Jared's One Blog

For most of the last two weeks here in central PA it’s been ridiculously nice outside, especially for March. After such a snowy February, and a stretch of more than a week and a half straight of cloudy days in late February and the beginning of March, we got six straight days of brilliant sunshine to brighten our moods and melt the snow cover. That stretch of sunny days bled into the start of spring break here, so Monday and Tuesday last week I took off work early to go play some tennis with Ben, to test out my new Slazenger racket for only the second time (believe it or not, I was able to play a couple sets with Anders back on 23 January, the earliest in the year I’ve ever played tennis!). Part of the challenge for us was to find a court in town that 1) was snow-free and dry, 2) had the nets up, and 3) wasn’t occupied by people already playing, but we found a court over at Suburban Park. On the first day I lost 6-0, 6-0, 6-2, only the second time I’ve ever taken multiple games in a set vs Ben. I really played a whole lot better in that third set. The next day I lost all four sets 6-0, but there were several tight, multi-deuce games we had. I just couldn’t seal the deal in any of them, oh well. At any rate, after seven sets of tennis in two days (with a workout session in between), I was definitely pretty sore the next day! It felt good though.
And then you don’t always appreciate life’s simple, routine things like walking until it’s suddenly painful. Last Thursday I went to Health Services to have a couple warts on the bottom of my left foot frozen. I’d been meaning to do that for quite awhile (like a couple years), but finally decided to do it now before we got further into the nice-weather season, so that it wouldn’t interrupt running, tennis or other outdoor activities. But that afternoon and evening after having the procedure done, my foot hurt so badly that I had to ask Isaac for a ride home from campus; with how badly I was limping, walking home two miles wouldn’t have been the best plan. I worked from home last Friday too, because while it hurt a little less, I was still walking fairly gingerly. It was still uncomfortable for me to walk (and I was still kind of limping a bit) through Tuesday this week, and I was starting to wonder how long the pain would last. Finally on Wednesday the pain really started to subside noticeably, and by yesterday I was walking completely normally again. It felt great not to be all gimpy and everything! This evening I even played another few sets of tennis with Ben (unfortunately my right wrist suddenly started hurting late in the third set, hopefully that won’t become something serious or chronic). And hopefully I won’t have to go back for another wart treatment, hopefully that one freezing got rid of them.
Now that the weather seems to have turned the corner to spring, I’m hoping to get back to running a couple times per week (while still lifting weights twice a week too). That’d probably require a little more re-dedication to going to bed and waking up early, something I’ve started to slack off on lately. I haven’t gone running since I did my 5-mile leg of the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK race in October, and I want to be able to get to the point where I can run 5-7 miles fairly comfortably, occasionally maybe doing up to 8-10 miles. Last fall was the first time I’d really started running routinely since high school, and I started late enough that I only ran as much as 5 miles exactly twice: once with Alex when he came here to visit the weekend of my birthday (5.5 miles), and once the following weekend for the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK (5.1 miles). I’d definitely like to improve my conditioning more.
Now it’s time to take it easy the rest of the evening and watch the last bit of the first round games of the NCAA tournament! My bracket’s hurting a bit (not a great record in first round games as usual, and I’ve already lost Georgetown, Temple & Siena from my Sweet 16), but this has been a really entertaining first round so far, so that makes up for it!

For large portions of 2008 and 2009 I often felt like I was in a bit of a rut. I felt like while I certainly knew a lot of people, and probably had a lot of friends in the modern American definition of the term, but that I didn’t have many actual friends. You know, people who you’d spend a good deal of time with and often call up if you wanted to hang out. I felt kind of disconnected from people here at PSU, and that led to me not being nearly as social, and spending lots of nights at home, not really doing a whole lot. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but life just wasn’t as much fun as it had been my first 2-3 years here.
