Unos giros / some turns

It was a learning experience for everyone. Pompeyo had raised the issue at the AGM (and a few times before, sounding people out). What about those members of the group who had never in their lives put a pair of skis on? Why not use the knowledge of the group to give them a taster of skiing so they could decide whether or not they liked it.

They don't know what they've let themselves in for

It seemed like a reasonable idea, a few people agreed. So that’s what we did.

The ‘knowledgeable’ folk were: Pompeyo, Carmen, Me and Liz.

So we were teaching (coaching, pulling up from the floor, encouraging, trying not to wince) some absolute novices. Let’s be clear, we were not trying to teach them to ski, only teach them enough to stop (turn if at all possible) and to use the lift, and of course, let them have a go at putting on boots, getting up after a fall, that kind of thing. It didn’t  hurt that the plan included a discount on gear hire (€10) and the option of a big lunch (€12).

We went to Fuentes de Invierno (I took my camera but the visibility was so bad that it never left my pocket). Spring snow (i.e. wet). We had a quick recap of necessary vocab (ski tips: espatulas, the back of the ski: talon, edges: los cantos, bindings: sujetadores, brake!: frena, snowplough: cuña) in the car and off we went.

Chaos, absolute chaos... like herding cats

We marched up the bottom of a long flat green piste and set to work.

There’s nothing like watching absolute novices to show you how much you have learned (and to demonstrate some appropriate cursing, meca is the Asturian equivalent of “bugger”, because it is basically the short form of me cago en el mar (poo in the sea!) although you can soften it even more by using “me caches el el mar“). As expected there was much falling, flailing, yelping and laughing. What seemed to us painfully slow was for them frighteningly speedy, but they all seemed to enjoy it. I’ll be interested to hear from Noel what he thinks about teaching real beginners. Fuentes de Invierno has a ski school, but there seemed to be a huge number autodidacts today (that would be, all over the place).

After a few goes down this little slope, Sabi, one of my charges told me to say los giros not las giras (ie masculine not femenine) for the turns, as the femenine means a tour. This was a long way from being my only mistake in Spainsh today (I paid special attention to the ski instructors I passed later in the day for good phrases: no te tiras! (don’t lean back) was one of the most used).

After lunch Liz and I went up to tootle around (in the zero visibility) and the others (those still standing/willing) paid for a single go on a lift. There were only a couple of injuries, despite the ma

ny falls, nothing too serious (fingers crossed). I think it was a success, half of them will be back, I’m sure.