Skiing with Safiul

The weather has become unbearable.
The mercury is crossing 41 deg celsius.
In this hour of crisis Safiul has brought us some relief.
Let us read of some of his exploits on the heights, skiing.
Just reading it brings some coolness in the air.
And it gives us all the terms we may require for skiing.
Now let us find some snow.
The article is really enjoyable.

Radheshyam

MOTHER OF ALL MADNESS

I glance at my car thermometer and think it must be broken. It reads one degree Fahrenheit [ negative 17.22 Centigrade/Celsius]. That can’t be right! When I was putting stuff in the car, still suffused with the warmth of the house, it hadn’t felt different than any other day. I keep going. The temperature reading changes to zero, then to negative one, negative two … The temperature at my destination is negative four degrees Fahrenheit [ minus 20 degrees Centigrade/Celsius]. In this frigid climate, I’m going to spend up to 3 hours outside hurtling down a slope, going back up and hurtling down again. This activity is otherwise known as skiing. Tell me this is not insanity.

If you’ve been caught by the skiing bug, Winter? – you no longer somehow get through it; you look forward to it. You love the snow. You don’t even mind shoveling it – the old fashioned way, with a hand-held shovel. Skiing is basically of two types: (1) Nordic, also known as Cross Country – where you propel yourself across terrain with the help of a long pair poles, [it is very strenuous] and (2) Alpine, also called Downhill -- where you are taken up to the top on a chair lift and you ski down. Here are the component parts of the Alpine skiing experience [a la Safiul Huda]:

THE ATMOSPHERE: Breathe deep [or, if you insist on being a grammarian, breathe deeply]; feel that cold crisp air cleanse you; feel the immediate uplift. There is freshness and joy from exerting yourself in the cold outdoors that must be experienced to appreciate. On bright days, with the winter sun low on the horizon, the sky turns a brilliant blue against the gleaming white snow. If there has been an ice storm, nature dresses up all branches and twigs in hard glittering crystal. If there has been a snowstorm, everything is softened. Either way, the allure is enhanced. But most beautiful of all is if snow is filtering out of the sky converting everything into an enchanted world through which you float.

Naturally, you have to have adequate clothing and equipment. For clothing you’ll need special socks, micro fleece shirt/pullover, polartec vest, windproof [and cold proof and waterproof but breathable] ski jacket, wind-water-cold proof breathable ski pants, preferably double layered gloves or mittens, a neck gaiter [that’s what we say in these parts instead of garter], a helmet. The latter is to protect your head and so is more part of your equipment than clothing, but turns out to be the warmest headgear in bitterest cold, and I find it to be the most crucial item needed to keep warm.

For equipment you need skis, poles, boots, goggles [to protect your eyes from snow glare and freezing winds either blowing or generated by speeding down the hill] and helmet.

All of this must be color coordinated and in current fashion. As in all athletic leisure activity, if you are not making a fashion statement, why are you doing it? I am a misfit in this regard.

LEARNING TO SKI: Skiing is easy to learn; skiing is difficult to learn. [Do you hear an echo of, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times”?] It depends on the person’s athleticism and age. Skis were different when I first clapped a pair of them on to boots. Today, with the new shaped skis, one can reach a level of proficiency in a single week that used to take a couple of entire seasons to acquire. Also, kids today start younger. I personally know kids who started at age one!