There were several contributing factors to life not being quite as enjoyable, or being frustrated with how my life was going. Many of these factors are related. One factor was quite a few of my friends from Meteorology, with whom I’d often hang out quite a bit, had graduated and moved away. That’s just a fact of life when you’re a fifth-year grad student, I guess. A second factor was that I’ve been trying to focus more on my own work, resulting in less “wandering the halls” to go talk to people (or maybe I’ve wandered the halls less because I know fewer people here). Right along with that, I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time working not in my office in Walker Building, but in my office in the ARL-Water Tunnel Building, where most of the time I’m the only person in my small, windowless office (for several weeks now I’ve worked almost exclusively in the WT). Another reason that can’t be discounted is that my research has been really slow-going for most of the last couple years, and running into constant problems that have often been beyond my own ability to solve, thus forcing me to rely on other people’s schedules to get help. When research isn’t going well, it really affects my mood in a negative way. When I’m not able to be progressing as much as I wish I were, I get a serious case of “grad student guilt,” and don’t feel like I deserve to go have fun on evenings or weekends. For whatever reason I’ve also felt kind of disconnected from Penn State Christian Grads, even though I’m the president of the group. I just wasn’t taking nearly as active a role in leadership or in the group in general as I previously had. There were other factors contributing to my general dissatisfaction, too, but I think you get the gist.
So I decided that I needed to shake things up to try to change my attitude. I decided that I’d be more open to invitations from people to go do things (basically, to be more social). And I feel like I have done a better job of that, and that that’s one reason why I haven’t blogged nearly as frequently so far in 2010 (I haven’t been spending quite as many evenings at home). I’ve been much more open to saying yes to last-minute or spontaneous invites to dinner or bowling or hanging out or whatever. (And taking up the invite to go bowling with some of the first years back in January allowed me to have quite the set of scores: 73, 99, 137 and 172. Guess I just needed to warm up a bit, haha. It felt great to beat my previous high score of 156 and get my first-ever turkey to start out the fourth game!)
I decided that I’d start working out at the gym, both to improve my health and strength and to improve my mood (hooray endorphins!). So I worked out at the hotel in Atlanta with Andrew one night at AMS, bought a spring semester PSU Fitness student membership for $52, and since AMS I have worked out basically every Tuesday and Thursday morning at Rec Hall (less than a 5-minute walk from Walker or the Water Tunnel, so it’s really convenient). I usually lift weights for 40-60 minutes or so, and then ride for 20 minutes on the exercise bike to get some cardio work in, since it’s been too chilly for my liking to run outside. I convinced Walter to come start working out too, though the last few weeks I’ve mostly been going by myself, while he’s been either too busy or going in afternoons by himself. With the weather starting to get warmer, I’ll probably mix in some running a couple times a week too.
I also decided that I’d start taking ballroom dance lessons. Yep, ballroom dancing. Kinda surprised myself with that one, too. I figured that’d teach me some useful skills (I do have at least four weddings to attend this year, for example), and also help me gain more social confidence. And maybe I’ll be able to meet some new people, who knows. (A few months back, Alex, trying to get me to think about taking ballroom, told me [mostly] jokingly, “If you take ballroom, you’ll be married within a year,” haha.) The Penn State Ballroom Dance Club has beginners ballroom lessons every Tuesday evening (almost every night they have lessons for some type of dance or level of difficulty, too). I’ve been there every week this semester except for when I was at AMS in Atlanta, and we’ve learned the rumba, cha-cha and waltz so far, spending 2-3 weeks on each one. I don’t have particularly great coordination (and often find it hard to simply relax!), so it’s often a bit of a struggle for me at first to put everything together and get my body and feet to do what they’re supposed to, but I’ve always been able to notice quite a bit of improvement, especially on the second week of learning a particular dance. I’m not taking ballroom lessons with anybody that I know, but I’m genuinely enjoying them, and look forward to them every week.
So are all these new habits and mindsets helping me out so far this year? In my opinion, definitely. I do feel much more positive in general, and am enjoying life a bit more this year. And I really have to thank Alex for that in large part, because he’s the one that really encouraged and inspired me to try and do all this to help change my attitude this year. Am I totally satisfied with how everything’s going in my life currently? No, far from it. But I am much more satisfied than I was late last year, and it feels great.

