A Day On The Piste

Yesterday a few of my companions from the bus suggested a days skiing in the mountains surrounding Queenstown. I've never been skiing before but I was up for learning and as an added incentive it was the first day of the Winter Games, which meant I could go and watch the Pro's flip about if I was struggling. As there were two of the party that required tuition and two that were semi-instructors, we paired off and made it a bit competitive. Team 1 consisted of Sophia and Mark, Mark being the learner, leaving Wally and I to make Team 2. We pencilled in a race at the end of the day between Mark and myself and decided the loosing team would have to buy the drinks that evening. So we eagerly headed off with our instructors and began our first lesson, putting skis on.
Mark was up the slope before me and was soon getting taught some basic turning and stopping techniques. Firstly Sophia had him practising on the flatter ground then before long he was gently on a slalom down the slope in her tracks. I also noticed a lot of the other learners were doing similar things at nice steady pace. Wally's teaching method was somewhat less conventional. He first advised me "To stop, point your toes together" then with a little shove he wished me good luck and I was on my way. It was a rather steep learning curve and as you can imagine, I was soon travelling at quite some speed in a limbo style formation towards a group of children. At the last moment danger was averted and I was saved from causing several deaths but I did learn from this experience and from that point onwards I kept it simple.
We had another hour on the nursery slopes before our tutors decided we were finally ready for the mountain. We jumped on the the ski lift, which was a comedy of errors in itself, and 5 minutes later we were at the summit. It turned out to be far stepper than I had imagined so I just plodded along at my own pace. After a few runs both Mark and I had developed our own styles. Mark liked the go-as-fast-as-you-can-then-crash-spectacularly method and I preferred the safer approach, keeping my speed below 2mph at all times. Mark was clearly the early favourite. Although he was never on his feet for than 20 seconds, I was so slow that by the time I'd caught up with him, he'd had ample time to get back up, re-attach his skis and start to build enough speed for his next tumble. However, by lunch time we had both improved tremendously and after a brief refreshment we were straight back on the slopes.
The last run was at 4pm so we jumped on the lifts 10 minutes before and I received my final briefing from coach Wally.  Considering my pace was still pretty poor we were really hoping the race would pan out in much the same way as the Tortoise beat the Hare in Aesop's fable, I just had to keep my speed steady and hope Mark tumbled. We finally arrived at the top and were under starters orders.
I made a good start and had the early lead but I could hear Wally screaming that Mark was catching up rapidly. About half way down Mark over took at tremendous speed and before long was motoring ahead. I just remembered the briefing and kept it slow and steady. With about 500m to go things went perfectly to plan and Mark was rolling around in the snow with his skis in the air. I took the opportunity while it was there and cruised past to take the victory. I don't like to gloat but after being called "Snail Boy" all day, it was nice to bathe in the glory while Wally and I sipped our prize.