Skiing!

Ow. I am in pain. This pain was not caused by falling 5-10 times, nor by slamming into some random Chinese guy while traveling several mph on skis. The pain was not caused by walking several miles, nor by hauling skis up a slope 3 times. No, this pain was caused by attempting to slide down a huge pile of snow which had a notch carved into it not big enough to fit my hips... I'm certain I'll feel pain from everything else later, but for now, I feel bruises forming on my legs...

Today was a good day. I got up at seven, put together a lunch and piled on several layers. Then I walked out to the main gate, took a taxi to the Ching-way (sp!), and waited to meet a friend around 8. This girl is from H's company, she is from Singapore, which was a very good thing, since she speaks (and reads!) fluent Chinese, since everyone else is initialled, we'll call her R. So we met in the Ching-way station around 8 and took the train away from the main part of town. We rode (not really meaning to) to the end of the line. Our stop was the next to last stop, but the doors closed before we could get out. We just waited awhile for the train to go the other way. We got off, R had some trouble since she only had gotten a 2 kuai ticket, but needed a 3 kuai one for the distance she had travelled. We walked from the station to the park (we paid 30 yuan at the entrance), then over the lake (so much fun! Though it turned out to be less efficient to have done so... It was quite cold, too... so cold that our breath frosted the stray hairs near our faces.) to another part of the road, then down the road to the skiing area. (Our purpose overall was to go skiing, it was her 2nd time and my first.) Our first inkling that something was different came when we got to a stretch of road that had Chinese police posted every 10 feet. It turned out that today was a huge skiing festival/international 50k cross-country ski race that lasts four days. By the time we got there we were quite cold, and ready to warm up a bit. We went ahead past the ski lodge (sorta) to the area where the race fun was going on. On the way, we stopped at a vendor and got tea eggs. I was a bit hesitant about these strange brown eggs with bits of black stuff sticking to them, but I went ahead, shelled my egg, and tried it. It was good! I'm going to try to make them when I get home, but that was a good egg. (Essentially, tea eggs are eggs boiled with water and tea leaves.) It was also hot, which helped warm my hands for awhile. We wandered around the race area for awhile. Twice, people had their picture taken with me (random, but fun), and we took our picture with the mascot fellow for the race: an Alpen grandfather type guy. We walked some more, seeing the random things, including some neat snow sculptures, ice bikes, little sleighs drawn by reindeer without horns, little dogsleds with room for two people. We tried some food from another vendor: it looked like a piece of wood, but it broke easily and turned sticky in your mouth, R and I thought it might be frozen molasses, we're still not sure. We made a loop and wound up near the ski lodge, we bought 5 more eggs (2 for her, 3 for me (I told you, they're good!)) and went in the lodge. We discovered it was 200 yuan to ski (100 to ski, 100 deposit) for two hours. So first we had our odd lunch: Tea eggs, little orange creme filled cakes, lemon cracker sandwiches, and beef-flavored Cheetos (I also had a cup of nai cha (milk tea)). I didn't like the Cheetos as much as I thought I would. C'est la vie. After we were thoroughly fortified, I bought a pair of gloves (the ones I've been wearing were letting too much cold through, so we layered those over my new ones, and we went to ski. It took a little while to get suited up, get a locker, (me to learn how you put everything on... I was quite helpless at first) and get out on the beginner's slope. We stood in line for the ski lift, (I'll insert here that standing in line in China is about as cutthroat as you get, if you don't aggressively move toward the front, all kinds of people will just go in front of you... As I was hapless/helpless on my skis for awhile, it was a challenge...) which isn't a lift, rather there's a disc that goes between your legs connected to an overhead line which draws you along. As you take the lift, you aren't sitting on the disc, you're sliding along on your skis, so if your skis go the wrong way (say, out from you in a V), you're going to have some problems. Guess who had problems! I fell off, which was the second time (I'd already committed the V error getting to the lift), so R got off, too. There was some fun getting up (you have to take the skis off to get back up, and I kept trying to get up with them on...), and we coasted back down, allowing me to get used to the skis. We decided to just walk up the slope instead of standing in line again. Walking with ski boots is plenty of fun... They're not exactly traction-oriented, since you're supposed to be wearing skis under them, so you have to walk carefully, nay, nearly gingerly to get somewhere (and trying to ski up the slope was not an option, since to do that you have to pull yourself along on your ski poles, which is murder on the arms...). We finally reached the top, put on our skis, and rode down. It was at that point that I understood why people ski. I was sort of trying to go slower, to keep my skis in an inverted V and not let them get to the error V, but I flew along, all the way to the bottom of the hill. It was fun. We hiked back up, after trying for awhile to pirate a ride on the lift from people who fell off, and we went again. This time, I was trying to be more controlled, and to go slower, keeping a larger inverted V, but with that as my focus, I wasn't trying as hard to sort of steer, which is when I slammed into the random Chinese guy... yeah... There was a chain reaction: I slammed into him, we both slammed into the ground... It was kinda weird, 'cause it almost seemed like he was standing there waiting for me to run into him... He and his friend helped me back up, and I had gotten my ski back on and was fixing to coast down the rest of the way when some girl got tangled up with me, and I met the ground again. Finally I coasted back down (By that time, R had come back and helped me up) the slope. R decided to try the intermediate slope, while I gave the beginner's another shot, by this time we were 35 min away from 2 hrs. My final ride was great. I sighted early on where there were gaps in people and focused on a. staying up and b. not running into people. I decided against another run, even though there were 25 min left, and made my way back to the ski lodge. It was slow going, and I asked a Chinese lady on the way to take a picture of me on skis. It took a couple tries, but we got a good pic. I waited for R back at the lodge, since she had our shoe claim tags. I tried to claim mine, since time was running out, but the guys behind the counter, amid Chinese, asked me to "Wait a moment, please." I went back out to wait for R, and finally saw her. We got our deposit (and shoes) back, then went to try out the snow slide that other people (mostly kids) had been having fun on. We chickened out for the higher one, opting for the one that had the too-narrow notch... We learned our lesson and went down the big one next... it was terrific fun. We were tired from the skiing, so we started to walk back to the entrance. We hadn't gotten far before a taxi van driver asked us if we needed a lift, so we took the fast/easy option and took the van to the Ching-way station. After I got back in the room, I decided that a nap was in order, but it took a loooong time before my legs stopped emitting cold and I was able to sleep comfortably. I woke up later, started to write this post, then H and I went out with some friends and had a good (big) dinner, then came back, and now I'll probably take a long hot shower to forestall the aches which are sure to come (or as Jamaicans would say, "Soon come."). I'll do my best to catch everyone up on what else has been going on over the next few days, but for now, tsai chien (phonetic spelling), or goodbye, from China.

Check out pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009646&l=85cd9&id=92700607