For people starting at my age, skiing “don’t come easy.” The very first time I tried skiing, [it was at a friend’s behest, enthusiasm and encouragement], I was already 45 years old. Never ever very athletic, even in my youth, by that age my klutziness had settled in and hardened. For the next 10 years, I skied only a few times each season. That wasn’t enough to develop sufficient “muscle memory” and I began each new season as though I had never skied before. Only at age 55 did I start buying a season pass at a local mountain and begin skiing avidly. So, I’ve been skiing regularly for 7 years. Having started so late, I’m never going to be as good a skier as I am, for example, a bicycle rider. I’ll always have to be conscious about initiating a turn, edging, pressuring, pole planting, facing the fall line, leaning forward [one skiing buddy has a rule of thumb: if your nose drip is falling on you instead of your skis, you’re not sufficiently forward – yes, your nose will drip when you go from the warmth of the Lodge to the cold of the slope], and so on. These haven’t yet become automatic, unconscious behaviors, and probably never will. Of these, the most important is counterintuitive: you have to lean forward. Normally, when standing on a slope looking down, you lean backward into the slope. Skiing, you have to lean forward, away from the slope in an action, which combined with forward motion is best described as “diving down the slope.” This is very hard to do because all instincts and previous experience has taught the average person to do the exact opposite on a slope.

With shaped skis, one’s goal is to: (1) put the skis on edge, (2) put pressure on them so they bend [the bending or flexing causes them to turn] and (3) leave two parallel lines traced in the snow. Minimal snow is thrown up. This is called carving or double carving. Because the surface of contact with the snow is very small – just the sharp ski edges – there is much less friction resulting in much greater speed. Seems simple; but the body contortions, positioning and dynamics involved are many. I now do have shaped skis, but haven’t unlearned the old style skiing methods completely. Despite all my efforts, I have not achieved effortless carving. I know the theory, I know what my body must do; I just cannot make the old bod do it. It no longer has the flexibility, dexterity or strength. On my best days I succeed in leaving a smudge wherein, upon minute inspection, one might, with healthy doses of imagination and kindliness, find traces of a double carve.

THE EXPENSE: Skiing is expensive [for a person of my means, let me hasten to add, not everybody]. Which sport isn’t? To reduce expenses, a good idea is to buy your own equipment [skis, bindings, poles, boots, helmet, goggles] rather than rent them each time you go skiing. This might take a thousand dollar-plus bite out of your wallet [much more if you want to be picky] but then the stuff will last you years and years. The jacket, gloves and ski pants will set you back a few more hundreds – but these too shall last.

A huge part of the expense is the ticket you have to buy to use the chairlift. It usually runs from $ 50.00 for a day at the tiny mountains, such as the one I go to, to $ 72.00 for the ones in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. If you intend to ski more than 10 days a season, it makes sense to buy a season pass. You pay a large sum up front but the pass gives you the right to unlimited skiing during the season. You also get some extras thrown in [for example, a free ski tuning]. Of course, the pass then ties you to the mountain. You’re loath to go to another mountain and pay a large sum to ski when you can do it for free at the mountain where you have your pass.

It is smart also to take a lesson or two at the beginning of the season. You can save by buying a group lesson. Private lessons are more expensive. They benefit seasoned skiers. For beginners, a group lesson is quite beneficial. I have often lucked out: I signed on for a group lesson and was the only member of the group! So I got a private lesson at a group rate.

THE DANGER: Skiing can also be dangerous. This fact one must not overlook. For one thing, you are bound to fall. When you do, you don’t say, “I fell.” You say, “I took a fall,” as though you graciously accepted the indignity. There are several descriptive categories of taking a fall. Two of them that I remember are (a) a “face plant” which is self-explanatory – you fall face forward and leave an imprint of your countenance in the snow and (b) a “yard sale” – after you fall, components of your get-up come off and you leave a trail of gloves, poles, skis, helmet, goggles and perhaps other paraphernalia on the slope as though displaying them at a yard sale.

Falling takes you totally by surprise [I mean, who would do it on purpose?] and that’s what saves you most times from being badly hurt – because you fall naturally. Tumbles will occur; thus it is foolhardy to ski without a helmet. Every year I fall 2 or 3 times. Till this year, I had escaped injury. This year, in early January, unlike my usual thundering crash, I had a gentle, slow-motion fall. Unfortunately, I fell, pardon me-- I took the fall, in such a way that I tore strands of one of my calf muscles. Needed a whole month to recover [i.e. for the swelling and bruising to disappear] but it still aches from time to time, reminding me, lest I forget, that I was remiss. Too, other people may smash into you, especially [often out of control] snowboarders. I’ve been hit by them several times. Twice severely -- one of these resulting in a cracked rib [also required a month to heal, but this one doesn’t give reminders from time to time any more, having happened a few years ago – so there’s hope my calf will completely heal as well].

