Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 3.
Four years ago, when Mr. Pinault first brought me to the French Alps for the winter holidays, I was a total snow sports novice. But only a total lame-o would spend a week at a ski resort without pursuing some snow-related endeavor, so, on that very first day, weary from jetlag and the stress of meeting my then-boyfriend’s family for the first time on Christmas Day, Mr. Pinault strapped me into a pair of Alpine skis and released me onto a slight snowy hill in back of the condos. It quickly became obvious that I lacked the requisite balance needed to stand unwavering in a pair of skis; in two minutes, I managed to fall about a dozen times, often with stunning velocity. It looked like my snow sport for that week might have to be sledding.
I decided that a more sensible route to gaining solvency atop of skis would be to start with XC skiing, which would effectively remove most of the pitfalls of downhill skiing (speed, steep slopes, my own spazzy fear) while enabling me to hone my rubbery sense of balance. And then, maybe, someday, I could use that bodily knowledge gleaned from those twiggy XC skis and transition to Alpine skiing.
And that time is nigh. During last March’s trip to Montchavin, I put on a pair of Alpine skis and found that I could not only stand, but maneuver quite comfortably, if not with the ideal amount of control that should govern a pair of downhill-pointed skis. And with this most recent ski trip, I got a solid 5 days of Alpine skiing to further develop the all-important technique of turning down a slope, rather than the straight, potentially lethal line of XC skiing.
Caution! Alpine Skier
And you know what? Alpine skiing is pretty freaking fun, a lot more fun that laboring on a XC track with burning arm muscles and constant motion. I can see why there are thousands of people on the Alpine trails, and less than a dozen on the XC trails.
The sun is hurting our eyes
I quickly figured out that alpine skiing is little more than controlled skidding down a mountain. And once you can control the skidding… hell, yeah, that’s a good time.
Cool Dude on the Slopes, with the Sun in His Eyes
Now that we’re back on the slopes, Mr. Pinault has dusted off his snowboard, which is inscribed with the word Rage (“Rage? You’re a 37-year old married IT professional in a part-time MBA program,” I pointed out. “And I’ve got a lot of rage,” Mr. Pinault sniffed.) Here’s something cool that I bet you didn’t know about my husband: Mr. Pinault was the first person ever to snowboard at Montchavin. Several people have reminisced to me about a teenaged Mr. Pinault and his wooden, primitive snowboard, with which he purported to slide down mountains while swaying from side-to-side. At the time, the cutting-edge French ski community was experimenting with an ill-fated contraception called the monoski, similar to the snowboard except the monoskier faces forward and carries poles. Mr. Pinault instantly grasped how much cooler, safer, and more pleasurable the snowboard was compared to the monoski, and became Montchavin’s original snowboarder more than 20 years ago. Says one witness, “We all thought he was crazy.”
Rage Against the Snow
Since Mr. Pinault’s simply insane snowboarding pants aren’t showcased in their full glory in the above picture, here’s another…
Pants
So we went downhill skiing 5 days. 3 other days were for XC. On one day, we XC-ed over 30 kilometers, a daunting distance that was the result of a totally unplanned diversion down a snow-covered road to the Olympic bobsled track, which was closed but still pretty awesome to see, if only for…
Le Bobsleigh!
- Any excuse to present my butt to the camera
And one day, we didn’t ski at all. It was raining, warm, and foggy, so we simply took a walk down into the valley. We could have joined all the fanatics on the slopes, but the pleasure of skiing is heavily dependent on the conditions. Walking, on the other hand… my motto has always been “When life gives you rain, go for a walk in it.”
Walking by a stream of melting snow.
Cabbage in the garden
