A steep, ice covered learning curve

Well, I'm in Queenstown, New Zealand at the moment and it's snowing. Everyone here is here for the snow. "Are you here for the snow?" everyone kept asking and I had to keep saying no. Eventually I thought I might as well just say yes and see what happened.

I've always viewed people who went skiing and snowboarding with some suspicion. Who in their right minds looks at a mountain and thinks "Hey, yeah, I think I'll hurtle down that with some wood attached to my feet and just see what happens.." ? Well, the day before yesterday I went skiing for the first time in my life and I must admit, I really enjoyed it. Once you get over the fear of flying over the edge of a mountain and being eaten by a yeti, it's actually really fun. I'd had two 2 hour lessons and at the end felt quite confident - so I decided to leave the nursery slopes and head up on the ski lift to a 'proper slope'.

I'd chosen skiing on the advice that you can get quite good at skiing faster - less falling on your arse at the start, whereas snowboarding is two weeks of falling on your arse before you master it. Well, I was about to do plenty of falling on my arse.

I'd got talking to some girls who were quite experienced and asked if they mind just guiding me down the slope a little. So the lift gets to the top of the slope and I see the girls waiting. I hurtle off the lift and tried to turn and stop before I got going - I became a tangle of legs and skis. Once I'd managed to correct myself and plug back into my skis I saw how steep the slope was. I hadn't seen this bit from round the corner. Oh dear. I got quite nervous. The girls were still waiting and smiling sympathetically as i reset my skis and skidded on my arse over towards them. They were kindly and I was apologetic. We began to go down the slope. At this point I was very glad of the guidance - if it wasn't for them I'd have headed off down the middle of the piste in a straight direction. They quickly pointed out that you hair-pin down zig-zagging across it. So we set off round a bend which cornered a 40m high rocky cliff which was cordoned off by a flimsy wood and rope fence. I picked up speed at an alarming rate. I was heading for the fence. Oh dear - here comes that fear again. Something innate took over and I put my brain in my hips - so to speak - and started skiing. I swerved round the corner faster than I've ever gone without the aid of fossil fuels and cornered neatly into the down slope. "wow" one of the girls said "you just did parallel skiing". I didn't know what that meant, but felt pleased anyway. "what's parallel skiing" I asked, before falling on my arse. Apparently it's an advanced high-speed cornering method. So somewhere deep inside me it seems is an innate skier waiting to come out.

When I got to the bottom of the slope the lifts were closing and I was happy to leave my innate skier tucked up away where he was before. In my mind, I'd got away with it and I can tick "skiing and not breaking a leg" off my list.

If only I could tick off "getting out the computer chair without making old man noises".