Such injuries tend to crimp my learning curve. See, every year, when I begin, I have regressed to way below where I had left off in the previous season, but not all the way to the beginning. By the end of the season I end up with a little advancement beyond the previous season’s best. This year that incremental progress was smaller than usual. But my injury was trivial compared to others I know who have had to have operations and physical therapy.

THE SNOW: You meet your buddies and start the conversation by asking about snow conditions. In the West, all the snow on the slopes is usually natural. There, an overnight snowfall might dump 4 feet [121.92 cm] of snow on the slopes. This “powder” is what skiers ski through knee-, thigh-, even chest-deep. It calls for a different technique. I have never been [grammarian alert! – skiing out West], but everyone who has says it’s just wonderful.

In the East [actually, the North East, because the best places in the East are in the Northeast and there is nothing in the South of the East Coast– this is contrary to the West – there you have great skiing places all over from the North all the way to the South], without snow making a full season of skiing would not be possible. Snow is made by snow guns. A snow gun consists of a nozzle to spray water and a device [such as a powerful fan] to break the spray into tiny particles. When the temperature dips below freezing, snow guns are turned on; the sprayed water freezes and collects as mounds of snow. It is a very expensive process requiring lots of power and water. A ski resort without a plentiful water source is doomed. Snow cats [‘cat’ from “Caterpillar”, I imagine, although that company doesn’t necessarily make them] – special low-slung tractors on treads – then spread the snow and smooth it down. This is called grooming. A groomed slope has a look of corduroy. And freshly groomed corduroy is what everyone wants to ski on. Hence the rush to be first on the slope before all of it is skied off.

In the East, therefore, the feel is different. The snow below the surface of the slope is pressed into ice. Over it is a layer of freshly fallen or freshly made snow. I most love to ski on an inch or two of freshly fallen groomed snow, on top of a solid hard base. The feel is unique and exquisite, as though gliding on clouds.

It does not last. On a small mountain like the one I go to, the snow gets scraped off pretty quickly to the layer with a semi-snow-semi-ice consistency which is also fun. In places it scrapes down to solid ice [“boilerplate”]. And that ain’t so much fun, especially on steeper sections. Sometimes boilerplate sections come about because strong winds blow off the snow cover and expose the underlayment of ice. Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid, NY, is famous for that. Some call it “Ice Face.” But we Easterners grow to love these conditions.

When you look out at the slope from a distance, no matter what the conditions, it looks basically the same – smooth and white. Up close, the consistency of the snow might be sandy, soft, hard, crunchy, pebbly, chunky [a friend calls them “death cookies” which expression captures the alarm when finding oneself inadvertently in such a segment of a slope], slushy, wet, frozen, icy, churned up, and what have you. Any of these conditions will make skiing difficult and the skier susceptible to taking a fall. A good, versatile skier will ski graceful carved curves on all these surfaces and enjoy the experience. I am not of them.

SKI RACING: The best way to become an expert skier able to ski well in all conditions is to ski race as a child. Our mountain has a ski racing team. My son was a member. [He graduated from the team when he went off to college.] I had to take him skiing early mornings. I would sit in the Lodge and read a book and sip coffee all day. Finally, after about 2 or 3 years, I had a ‘duh’ moment: – why not spend the time skiing? And thus began my avid skiing period.

