cake right?
BIG MISTAKE.
We boarded the train at 6am in Zurich for our trip to Flumserberg. The resort town is roughly an 1.5 hour train ride from Zurich and the base sits at 3300 feet. Upon arrival, we had to take a 25 minute gondola to get to the base of the run. 25 MINUTES. The views were beautiful with some serious elevation and we were moving at a nice pace. All I could think about was one of those movies where the aliens attack earth. They always hit a tall building or some gondolas in the Alps. With my luck, the aliens would be attacking at any moment and if not the aliens, a huge gust of wind was going to take these wires down. On a serious note, the Swiss must love skiing because the gondola system is a monumental capital investment. It's quite impressive. But never underestimate the resolve of a people that would spend $10 Billion and take 25 years to build an tunnel under the
ALPS.
I guess the wife took my comment, "I've basically never ski'd" as he's probably average at worst, so off we went to the bunny slopes and the infamous T-bar lift system. To be fair to the wife, I didn't object too much, but deep down I was real concerned, especially after we couldn't find the path to the T-bar. After taking the indirect route that involved us carrying our skis and walking through the snow in our snow boots, we finally found the entrance. It's not a good sign when the instructors are laughing at us through the entrance window. One instructor came out and completely stopped the T-bar for us and told us that since it "looked" like our first time, she would stop it only this once. So we hopped on the T-bar, well kind of, it just kind of pulled us along. Half way up the hill my wife said, "You know you're supposed to take your poles off?" Actually, no I didn't read that in instructions and I must not have gotten that memo last night. I'm basically doing that thing where you follow the most experienced person and then just imitate their actions. Like going to yoga the first time and the instructor says, "I want you to transition into a upward facing dog." Well imagine if half way through the class the instructor starts asking you for direction. My wife did just that...I guess we were so concerned about staying balanced on the T-bar that we didn't hear where to release and release spot was happening in the next 30-90 seconds. 60 seconds is a huge difference! The wife asked me if I thought we should go over the next hill or release "now." If my heart wasn't pounding so fast I think I would have said "I don't know" and right when I was going to say just that, my wife YELLED "OH #$%T!" The next think I remember is getting pushed off the T-bar and skiing out of control down the hill and someone screaming "SNOW PLOW, SNOW PLOW" And that was how it all started, my real first ski experience, being shoved off the T-bar and barreling down the bunny slopes. I wish I could say this was the worst of it, but it gets even worse/better depending how you look at it. For me, the former! So that hill that we (my wife) were debating to go over, well it was a cliff to imminent pain and possible death. It was under construction and there was no snow, just a 9-10 foot drop to pain.
So now I'm upright and ready to do some intentional skiing and the goal was to follow the wife's lead. The plan was to slowly traverse the slope and stay on the path while turning in each direction. Slowly, turning, and turning in both directions involves the critical snow plow maneuver which I thought just involved turning your skis inward. Wait, path....isn't this all snow or powder, what did she mean stay on the path? My wife is still under the assumption that I was Bode Miller and that my first fall was because of her mistake. So we started slowly and then she kept going slowly and I sped up very rapidly. The next thing I hear is, "you're off the path, snow plow, inaudible plow, you more inaudible....powder!" By that time I had already did a double flip over my skis with a slight twist so that I was facing uphill on my back. It would have made the U.S National Gymnastics team proud, well except for the bruising landing. I heard a snap and didn't know if it was my legs or my skii's or my ribs or all of the above. Out of shock, I just started laughing, you know that uncomfortable chuckle where you're really saying, "What the H...E...double hockey sticks am I doing, black people don't do this", all while feeling for broken bones. I don't think I've ever seen the wife so concerned but when she realized that I was all good she broke out in tears...of laughter. When I was younger, my granny would hear something that would make her laugh so hard that she would break out into tears and she would have to run to the washroom to avoid an accident. It's nice to see that the wife has some of those same qualities. Well this was one of those moments. She was pretty much on the ground crying. All I could say was, "Did you see that, What he $%!#" You would think that I would know when I'm over my skis ( pun intended) but I continued and experienced brutal fall after brutal fall after brutal fall. It must have been difficult for the wife to see her husband get dominated. The only thing that saved me was lunch time. I entered lunch a defeated man, spirits worn down, and finger tips damn near frostbitten.
A sane person would have called it a day but I needed more. Quit just isn't in my DNA. I think the wife wondered if I EVER was going to ski again. To be honest, I was thinking, I'm going to fall a few more times today and that's it forever. So instead of the bunny slopes, we went to the beginner, beginner, beginner slopes with the 4-5 year olds and the South American skiers and snowboarders. There were a few adults, so that made me feel good, but just when I thought I was getting decent, a little 4 year old pushed me down. I guess I was in his way and he just wasn't having any of that. Down I went. With my renewed confidence, my wife and I returned to the Bunny slopes. Mastered the T-Bar and even got a few more turns in on the slopes before falling. The last big crash involved me and a house that was smack in the middle of the slope, which makes absolutely no sense but into the side of the house I crashed.
Lessons learned:
Never say "go this way" when you are to the rear of a novice skier, just causes confusion and crashes
Never cut off a four year old, you will pay a severe price.
Never underestimate your wife's patience! She was awesome.
Never laugh at other skiers/snowboarders that have helmets. Experience over confidence 70% of the time.
Always communicate how bad you are at an activity before you do that activity.
Never do an East German workout class focused on quads and triceps a day before going skiing.
Never yell "Lookout below, I can't stop, Watch out, Watch out" in a foreign country, good chance they won't understand what you're saying. Just fall to the ground.
Never be too proud to laugh at yourself.
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| Still standing...15 falls later. Can't say the same for the house! |
This weekend we'll be buying a tree, doing some tree trimming and decorating, purchasing one last gift and prepping for our guests from Philly (via Utah and Jersey) and not so Hotlanta.
Bis Woche, Auf Wiedersehen
