Lake Tahoe Ski Trip Day 3: Learning to Ski

Happiness is : Skiing

Today I learned to both how to ski and how to love skiing. It is so beautiful and perfect.

We had to rent ski’s for this trip. We checked out the rentals from the hotel but it seemed, how do I say this, too expensive. I asked the car valet (there are so many types of valets here!) where he likes to rent his ski’s, and he tipped me off to Ski Butler with a 10% off coupon. That was very nice.

Ski butler is a ski delivery concierge service. For a price that was 30% cheaper than hotel rentals, they came right to our room with multiple snow boots to fit us appropriately for the ski’s. Mike was incredibly nice. He let me ask lots of easy questions like, do you wear jeans to the crag?, will I fit in if I wear mittens?. These are important questions because I decided not to buy ski lessons for the trip. I really enjoyed the Ski Butler Experience and would rent again

The day started with a coconut water bought at the Café Blue to break a $50 bill I intended to use for tipping my rental concierge. Then I picked up my lift passes and headed over to the ski area. It was really awesome. Even though we did not rent ski’s from the Ritz, the Ski Valet’s still shuffled all of our equipment around stored it for us inside at the end of the day. What wonderful service!

That is dorky Maria Skiing

Casey and Matt in thier skiing Garb

I had an ugly few moments learning how to ski. I felt fear, that same fear I feel when I am outdoor rock climbing. As soon as I got down to any decline, I fell down. I fell down in strange, ugly ways. My ski’s popped off. I ended up going super fast and wiping out at the very bottom. Then I waited for my friends to come down because the were going slow like responsible ski learners. Then Allie helped me down the mountain carefully with control. After that quick lesson, I got over the hump and really started to enjoy myself. Whoa, did I enjoy myself. I love skiing. I skied as much as I could. I skied until they closed the lift. Allie told me that I needed to practice getting my ski’s closer together but a wide stance is where I feel comfortable. How could I not? I was pizza-ing all over the place.

Alex took a video of me skiing. My skis are far apart because I am a beginner.

After Skiing we went to the spa to steam and let out some steam. Not everyone had as much fun as I did, unfortunately. I used their bathing suit dryer and put cucumbers on my eyes while I laid down in the steam room.

Then my dear friends and I met for a lovely in room dinner. The omnivores got a stack of ribs from the delicious backyard barbeque (highly recommended) while us with more vegetarian sensibilities shared some vegetarian panini room service. We also had some drinks and played cards.