There are 4 basic types of downhill ski races. They are differentiated by the number and sharpness of turns taken. They are, in descending order of sharpness of turns and ascending order of length of the course: (1) Slalom, (2) Grand Slalom [GS], (3) Super GS and (4) Downhill. It is in the Downhill races that the world’s best skiers reach speeds of 80 mph [ 129 km/h] and higher. Each of these events requires skis designed specially for it. So, for racing, there are slalom skis, GS skis, Super GS skis and Downhill skis. For people like me, we have “all mountain” or “general purpose” or “recreational” skis.

Ski racing is wonderful for kids. First, there’s the social aspect and camaraderie of skiing with friends. Then there is the learning of responsibility, discipline, being organized, etc. that comes with it. The best result of all: becoming lifelong expert skiers.

Ski racing is also wonderful for the parents of ski racers. I call them “ski parents.” They get to know other parents from different walks of life. They form their own social circles. They ski together. When you ski with people who ski better than you [and everybody skies better than do I] your skiing improves. You travel to various other mountains where meets are and you belong to a group with a feeling of solidarity. There’s sharing of pictures, video, information. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

THE VIDEO: By the way, if you’ve seen any ski racing on TV, don’t think I look like that when I am skiing. They are the world’s best. I am, arguably, among the world’s worst. So imagine accordingly. However, to me, when I am skiing, it feels as though I am going very fast even if in reality I am going no more than 20mph [ 39 km/h] at my fastest. Well, 20 mph without the protective cocoon of a car’s body, zooming down a steep slope, can feel pretty scary. At first you try [in wild panic] to shed speed. Slowly the panic subsides [to mild]. Pretty soon you still feel you’re going very, very fast at 20mph, but you’re comfortable with it. It is only human frailty to advance to the next step and delude yourself into feeling and believing you are skiing almost as well as the world’s best. That is why it is important to shoot video of your skiing; it provides a reality check.
My son video’d me on March 20th. His comment: “New helmet, new goggles, new jacket. Same skiing.” Very galling. Upon watching the video, I am compelled to recognize I’m not quite the poetry in motion I thought myself to be – diving down the slope in a smooth, carved, elegant curves. I am stiff, herky-jerky, slow and tentative, a poster child of awkwardness, providing comic relief for all the other skiers, not an example to emulate. My wife says she can spot me quickly in a whole slope full of skiers – I am the most ungainly one.

My son tuning his skis in our basement before a race. One of the skills you learn if you ski race. You can (a) wax your skis or (b) sharpen the metal edges (that’s what he’s doing in the picture). If you do both, it’s called “ski tuning.”
Strangely, all this doesn’t discourage me. I spot the errors in my skiing from the video and am motivated to correct them. After all, even Rabindronath (what a guy! – him, not me – OK, for you grammarians raising your eyebrows, that should be “he, not I”) said:

Hethha jey gaan gaitay asha amaar
Hoi ni shey gaan gawa.
Aajo keboli shoor shadhaa amaar
Keboli shetar baa[n]dha.
[The songs I came to sing
Hereupon – yet unsung are.
Still am I scales practicing
And – tuning my sitar.]

No, no, no – I’m not saying I’m Kobiguru [a term of respect and adoration used by Bangalees or Bengalis for Robindronath Thakur or Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913]. He achieved perfection [according to the rest of us, if not, as per above poem, according to himself]. But there seems to be a human trait to try to perfect, in sporting leisure activities anyway, no matter how far short one falls or how ridiculous it makes one appear in the effort. Look at all the millions of golfers trying to be Tiger Woods. So I keep ‘tuning my sitar’.

A thought just occurred. Do you notice this tendency [recently acquired] of mine to quote from stuff long in my past? I have not read any, as far as I can recall, Tagore since before coming abroad and whatever I read was long before leaving Dhaka, in my childhood almost – decades and decades ago. Yet my quotes, if not absolutely accurate, are still only slightly off the mark. On the other hand, I cannot remember accurately the name of the book I read before the one I’m reading currently [Tony Hillerman’s “Finding Moon”]. This is worrisome. Isn’t this tendency – to remember vividly things long past and forget things from recent experience – indicative of a dread disease? Either dementia or Alzheimer’s – can’t remember which, which lack of memory, being symptomatic of the disease, provides dread confirmation of being afflicted with it.

