Confession: I love the stage of discovering something when you're still in the steep part of the learning curve, but not so steep that you could slide right off. Right now, all things connected to my x-country skis is exciting. Especially the waxing bit - because, you see, I don't get it at all!
And something you should know about me: there are two qualities I look for in people above all else: humour, and skills. More specifically, a sense of humour compatible with my own, and skills that I don't yet possess. Because then we get magic: I learn without being afraid to laugh at myself, because I'm already laughing.
So, I love all the colours of the hard wax, and the mystery of it all. I have my cork and my wax scraper and my glide wax and my klister. I can finally put a pile of waxes in order of stickiness: I know that special green is less sticky than green, for example, and that red is really sticky. And I've finally clued in that when in doubt, wax colder, because you can always put stickier wax on top in a hurry, but you can't go the other way as easily. And, here's where my cool friends come in, Sarka explained the idea of putting special green down in the grip zone while at home, and doing a good job (and thus I finally discovered a use for my blow dryer!) - and then using the stickier wax once I've evaluated when I get to the trail. But there are so many mysteries, like this one: Ernie told Sarka that, a lot of times when spring skiing, it's appropriate to put hard wax *on top of* klister. My mind is spinning. I must ask Ernie (I miss Ernie. I haven't seen him in so long, it is so my fault. When he tried to teach me skiing stuff - and you don't get a better offer than that, when a man who has coached national-level skiiers is willing to spend time with you - I was only receptive to the skate-skiing. I was quickly overwhelmed with classic, and I didn't enjoy it that year - and thus, I never really made use of the rope-pulley thing that he gave me, to help me with the upper body movement. I had it in my hand when I reorganized my outdoors gear the other day).
I used to call myself an adventure slut, though one must be careful when saying that - it is much less innocent sounding than geogeek. But you see, if there is an adventure, I want to go! That's how you end up doing things like caving for a while before admitting to yourself that you really don't like it that much - by that conditioned response of, sure! I'll come! But I am still adventure slut - it is still ridiculously easy to sell me on adventures, and if only I didn't have so many non-negotiable time constraints. But, to be honest, I went through a couple of off years recently (lots of reasons, including some bad group dynamics, deteriorating fitness and attendant increasing girth which makes movement less fun, and a gardening obsession when I learned the names of all these plants while HP sat in an adirondack chair handing me another beer when mine was empty. I miss HP too.) And now, ass size notwithstanding, I am so back! my fitness has picked up again (thanks, in part, to a beer bucks deal with John*, and in more parts to the return of the cyborg trainer chickie), my garden is happily perennialized and thus much lower maintenance, and HP is devoting his life to being a responsible husband and businessman, and across an ocean at that.
And I'm learning new stuff again.
*The beer bucks for butt moving deal... here's how it works. You shamelessly take advantage of someone's new year's musings by proposing you *pay* each other to exercise, and at some point in the future, you spend all the accumulated money on beer. You start with $1 for every 30 minutes of activity the other person does - whether you run or walk or ski or play frisbee with the dog, it doesn't matter, only exception is that you can't claim time spent walking to the pub or ummmm horizontal activities (because of too much information rules). You kick the other person's ass. When he catches on that he can do these long bursts of activity on weekends and catch up to your slow and steady plodding, you change the rules on him: now, you only get $1 for 30 minutes if your heart rate consistently stays above 120, otherwise it's 60 minuts for that loonie, and you must log time four times a week or face deductions, and if you don't work out *at all*, you lose $20. And you must keep an eye on this formula, because the second it stops fitting your patterns better than his, you need to change it again, so you stay ahead of him. And you probably shouldn't admit that, not when your being-fleeced fitness quarry knows your blog address. But I'm tempting fate. Something about hubris.
Posted by Johanna at March 25, 2006 12:11 AM