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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This subject has been percolating in the subterranean strata of my noggin for several months, searching for the connections that will lend it substance. The search for this topic’s handles has a wedding-cake’s worth layers: to depict the wandering mind requires its engagement, a self-cancelling concept that would oblige me to catch and release the idea in a Sisyphean quest to define its merits.
The notion of expounding on this Möbius strip of an idea was, naturally, an example of the wandering mind in action. I might have been noodling on a question several of my Dear Readers have posed, which can be distilled to, how did I ever learn to write in the manner that I do?
To find my answer, I had to relax my grip on the subject. My reasoning self was ready with mechanical answers, such as the discipline of writing every day. Duly noted, but insufficient. Let’s wander a little further.
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If you’ve been a lifelong skier, you’ve not only experienced failure; most likely you’ve survived at least one miscalculation so soul-scarring, its time capsule is enshrined in the halls of memory alongside weddings and funerals.
As inspiration and prod to memory, allow me to recount a vignette from my days as a freestyle competitor. The location is Keystone, Colorado, the event, The Chicken of the Sea Freestyle Classic, a sponsorship coup that couldn’t have been too tough to land as Ralston Purina owned both the resort and the tuna.
I qualified via a preliminary aerial competition, taking a conservative tack by throwing a mule kick, hardly daring when going upside down was common. But my modest move was clean and hung out to dry, with a barely discernible, weightless pause at its apex.