[P.S. I just finished a book by Lisa Genova called “Still Alice.” Read it if you ever get the chance. No, don’t wait on chance; make it a point to do so. Good example of how a wonderful book should be written. After reading it, you’ll not talk about Alzheimer’s in jest. I get the impression that the erasure of memory is called dementia and the disease that causes it is called Alzheimer’s.]

Moi. Atop the little mountain I do 90% of my skiing on-- about 14 miles [22.5 km] from home. You can see the grey roof of the Lodge [where this trail terminates] and a section of the Parking lot and other smaller buildings behind it at the bottom of the hill.

SLOPE GRADES: Slopes are graded according to the degree of difficulty of skiing them. They are marked as follows: The easiest slopes of a ski resort or ski mountain are called green and marked with a green circle. The more difficult slopes are categorized as blue and marked with a blue square. The most difficult are called black diamond and marked with a black diamond symbol. Black diamonds are the steepest and scariest trails of a ski resort. But that’s not all. There are double black diamond trails. These are not only steep and scary, but also packed with large [or medium] sized icy humps [called “moguls” for some weird reason], or else wooded – that is, full of trees. If you tilt at a tree with your ski pole at even a mild 15 mph [24.14km/h], that tree goan win, chile, jess like da win’mill wif Don Quixote. Moguls are easy – you’ll fall on the very first one you encounter – problem solved. If you find yourself in trees or moguls, stop; take off your skis and walk back to safety. Unless, of course, you have a death wish.

This is Bretton Woods Ski resort in New Hampshire, a relatively easy place to ski with gentle slopes that make a beginner look good. The building in the foreground is Mount Washington Hotel at which the Bretton Woods Conference was held after WWII whereat John Maynard Keynes and company set up the World Bank and IMF

Slopes are deceiving. If you stand at the base of a very steep slope and take a picture of it, in the photograph the slope will seem mild. But if you pull back far enough to see the whole mountain, even slopes you thought were unimpressive will seem quite steep. If you go back in summer and hike a slope you considered tame when you were skiing it in winter, you’ll find the climb rather difficult because of its pitch.

Here is the trap: just because you can ski black diamonds at a certain ski place doesn’t mean you can ski black diamonds at another. Because the black diamonds rating means “the most difficult for that particular ski resort.” So the blue trails of a resort with generally steep mountains may well be steeper and more difficult than the black diamonds of a resort nestled in gently sloping hills. Something like the concept of millionaire. You can be a millionaire in Zimbabwe; you can be a millionaire in America. But the

I took this picture of my son on the summit of Sugar Bush in Vermont on March 20, 2009. The sign behind shows one trail is a black diamond and two others blue squares. Because of me, we took the blue square (trail visible on the left; we could’ve, and later did, go over the top keeping those signs to our left). From here it is some 2100 feet [ 640m] down to the Lodge at the base.

two aren’t the same. I have found that if you don’t possess this knowledge, you can ski without any problems on all blue trails. Just as when you learn that your many Zimbabwean dollars that made you feel so smug are nothing compared to, say, Australian dollars, you begin to feel deprived, poor and panicked, as soon as you know that a blue trail of the slope you are on is the equivalent of the double black diamond of the place you frequent, you are paralyzed with fear and unable to ski. This predicament manifests itself in your taking a fall.

On March 21st, a good friend and fellow ski parent, overestimating my abilities, took me and released me atop a black diamond trail. This was on a large mountain in upstate New York – if you skied from the summit down to the lodge, you’d have descended 2300 feet [ 701 meters]. I froze. My skiing down was not a pretty sight. But it was mishap free. That’s what the incremental improvement in my skiing has done for me this year.