And now it’s been another month without blogging. Sigh. Again, sorry about that. Spring break is almost upon us, and I’m still blogging about something I did six weeks ago. Time for another main highlight of January, complete with heaps of photos!
In mid January I went to Atlanta for the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), where I presented a paper in the 16th Conference on Air Pollution Meteorology. I had a week to get ready for the conference after returning to campus from Christmas break, and there was enough to do that I didn’t quite get my talk or my manuscript finished before I left for Atlanta. I think this was the first time I left for a conference without having my talk completely put together, prepared and practiced, and this actually caused me to stress a bit. And my talk wasn’t until Thursday the 21st, the last day of the conference, so I had plenty of time to simultaneously put off prepping and fret about it, but also enjoy being in Atlanta and hanging out with friends. In the end my presentation went really well though, I was happy with it and Sue was happy with it.
Originally I was going to fly down there on Sunday the 17th with all the other Penn Staters, but back in December the Department of Meteorology asked if any grad students would be willing to go down to Atlanta a couple days early to represent the Department at the AMS Career Fair during the AMS student conference the weekend leading up to the main conference. Basically, they decided that it’d be better to have grad students instead of undergrads man the table to talk to prospective students about our graduate program — a very wise decision, in my opinion. So Andrew & I volunteered for that duty. It was enjoyable to talk to so many students who either had applied to PSU this year or were thinking of applying next year and give them advice on how best I thought they could strengthen their applications. There was a fairly steady stream of visitors to our info table during both the Saturday and Sunday evening sessions. Andrew & I had a little bit of an adventure in trying to set up for the Career Fair on Saturday — the shipment with all the stuff for the Penn State table didn’t arrive at our hotel until close to 2:30 or 3pm, just 2-3 hours before the Career Fair started. That definitely had us nervous for awhile, as it was supposed to have gotten to the hotel the day before. It certainly would not have looked good for Penn State to have an empty table!
The hotel Andrew & I stayed at was the Omni Hotel at the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta, and which was right across the street from the Georgia World Congress Center, the site of the conference. At last year’s AMS conference in Phoenix, Alex & I stayed at a hotel that was a half-hour train ride away from the conference center, so it was pretty different being right across the street this year. (Of course, last year Alex & I were both pretty much paying our own way to the conference, and so stayed at a budget motel, whereas this year both Andrew & I had our entire trip to AMS paid for by Meteo & ARL, so a closer, nicer hotel was feasible. 🙂 And the view from our hotel room was pretty sweet too, a 4th floor view of Olympic Park and the Atlanta skyline.

Saturday the 16th was a very rainy day in Atlanta, but I spent most of the day hanging out with my friend Paul. I knew Paul from the State College E-Free Church, and I hadn’t seen him since he moved to Atlanta in summer 2008 after getting his Master’s in Acoustics. Paul took Andrew & I to lunch at The Varsity, a very famous fast-food joint. I believe it’s the largest fast-food restaurant in the U.S. — the place is enormous. Even at 2pm the place was absolutely packed too. Their trademark greeting (when you finally manage to get to the counter) is “What’ll ya have?!” I think I got a chili dog, chili cheeseburger, onion rings and a fried peach pie. They sure know how to fry food in the south!

