(CH)ICAGO ABROAD: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER(HORN)

It's been far too long since I've posted anything about our adventures. The wife and I have been pretty chill leading up to our busy two week period where she had a work retreat in London and I hosted friends from Chicago, then headed to Dublin for a few days and finally landed in London to meet up with the wife for a Premiere League match. The Premiere League match was our gift from my brother-in-law. It initially started as some pretty sweet seats at the U2 concert in Chicago until Paul Hewson (I'll tell you who Paul Hewson is in a later blog) threw out his back and had to cancel the show. So we traded the tickets in for Arsenal tickets, Arsenal Gear, and Arsenal drinks and spirits. Yet another blog, yet another day. Actually probably today but another blog to say the least. You'll have to wait a few minutes, hours, or days, depending on how quickly you read and how quickly I write, for me to share my absolute love for Ireland and it's wonderful people. You'll have to wait even longer for me to tell you how BIG London was and how I saw one player score two goals at Arsenal.

First and foremost, I want to wish everyone out there a very special Valentine's Day. Make sure you give all your loved ones a great big hug and some mad love today. I'll be honest, I'm not a big V-day type of person because I try to send the love out 365 days a year, 366 days every four years but it tis what it tis, as my friends in Ireland would say. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone.

Ok, so Zermatt and our ski trip. If you recall from my last ski experience, I did pretty well at skiing, it was the stopping, turning, and slowing down where my skills sort of deteriorated. So this time out, my wife and I both agreed that ski lessons were probably a good investment. I'm not sure if it was the double flip, running into a house on the bunny slopes, or damn near crushing some kids my last time out but lessons put me at ease. Maybe, in my head, I felt that all the liability would fall on the ski instructor and not me. In my little calculation, I didn't take into consideration that certain "liabilities" might include me falling some several hundred meters to a very painful and excruciating demise. But I digress, the ski instructor is responsible for that too, if it happens, which it didn't. What did happen is that the wife and I saw some amazing views of the Swiss Alps and the Matterhorn.

It seems like every week, we find ourselves saying, "Wow, this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life" Or "Holy $%^@, can you believe this?" My favorite is "The only thing that will make this better is some Harold's chicken wings and a deep dish pizza!" Well maybe I don't say that but I'm pretty much thinking it when I see amazing things.

Take a look for yourself...

Pretty amazing right....

Now what everyone's been waiting for, did I nearly kill myself of did I get my Picabo Street on? I'm here writing, so I obviously didn't seriously injure myself or hurt what little brain left I have from undergrad life at Illinois. And I wouldn't exactly call it Olympic skiing either. My instructor showed up 5-10 minutes late and after I went to the bunny slopes looking for him, I returned to my wife to find him asking her what things I needed to work on. She politely said "Pretty much everything, especially stopping and turning" Hmm. I probably would have described it a little differently, like so... he's quite agile, fast, but he needs some help stopping and turning, but that's just me. I figured he must not be Swiss because he's late. Sure enough, he was British. Born and raised in London, in the Arsenal neighborhood of Highbury, Robbie is a ski instructor all year spending the European winters in Switzerland and then traveling to New Zealand for their winters. Seeing that in a few weeks, the wife and I would be going to an Arsenal match, besides his tardiness, having Robbie as my instructor could be a good thing. As it turned out, Robbie was a pretty solid instructor and I breezed through my training session. The end.

Just kidding.

We started out with some stretches, getting familiar with the skis and then did some skiing hops to test out my balance. Robbie basically told me that I had a good core for the fundamentals of balancing and that we could jump to the starting and stopping exercises. So I did a few runs down a very small incline, working on my "snow plow" and easy turning and was doing the much better than I ever had before and then the funniest thing happened. I took the ski carpet back up to the top of the hill and there was a kid no older than 3 or 4 years, waiting to go down the little incline. But he had a pacifier in his mouth! This kid or should I say baby could barely walk but there he was on skis. Both Robbie and I started to point and laugh ( more like smile). Robbie didn't start skiing until he was 18 and I didn't start until, well 31 and here this kid was going down the hill with no fear with a pacifier in his mouth. I guess the kid didn't take to kind to us pointing and smiling at him because after he went down the hill, perfectly weaving back and forth, and then he turned and started staring at me as to say, "I did it, now you do it" He just stood there until I went down the hill. I was just happy I didn't fall but I guess that what's you call being punked by a three year old.

After that, Robbie thought that it would a good idea to do some of the easier runs. Along the way, I would do controlled turning exercises at very slow speeds. Check out my moves... click on the images for some world class skiing!

When I watched the videos it was pretty funny as well. Ok stop laughing now, it's not that damn funny! Ok maybe it is.

This is getting quite long but as you can see I am getting better on skis. The entire day I only fell four times. Twice with my instructor and twice with my wife. Only one really hard fall and one embarrassing fall. The embarrassing fall happened with the wife due to icy conditions and I couldn't get back on my skis. All in all a good trip.