Still looking for fresh powder

2/7/2009

Still looking for fresh powder
Tammy Malgesini
Inside My Shoes

Last month I headed up to Spout Springs Ski Area and hit the slopes for the first time in three seasons.

The night before I was scheduled to do a story on a couple of local Special Olympics athletes training for the 2009 World Winter Games, I was like a giddy school girl waiting for her first date to show up.

For anyone who's a skier, the time between seasons seems like an eternity - so after missing three winters on the white stuff, I was philosophically opposed to missing another.

As I trudged up the hill to get my lift ticket I watched a small group of people huddling with a ski instructor. I laughed to myself as I thought about my first experience on skis.

I was employed as the residential manager of group homes for adults with developmental disabilities. Several of the clients had expressed interest in participating is Special Olympics skiing. The only problem was one of the clients required 24-hour supervision and we were short staffed.

Suzy Tosten, one of the group home managers, and I decided we'd go to Spout for the coaches' training the week before training started for the athletes. I arrogantly figured if I took a lesson and spent a day on the slopes, I'd be one step up on my clients and would be just fine.

As I tried to remain upright with these two long boards strapped beneath me, I wanted to watch my feet. Buzz Fulton, our ski instructor, kept a watchful eye on me.

"Look up, a picture's worth a thousand words," he kept saying to me.

Then he told us to fall down, so we could learn how to get up on our own. At the time I thought it was ridiculous that I should purposely splay myself all over the mountain - something I was desperately trying to avoid.

After we ventured up on the chair lift for the first time and began to slide down a real slope, I suddenly realized I needed more instruction in stopping. As I was headed straight for a tree, Buzz and my classmates were all directing me to wedge my skis. However, above the dull roar of instructions, I heard Suzy say, "Fall down."

Suzy wasn't only a co-worker, she was a trusted friend. I didn't know at the time Buzz was a long-time ski instructor - I just figured he did his duties at instructing as a way to get a free ski pass. I listened to Suzy and gracefully shifted my weight and toppled in a heap.

As I laid there in the snow, I suddenly realized Buzz probably knew what he was doing when he had us purposely falling earlier in the lesson so we could learn to get up. I still have the ski pole, which bears a distinct bend from being used to pull myself up more than once during my bunny slope days.

After my close friends Mark and Teri Briley moved to Denver, I finally experienced ski nirvana during my yearly birthday trips to Winter Park. The ski resort actually sent me a T-shirt and other goodies the first season I missed after having my left knee replaced.

Last year I was set to return to the slopes, but then I did something to my right knee. Although some people might give up, not me. I'm addicted to snow. Although my joints are creaking, I've always said, "Age is a state of mind. Someone just forgot to tell my body that."
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Tammy Malgesini is the community editor for the East Oregonian. Contact her at tmalgesini@eastoregonian.com