Believe it or not, for the first time in over 10 years, I went skiing. There are a number of reasons for the long time between drinks - namely money and my ankle injury. I wasn't going to test my crappy ankle on the icy Australian slopes (again), and I had other (better?) things to spend the money on than fly to NZ or JP for their powdery snow. But now that I live in a cold country, the 'expense' argument is wearing a bit thin not to mention contending with weird looks when I tell them I've visited famous skiing areas and didn't ski. The ankle is a legitimate reason why I shouldn't ski, but I was persuaded to eat least try the ankle out on some European blue slopes, or at the very least, keep Barbel company given that a bunch of friends had planned a ski trip and she was the only person who wasn't in a couple.
We were staying in a village near the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis ski resort, in an apartment on the top floor of a farmer's house (Bauernhof). And when I say farmer's house, I mean it because they kept a pig that we fed our scraps to and a cow that supplied us with milk and cheese!
The view from our window.
So how did I go? Good news - the assessment from Yvonne and Daniel was that they could tell I'd definitely been on skis before, even though I was a bit rusty and technique wasn't that great. Hooray for muscle memory! Ladis has two blue runs, one quite short and the other one a bit longer, both of which Daniel took me along twice in the morning to teach some pointers. I made it to lunch falling only 1.5 times! Once during my second time down the longer run, and half a fall when I was trying to figure out how to use the platter lift.
Check out my happy smile at the shorter blue run!
The bad? My leg basically couldn't handle it. My leg was pretty sore by lunch, and REALLY sore after it. I decided to stick to the shorter blue run which was a great idea because I could tell that I was having difficulty controlling my left ski, making me a bit of a hazard to other people. By dinner time, I was limping and my knee was killing me :( I decided to make the call as to whether I skiied the next day based on how my leg felt.
The next day it felt fine, actually. But the view from the window looked like this:
Yes, it was snowing like hell and I was advised to not ski. Turns out it was a good decision because it was powdery snow on top of ice and 'tricky'.
Once the snow stopped coming down, I took advantage of the dumpage to make a snow creature!
There ARE kangaroos in Austria!
They're just awesomely camouflaged.
The new dumping of snow also transformed the valley into something a little more abstract. Like a greyscale sketch.
Our last day at the snow was beautiful, but Yvonne, Barbel and I decided to just hang around the restaurant on top of the mountain rather than ski due to either being physically or financially crippled.
Seriously gorgeous day.
That restaurant served some mighty nice hot chocolate.
And a pretty awesome strudel as well!
Watching kids learning how to ski, I wished again that I learned while still young enough to not care about injuries
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