We dropped Andrew off at the hotel after lunch (after which point the shipment for the PSU Career Fair table finally arrived, so Andrew set up the table by himself), then Paul & I went to the World of Coca-Cola. The World of Coke is a museum dedicated to all things Coca-Cola (which is headquartered in Atlanta): history, advertising, pop culture and art, a mini bottling plant, free samples of Coke-brand soft drinks from around the world, and of course a kitschy gift shop with more Coke-branded items than I’ve ever seen before in my life. Admission was $15, and I’d say it was a fair price. A small first part of the tour was guided, but the vast majority of the tour was self-guided. Paul & I even got pictures with the Coke Bear (which had a silly, stupid grin on its face), and got a chance to hold Olympic torches. So that was pretty cool. In the taste test area, they had “totems” set up for each continent, each having eight different Coke-bottled soft drinks, and each brand labeled with the country of origin. Some of these other soft drinks were quite good, while some others were pretty bad. In this blogger’s humble opinion, the highest percentage of good drinks were at the Africa totem (South America had some pretty good ones too), while the highest percentage of poor-tasting drinks were at the Europe totem (I think Fanta was the only one I liked). It was a pretty cool 2-3 hours at World of Coke, I’m really glad I went. And I’ve noticed that ever since I went to the World of Coke, I’ve been much more inclined to drink Coca-Cola. Hmmmm…

After doing the Career Fair table for a couple hours, Paul came back into the city to pick up Jeff [Frame] & I (Jeff was in town for the student conference and career fair, trying to recruit students to the University of Illinois, where he just started teaching), to go get dinner and watch the Colts-Ravens playoff game at a Mexican restaurant up in Buckhead, a northern suburb. Then we finished watching the game at Paul’s apartment, so it was cool to see where he lived.
Before getting picked up by Paul, however, I may have gotten hustled. I was walking to Paul’s car in the rain, when a guy came up to me asking if I was from the area. I said no, but he asked if I could help him out anyway. My initial reaction was to ignore him as I did all the other numerous panhandlers in Atlanta, but something about this guy seemed legit. I had a feeling like I was supposed to help him. He told me the story of what happened to him — something about his car getting broken into, then having to wait two hours for the cops to show up, and now in need of $10 for gas to get back home. He gave me all sorts of reasons as to why I should trust him, and promised that he’d pay me back. I asked him how he’d do that, and he said he’d take down my name and cell phone number and meet me at the CNN Center Starbucks at 9am the next morning. I told him I didn’t have a $10 bill, so he asked if I could spare a $20. Like I said earlier, I just had a feeling that I was supposed to help this person. Anyway, the next morning I waited at the Starbucks for a good 45 minutes with no sign of the guy. So maybe he wasn’t being genuine about his situation or his need, or his intention to pay me back. Or perhaps he really was in need, but for whatever reason couldn’t make it to the CNN Center the next morning. Maybe the reason he didn’t call me back was that the piece of paper on which I wrote my phone number got soaked in the rain. Who knows. Whatever the case, I hope my $20 met a genuine need of his.
So after waiting around at Starbucks for awhile, I hopped on the MARTA (the metro/subway) up to Buckhead to go to church with Paul at Peachtree Presbyterian Church. Peachtree Pres is such a huge church, they have multiple church services going on simultaneously. When I was there, there was a traditional service happening in the main building, while Paul & I went to the contemporary service in the building across the street. They even had a couple traffic cops on the street so that parishoners could cross the street between buildings, and turn into/out of the parking lots. And for the service we went to, there were multiple remote locations in that building in which one could view the service and watch the sermon (such as a young children’s/families area). It was probably the biggest church I’ve ever attended. Then after church Paul & I drove back to downtown Atlanta to watch the Vikings-Cowboys playoff game at a place called Stats. Stats is unique in that it’s one of the only establishments in the world to have a table-top tap — some of the tables have their own taps, where you can pour your own beer. It keeps track of how many ounces you pour yourself, and then generates a bill when you’re done. Pretty slick! It was also a fun place to watch the Vikings dominate Dallas. 🙂
On Monday night the 18th, Harris Corporation threw their annual GOES (Geostationary Orbiting Earth Satellites) party. Last year it was at a hotel in downtown Phoenix, but this year it was at Atlanta’s Georgia Aquarium, just on the other side of Olympic Park from our hotel. The theme, naturally, was “Harris GOES Fishing.” The GOES party is awesome because of the free admission, unlimited free food and drinks for conference attendees, but this year there was the extra attraction of wandering around the aquarium. It was fantastic, the whole aquarium was open to us! While there I ran into my friend Laura (both a Penn State and Australia connection there, bit of a story), who then was about to introduce me to her friend Monica, when Monica & I laughed and said, “Oh, we already know each other — we went to high school together!” Yep, there were two graduates of Cumberland High School at the AMS Conference for the second year in a row. Small world! It was fun catching up with both of them. I meant to get a photo of all three of us, but there were so many people everyone knew at the party and so we got distracted.

