Day 2.
Today, like yesterday, started with being woken up by little hyperactive kids. Some of us were ready to kill them, myself included.
After breakfast we headed back to Imori Goryou and split up once again. Lucky us, Greg was again our instructor but this time we were joined by a very young, very small, very quiet, Japanese girl named Leyla. It's apparent from the first 5 minutes that she is ten times better than any of us. At one point Greg was giving pointers to Amelia and I had stopped a little further down waiting for them to catch up, when Leyla slid up next to me. I asked her if she heard Greg tell us to keep going or to wait. Leyla looked at me for a few seconds, then just continued down the mountain. Epic burn.
Lunch was ramen again. I don't know what it is, but ramen and skiing just go together.
At lunch I was getting praised for my turning by Amelia and Jules. This turned out to be my downfall as the rest of the guys thought it would be a good idea for me to follow them up the mountain to where they were snowboarding. Little did I know that where they had been boarding was from right up at the summit. I only found this out along the way, once we were on the gondola to the peak.
Apart from being steeper, the surface was much more varied. Some hard packed areas with lots of loose powder over the top. I was able to turn on it, but then I'd lose control and either fall over, or crap myself as I shot down the mountainside. I was able to get some pointers from Dwayne which helped me get down the mountain, but I was still falling over and getting powder up my back, and just before meeting up with the others I managed to take out some lady's legs. Thank goodness she was quite forgiving about it all.
What should have taken 20 minutes blew out to almost an hour and my legs were about to give way.
Just before reaching our meeting point at the base of the mountain, I managed to avoid a skier but that pointed me directly at a rail. I desperately didn't want to go over the rail, and I literally voiced that out loud. Still, as with mountain biking, the more you stare at something, the more likely you are to crash into it.
So there I was, traveling backwards across a rail, freaking out. I got about a meter along before I toppled over and landed on my backside onto hard, flat wood. Not the way I imagined the last 200 meters of my torturous ski day would end up. When we got back to the lodge, our friend Chris 'Besty' Best was there to greet us.
Onsen was on again. This time, we took our modesty towel with us and managed to procure some cans of 'biru' before entering the water.
We had neglected to book dinner reservations so we tried our luck at Penke Bar. It's a little unnerving traveling 1/4 way around the globe to Asia to end up eating buffalo wings, served by Australian staff, and sharing the room at the bar with Irish people.
The last thing I remember was skolling my beer and stumbling back to the lodge. I'm pretty sure the moment has been beautifully preserved in someone's camera.
That rounds up day 2. Stick around for Day 3 coming soon.
Kampai!
-Simon.
No comments:
Post a Comment