One of the foundational elements of many misunderstandings is cemented in place when one side of a relationship presumes the other is operating at a level of knowledge, vocabulary and general awareness that they do not, in fact, possess. No one likes to be taken advantage of, a concern that compels some consumers (most often male) to disguise their vulnerability by embellishing their resumes, beginning with the self-assessment of their skiing skills.
One of the problems with this sort of seemingly harmless puffery is that, if the salesperson takes this optimistic testimony at face value, he or she will automatically import a large bundle of presuppositions to the party. When a prospective ski buyer alleges advanced ability, salespeople are naturally going to presume there’s little need to revisit fundamentals. The rift between knowledge presumed and knowledge possessed has already begun to form, and only a return to basic training can heal it.
So, what sort of stuff do we, the ski salesmen and bootfitters who toil in America’s specialty ski shops, presume you know? Or looked at from a slightly different angle, what do we find ourselves explaining over and over to skiers who have been skiing for years, even decades, blissfully unaware of fundamentals so basic, no one has ever explained them?
In a properly sized shell, forefoot buckles can be finger-tight. Your forefoot does not respond well to being crushed. To help avoid over-tightening the second buckle on the lower shell, don’t over-tighten the first. I’m not advocating looseness; quite the opposite, I’m interested in the precision that comes from being close to the shell without resorting to excessive pressure.
If you struggle to get your boots on, heat them first. There’s more than one way to skin this cat, but a heated boot bag heats the liner and the shell, which is money.
Your toes will feel the end of a properly sized boot before you buckle it up. In fact, your toes touching the end of an unbuckled boot is one way to know it’s the right length shell.
There is a correct way to hold a ski pole. Look around you in any chairlift line. A hefty percentage didn’t get the memo. Please see attendant illustration for do’s and don’ts.
Wear a thin sock made for skiing. You might think every skier must know this, but remember what we said in the opening sentence about presumptions. Thicker socks are more hindrance than help, and wearing two pairs (or more) is an affront to all that is holy.
An insole that matches your arch doesn’t just feel better, it connects the proprioceptors in your arch with the rest of your balance system, unconsciously making you a better skier. The surreal beauty of this connectivity is that it operates independently of conscious interference.
Store your boots buckled. It’s not about buckling them tightly, merely under enough tension to keep their shape. Make it a habit and you will have fewer fights with your footwear.
While we’re on the subject of common misconceptions, you were not going 70mph, I don’t care what your watch or phone or goggles say. It’s flat-out impossible.
For a quick refresher in basics subjects like those I’ve breezed over here, I refer you, your friends and your skiing neighbors to The Returning Skier’s Handbook. You can find it under the Gear Guide on the home page of Realskiers.com.
And for a master class in miscommunication, I refer you to this immortal Monty Python sketch about a rogue Hungarian phrase book: https://youtu.be/C1Sw0PDgHU4. Even f you don’t find it particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, it’s well worth the 4:20 it requires to view it.
Before I close the book on this week’s Revelation, I want to apologize to my sound engineer, Oscar Wilde, who happens to be a Russian Blue feline, about the “skin the cat” reference. Sorry, Oscar, I said it in a moment of weakness.
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Fit the Whole Skier
We bootfitters are naturally obsessed with feet, but the best bootfitters don’t just fit feet; they fit the whole skier. The “whole skier” includes more than just a quick survey of the lower leg and how it’s connected to the foot. It’s even more than all of the skier’s physical attributes, which include not only height and weight, but seated posture, stance, kinesthetic wiring, arch health and stiffness throughout the kinetic chain; the whole skier also includes his or her history with the sport and, most importantly, what sort of skier he or she wants to be.
One of the most obvious traits about almost all boot customers is his or her gender. (Please forgive me if I don’t overcomplicate what should be a simple point about body type.) The first step in a sales process that consists of winnowing all possible boots down to one is picking from the pile of unisex boots or the alternative world of women’s boots.
No-brainer, right? Not so fast. What if a particular woman were tall, with a long tibia and a tapered calf? Let’s add to her profile that she’s a good athlete with a background in dance. Up to now, she’s only been an occasional skier who rented her gear, but a new beau has persuaded her to take a deeper dive. She already has her season pass.
The Things We Do for Love, Part II
Dear Readers who regularly devour my weekly Revelations know that I have already written at length on the subject of Why Skiers Are Better than Everyone Else. Last Friday I was reminded of my timeless prose as I spent 45 minutes traversing a very short stretch of road that connects I-80 to Route 89, my proscribed path to Alpine Meadows. As I voluntarily descended into this automotive miasma, I could make out the dim form of the interstate traffic snaking down from the west, two dense strands of tightly linked vehicles stretching beyond the horizon.
Realskiers.com Trounces Field to Earn Second Stump-Bertoni Prize for Excellence
In a stunning upset that in retrospect appears inevitable, Realskiers.com has been awarded The Stump-Bertoni Prize for Excellence for the second year in a row.
For those cave-dwellers who snoozed through Realskiers.com’s first triumph in this gilded competition, permit me to bring you up to speed. Then as now, the battle for this cherished trophy (metaphorically speaking – the S-BP lacks sufficient funds for a memento commensurate with its prestige) was fierce, extending both of its eponymous founders to previously unknown limits.
The final ballot was determined by leg wrestling over Stump’s furious protest; he cogently argued that this sort of bias against the vertically challenged has no place in a free society. Bertoni imperiously overruled Stump’s evermore strident complaints, citing a lack of legible documentation, tardy submissions and a tendency to perspire copiously when provoked.
This year’s competition was no less fraught.