Overall throughout the conference there were a fair number of interesting talks, and there was only session all week I skipped out of due to a complete lack of talks that interested me, which was on Thursday afternoon, the last day. I spent the majority of my time in either the Air Pollution Meteorology conference, Energy conference, or the Probability & Statistics conference, and then going to scattered talks that caught my eye in random other conferences. One of the highlights of the conference for me was going to hear Dr John Christy (U of Alabama-Huntsville, Alabama State Climatologist) speak on the effects of modernizing historical climate network temperature stations in Alabama. The main gist of his talk was that microclimates rule the roost when it comes to temperature observations, and stations a mere 600 meters apart can exhibit a bias of a couple degrees relative to each other on average. That makes a big difference, especially when many of the stations that have been going into the climate record are near buildings or pavement, which leads to warmer observed temperatures than they actually should be. The room got pretty full for his talk, and it was quite the interesting presentation. I went up to him later, introduced myself, and told him that I really appreciate the work that he & Roy Spencer (also of UAH) do with regards to issues related to climate change research (and John Christy’s emphasis on getting good data and observations into the climate record). He said he doesn’t think too many people at AMS appreciate what he has to say, but I told him that there are people like me who do. So anyway, that was a bit of a thrill for me. 🙂
Getting home from the conference was kind of interesting too. Fog delayed our departure from ATL on Friday morning the 22nd, so that our connection in IAD was really tight. We landed at gate A2, and were immediately hustled to the front of the line at gate A1 to go straight onto the plane to SCE, the doors of which were closed as soon as we were on board. We were literally in the terminal for no more than a minute — that’s the tightest connection I’ve ever made. Needless to say my luggage did not make the connection with me, but was instead delivered to my apartment the next morning.

Okay, so, yeah, it’s been about a month since I last blogged. Sorry about that. A lot’s been going on. I’ll try to hit some of the January highlights in an effort to get caught up.
Back in early January there was a three-day span in which I got to hang out with three of my best friends, Scott, Alex, and Daniel — that was pretty sweet! On Monday the 4th my friend Scott drove up to Cumberland from the Twin Cities to hang out. We shot some pool at my parents’ house for a bit, and then had a good long lunch and a couple tall beers at Nezzy’s in Cumberland. Lots of good conversation! We also ran into our friend Louis from our high school class when we stopped by Louie’s Finer Meats (Scott’s wife Katie gave him an ultimatum to come back with some hunter’s sausage and other goodies from Louie’s while he was in Cumberland, haha.) I was very glad to be able to have those four or five hours to hang out with Scott. He’s in his last semester at the University of Minnesota, and if he winds up with a job in the DC area after graduation (and it’s likely he will), we’ll get to hang out a bit more often, since DC is only a 4-hr drive south of State College! That might even be the next time I get to see Scott & Katie, who knows.
A couple hours after Scott left, Alex drove up to my parents’ house, and then we went over to Nathan & Laura’s house in Rice Lake for dinner and a game of Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. Alex had never played even regular Settlers before, so Nathan took about an hour to thoroughly and carefully explain to him all the rules for first Settlers and then Cities and Knights. Alex did really well for a first-timer, but I managed to come from behind to win the game. As near as I can remember, that was the first time I’d ever won a game of Settlers (regular or Cities and Knights). So it was enjoyable to break through that barrier and finally win a game! I was glad to make it over to N&L’s for a game night while I was home too. On Tuesday the 5th Alex & I drove from Cumberland to Ann Arbor, with a stop in Valparaiso around dinnertime so that Alex could say hi to a couple friends of his. It was a long drive (especially with snow in Michigan making the roads a bit slick), but a good trip. As I always say, a drive that long is always far nicer with a friend.