THE LODGE: The Lodge is the central place of a ski resort. After putting your skis and poles on a rack outside, you enter the lodge to don your boots and gear and store your non-skiing stuff. The Lodge houses the all-important cafeteria as well as ski-shop, equipment rental and ski waxing and ski tuning shop, tables, lockers, restrooms, ticket booths, information, and so on. It may be huge and impersonal or smaller and cozy, depending on the size of the resort and mountain. Indeed, there may be several lodges. They may be all at the base or sprinkled on the mountain at different elevations.

So, you arrive at the resort where you hold your season pass, rack your skis and go in to change. You meet all those ski buddies [ski-parents] who’re there and sit with them and start chatting. These guys [at the place I mostly go to] are all well heeled, but in that unassuming American way, don’t care that I am way down on the economic ladder and are happy to be my friend, at least where our paths cross at skiing venues. I am sure, given my low position on the economic totem pole, other folks whose incomes reach $259 million for failing – i.e. for running their corporations into the ground – with them I would have no chance of being seen, leave aside being heard. But the people I am talking about are not in that stratospheric income level, though affluent.

Maybe this goes with affluence, but almost all of these folks are right-leaning. Since I am rather liberal, the adda [Bangla for shooting the breeze] gets quite interesting and involved. Almost every single one of them skied, and many ski-raced, in their youth. They’re a different class of skiers than yours truly. Nevertheless, they are willing to ski with me, give me pointers, and be patient.

There are always ski-parents sitting together at some table. I join them. After a while we’ll get coffee and snacks from the cafeteria [low on the taste scale but high on the price scale – basic economics – it is a monopoly situation.] Soon food services folks will get the barbeque going on the deck. A long line will form. I’ll join the queue, get a miniscule hamburger at a gargantuan price, bring it in and continue the adda.

In the group may be engineers who design and build jet engines, architects, builders, professors, lawyers, financial folks. The conversation is intelligent and lively. Just the other day, I finally learnt that one of the gents that I’ve been chatting with works for a firm that specializes in conversions of existing structures to large, high-end single family dwellings. His beat is Manhattan. That surprised me because I know that there are not many large, or for that matter, small, single family homes on that island. He explained that what he does is combine several living units and covert them into one residence which they define as a single family residence. The current one he’s working on is 45,000 square feet. Forty five thousand square feet! – that’s not a residence! – that’s Wal Mart! He explained that once you’ve put in a 50-seat movie theater, a 100-seat dining room, smaller dining rooms, 10 or 15 large bathrooms, chef-suitable kitchens, a personal gym, etc., etc., etc., all of them world-class, of course, a lot of square footage is easily swallowed up. The rich are different.

Here is a picture of Biltmore in North Carolina. 250 rooms. 174,240 square feet, French style chateau, completed and opened in 1895.

One day I learnt that some corporate shooting star is going to build a single family residence in the town I live in that will be the biggest family home in the U.S. after the Biltmore in North Carolina. The rich are indeed different. I have no clue where in my town that house is to be built. I live in the very middleclass section of town and don’t have occasion to go to those wealthy, secluded areas. Therefore, I feel no urge to find out the location of these high-end residential areas in town.

This is the largest home in my town right now. This is the rear view. Only 62,432 square feet, 15 bedrooms, and 12 bathrooms. It is for sale at a price- reduced $14.5 million in thecurrently depressed housing market. I genuinely don’t know where in my town it is. I don’t live at the most prestigious address in town!

Another day I learnt that they test jet engines by actually throwing tons of water and birds and other objects into them! The test is to ensure that if the engine shatters, the housing will contain the debris. Skiers are friendly folk. Even those you don’t know will not mind sitting for a spell and yakking.

As I was saying, you learn all kinds of fascinating stuff that you were never privy to or even aware of. So where’s the skiing you ask? It is outside – it’s whatever those crazy mothers are doing on the frigid slopes – practicing the mother of all crazy sports.