Alex’s semester at Michigan started the morning after we got back to Ann Arbor, so I bid him farewell around lunchtime. I took a bit of a detour that afternoon on my way back to Pennsylvania, in the form of a 3-hr drive down to Dayton, Ohio, to visit Daniel & Katie! I hadn’t seen Daniel & Katie since they moved away from State College in summer 2007 following Daniel’s M.S. graduation (Daniel was in my incoming class in meteo at PSU and we became really good friends). They moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where Daniel was a weather officer at Barksdale AFB, but this past November he was notified that he was being transferred to Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, and that he needed to report in early January. Not a lot of notice, to be sure! So when I visited Daniel & Katie, they had just arrived in Dayton a few days earlier (New Years Eve), and were staying in temporary housing on-base (the Air Force allowed them to stay there for up to 10 days for free while they looked for permanent housing in/near Dayton … a ton of time, I know). They did move into a rental house off-base less than a week after I visited, so I’m pretty sure I was not only their first guest in Dayton, but their only one at their temporary housing. 🙂 It was my first time ever being on a military base as well. It was pretty painless to get on the base, actually. Daniel was in the vehicle ahead of me, and told the soldier at the gate that I was a civilian visitor that he was sponsoring, and the only thing the soldier at the gate asked to see was my driver’s license, and then asked me a couple perfunctory questions about how long I’d be staying and whether I’d be coming and going by myself. Anyway, it was great to hang out for the evening with Daniel & Katie and catch up with them, and to meet their 10-month old daughter Elizabeth Paige for the first time (Katie’s also expecting with another daughter Claire due sometime in March). Before I came Daniel warned me that Paige was teething and therefore not sleeping through the night, but I said I could deal with it. And she did wake up a couple times during the night when I was there, but it was just fine. On Thursday the 7th I finished the drive back to State College (snow from Dayton to Columbus had me wondering at first if it’d take a really long time to get back). I’m looking forward immensely to seeing Daniel & Katie much more frequently now that they’re only a 6-hr drive from State College (and only 3 hrs south of Ann Arbor). Add Ryan & Sarah to the list in Chicagoland and I have plenty of good friends to try to visit on my trips between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin/Minnesota!

And then the night after I got back to State College I hosted a game night at my apartment. That was a big success, as 13 people came (mostly from PSCG)! So the whole week was basically filled with friends, it was great! That night I also tried to remember a recipe for bars (for those of you who don’t speak Minnesotan, bars are anything that’s remotely like brownies or a cake/brownie mix or something similar) that a family friend brought to our family Christmas this year. Apparently I failed to remember a key step quite correctly, so the bars were a partial failure. But they were still a tasty failure. 🙂
Coming up (hopefully soon) in Part 2: AMS 2010 in Atlanta.

To close out 2009 I went downhill skiing for the first time in my life! I decided that I wanted to learn to ski, partly because I know several people who do it, it seems like it’d be fun, and I’ve decided that I want to start being a bit more adventurous. Back at the start of Christmas break, Alex & I looked up prices to go skiing at several places near the Twin Cities (Afton Alps, Trollhaugen, Wild Mountain) and on the North Shore (Spirit Mountain, Lutsen Mountains). My original thought was to go skiing up at Lutsen (the best ski resort in Minnesota), but lift tickets at Lutsen cost $58 while every place else was $39-42. Since this was my first time skiing, it didn’t make sense to pay more money just to stay on the bunny hill and green circle runs. With Spirit Mountain costing the same as the ones near the Cities, we decided to go there so we could hang out at my parents’ new house on Lake Superior in Two Harbors, Minnesota — essentially a free resort to us. 🙂
On Tuesday when I was in the Twin Cities I bought a bunch of ski and snow-gear: a waterproof winter coat ($160 on sale for $40!), snow pants, a ski mask, ski goggles, waterproof gloves, warm socks… I didn’t want the elements to be an impediment to my enjoyment of skiing, and I needed better cold-weather gear anyway. After I got all that stuff bought, on Tuesday night Alex & I drove up to Two Harbors. The weather was great for skiing on Wednesday the 30th, with temps in the mid-upper 20s and flurries. And the Christmas Day storm dropped a bunch of snow up there too, so there was a nice, fresh base.
We got to Spirit Mountain at about 1pm and bought 8-hr lift tickets, because we wanted plenty of time to ski and an 8-hr ticket was only $5 more than a 4-hr ticket. I rented skis, boots and poles (Alex had his own gear), and after I got all those on, Alex had us go over to one of the green circle runs. It was a bit of an adventure just for me to get over there, what with it being my first time ever on downhill skis and the first time on any sort of skis since I was in middle school when I last cross-country skied. It was all I could do to maintain my balance at the start. To slowly work our way down the mountain and see if I could learn control without going fast, Alex had me try to go from side to side across the slope (only descending the hill a little bit). I hadn’t yet learned how to stop yet or anything like that, so whenever I’d be getting to the side of the slope and approaching the trees or whatever, I’d simply fall over. Falling over proved the most common way for me to stop for most of the day. 🙂 For some reason I often had trouble getting back on my feet with the skis on, too; sometimes I simply could not get up without undoing my skis, it was rather frustrating. All told, it felt like it took about an hour to make it down to the bottom of that green circle slope (“Four Pipe”) the first time. From all the exertion and nervousness of trying to stay up and then trying to get up so many times, I was pretty tired even by that point. And that first run wasn’t very fun for me, but I wasn’t going to let a rough first time down the mountain affect my attitude — this was my first time on downhill skis after all, and I knew coming into this that my first time down the hill would likely be really rough.
So we took the lift up to the top of the mountain and skied back down to the chalet so that Alex could give me some instruction on the bunny hill, teaching me how to do the “pizza cutter” (or “snowplow”) and slow myself down some. After going down the bunny hill a few times without falling, we went back out to the Four Pipe green circle run again. My second time down the hill was much better than the first: instead of going down the hill in about 20 segments, I made it down in just two! I didn’t know how to turn yet though, so I basically just “bombed” it straight down the hill. Alex said that gave him a bit of a thrill of going fast trying to catch up to me. 🙂 When I was halfway down I decided to wipe out; I was going really fast, probably a bit out of control, and felt like I should take a moment to evaluate the last portion of the hill, especially the bottom where all the people were waiting to get on the ski lift.
On our lift ride to the top of the mountain Alex said to me, “You know, the point of skiing is to take your time and enjoy it, turning back and forth. It’s not to see how quickly you can make it from the top to the bottom.” 🙂 So we went back to the bunny hill for quite a long time, with Alex patiently teaching me a couple methods of how to turn and improve my control. Just about each time down the bunny hill I gradually improved and was better able to turn, and Alex would let me know it. One problem that kept manifesting itself, however, was that while I was trying to go really slowly each time to focus on my technique, I’d inevitably start going too fast down the hill and wouldn’t be able to stop. I should’ve been more concerned about taking time to fix that than I was, but hindsight is 20/20. Anyway, we spent a lot of time on the bunny hill, and I was grateful that Alex never seemed bored, and was instead interested in teaching me and helping me continue to improve.
After the bunny hill’s tow rope closed around 7pm, we decided to go back to the “Four Pipe” green circle run again. Apparently I forgot pretty much everything I learned on the bunny hill, however. Just like on the bunny hill, once I started going downhill I couldn’t stop myself. I think that caused me to panic a bit, and then I couldn’t get myself to do the “pizza cutter” well enough to slow me down or get myself to turn — I wasn’t bending my knees together nearly enough, and therefore the inside edges of my skis weren’t cutting into the snow. So anyway, on this first evening run down “Four Pipe” I wound up bombing it down the left side of the run, which was hillier than the more evenly sloped right side. About halfway down there was a big hump/hill that I went over, and managed to keep my balance. Thing is, that led right into a second, much larger and steeper hump. I lost my balance and went down in a most spectacular fall and a “yard sale” (my skis and poles scattered on the mountain during my fall). While Alex was trying to catch up to me, he said he saw me disappear over the second hump and then saw a huge cloud of powder go up, and that he heard the people on the lift above say “WHOA!!” Alex told me, “Seeing that wipeout right there was worth the whole price of admission!” That made me laugh, and fortunately the fall didn’t hurt.
On our second night-time run down “Four Pipe,” I got out of control a few more times, and had two very painful, hard falls on ice, landing on the sorest spots on my right hip, side and arm. They were sore because almost every fall of mine early in the day was on my right side, and because I hadn’t fallen on them in quite awhile (because I was on the bunny hill), they’d had time to get plenty tender. Anyway, I just laid there for awhile after those two falls, and specifically those two falls put me in a pretty sour mood. I was getting extremely frustrated that I wasn’t able to stop/slow myself once I started going downhill, and that I wasn’t able to turn like I was on the bunny hill. After those two painful falls I was also then fearing my inevitable falls, unlike the first part of the day when I’d choose to fall and wouldn’t feel any pain. “I can’t do this” or “I’m tired and sore” was becoming my mantra. A bit further down the mountain when I was going fast and basically out of control, I fell on my left side (finally! my first fall on my left side, haha) to avoid a possibility of a collision with someone. Alex came swooshing up to me and said, “Did you hear what I was yelling at you after you took off?” I said I didn’t, but he said he yelled “Fall on your left!!” Maybe I subconsciously heard him, haha. 🙂
We decided to go for a third night-time run down “Four Pipe.” Alex was trying to get me back to basics and keep me in control, going really slowly. If I started going too fast, he’d catch up to me, grab my pole and stop both of us with his “pizza cutter.” Obviously I was doing something wrong, if I wasn’t able to stop myself but he was able to stop both of us by himself. There was a little plateau we stopped at before starting the last two-thirds of the run, at which point Alex asked me again what I was thinking, but this time he added, “If I hear you say anything more about how you can’t do something, I’m going to think that my money today was wasted.” It was his way of telling me to stop having the attitude of a 10-year old, and I knew it immediately. He knew it would get my attention and it sure did. I appreciate and am thankful that he was willing to tell me bluntly that I needed to change my attitude. Pretty much right away I decided to stop having such a crappy attitude, and instead be more positive and teachable. There were a couple more times when Alex would catch me if I started going too fast, but on the last one of those, I was going really fast, really unintentionally. Alex finally caught up to me, grabbed my pole, but then I fell, and Alex went sailing over me. Double yard sale! It was the only time Alex fell all day, too. After we both made sure the other was okay, we said to each other that that was fun, but we probably shouldn’t do that again. 🙂 We decided that we should probably just try to make it down to the bottom alive and then call it a night. I think that was the last time I fell, because I did the last third of the hill mostly in control (even though I basically bombed down it), and perfectly turned, slowed down and stopped right at the lift entrance. Back at the top (and after my second consecutive completely successful dismount from the lift) we had to ski part way down the mountain to the chalet, and I had even better control on that run. So after getting so extremely frustrated after my painful falls, at least I ended in a good mood on some positive notes. It was about 8pm when we called it a day, so we were out there for about 7 hours. With how tired and sore I was, I definitely slept extremely well that night too. 🙂
Despite some of the frustrations I experienced, I enjoyed skiing and had a lot of fun that day. I’d definitely like to go again sometime to see if I can improve. I’m really glad that Alex was willing to go skiing with me this first time and teach me. His patience, encouragement and correction meant a lot to me. I’m even thinking I’ll try to buy a cheap used pair of skis and equipment. After a few more times of skiing, the money saved by not paying equipment rental fees would cover that. Unfortunately, the best time to find a good deal on ski equipment is at the end of the season. So if I go skiing again before March or so, I’ll probably just rent again. Who knows, maybe a skiing trip to Tussey Mountain or down to Blue Knob near Altoona will be in my future. And next Christmas break I’d love to go skiing with Alex again; hopefully I’ll be good enough to tackle Lutsen by then. 🙂