anarfea

I just wanted to let people know that I am, in fact, alive. Just not on Dreamwidth of late. I'm still doing The Artist's Way, I've just been doing all the exercises in longhand, because I've gotten super into fountain pens! I've acquired four pens since I started writing this. In fairness, I only bought three of them. One was a gift. And one of them is for drawing. The other two are for writing. And damn is writing with a fountain pen fun. So, I've been doing all my Artist's Way exercises with my new pens (and inks! I bought a ton of ink samples and was given a ton of ink samples).

Today was my last day of ski instruction. Which was good, I think. The weather is warming up and the snow is getting slushy and I was just kind of feeling done with skiing. It's supposed to snow again this weekend and I may use a couple of my vouchers to go one or two more times with my husband, but I'm glad it's over. Today was hard. My afternoon lesson, a 17 year old girl with autism, was having issues. She got really clingy. Literally. She grabbed onto my arm and refused to let go unless she was allowed to hold the other instructor's arm. We couldn't get her to hold the bamboo pole, or the ski pal (a hula hoop type device), she just wanted to grab onto us. Which is not particularly safe, so we quit after two runs. My co-instructor said she admired my patience. Which surprised me, because I don't consider myself a particularly patient person. But there's not much you can do but be patient with someone who insists on clinging to you like a koala bear. 

Anyway, I'm glad I did the program. It is rewarding. But I'm also glad to have my Saturdays to myself again.

So, I'm on week two of my six week Adaptive Ski program, and this afternoon a number of students didn't show up, so we had an impromptu clinic on the bi-ski.

A word on what the bi-ski is: it's basically a sled, with two small skis as runners, a seat (which we call a "bucket"), and a trough to hold the skier's legs. Outriggers can either be fixed to the sides of the ski or held in the skier's hands. The outriggers are basically itty bitty skies (mine were actually the tips of regular skis that had been cut off). It's more stable than it's cousin the mono-ski, which has only one, usually wider, ski. These are for more athletic skiers who have strong upper bodies, as they are always used with handheld outriggers. A bi-ski is usually used by skiers with less strength and mobility or who have paralysis higher up the body.

Anyway, this afternoon, I pretended to be a student so that the guys could practice loading and unloading the bi-ski from the chair lift and tethering it. Tethering is basically when someone skis behind the bi-ski using nylon leashes to control it. Primarily you are acting as a brake to keep the bi-ski from going too fast, but you can also steer it by pulling on the tethers. How much steering you need to do depends on the abilities of the sit skier. I have never been in a bi-ski before and have pretty much no bi-skiing ability, so they used fixed outriggers which are basically like training wheels. If everything is going well, the ski should actually balance on the longer skies. But if we get off balance, the outriggers are there to keep the ski from tipping over.

In theory. LOL. Actually, we tipped over a lot. This is why they were using me instead of a real student. But I had fun. The feeling of a bi ski is totally different from being a stand up skier. When you're skiing, usually you are absorbing small bumps and what not by flexing your knees. The bi-ski has a shock absorber which lets it bounce up and down, but it's still a much rougher ride than skiing standing up. And again, they were pretending I was pretty paralyzed, so they were having me initiate turns by turning my head to the right or left (which actually shifts the balance of the ski quite a bit). I could also lean my upper body to the right or left.

I really have newfound respect for our students. I really appreciated the amount of trust a sit-skier places in their handlers. When I was tipped over, I was completely helpless. The ski is heavy and I had no outriggers, so all I could do is lay there on the snow until someone picked me up. It was really eye-opening. Loading and unloading the lift was also fun. They basically picked me up and lifted me, bi-ski and all, into the seat, and then scooted me off and set me on the ground. Also, riding the chair I was sitting way up high, which was a different prospective. But again, it requires so much trust. The ski has a safety clip that attaches to the lift to keep it from falling off the chair. Still, it's scary being way up high and being totally reliant on other people.

Anyway, here's a pic of me on the bi-ski.




You can't see the outriggers in this picture; they took them off so they could "bucket" me down the bunny slope. "Bucketing" is when a handler gets right up behind the bi-ski and pushes it. We did this on the bunny slope because it's so flat it's hard to get enough speed to get the bi ski going. The physics of skiing dictate that it's actually easier to ski fast, because you're working with gravity and sort of flowing in the stream of it. The ski naturally drifts towards the fall line (the path a snowball would take if you rolled it down the hill), and you only shift your weight to steer. When you're going slow, it's actually a lot harder to control the bi-ski. This was something my handlers struggled with because they were afraid to let me go fast. But I got to go fast when the instructor was demonstrating, and it was a lot of fun. I'm glad that we provide this experience to our student-athletes.

So I went taught skiing against last week. No teaching the week before because they had a lot of cancellations and pretty much all the students who did show up were sit down skiers and I can't tether a monoski.

This week I worked with my first adult student. She was pretty easy. She's an advanced beginner. Just starting to ski blue runs but still turning across the whole hill and using a wedge.

I had a lot of fun with the second student--a sixteen year old with autism. She's a strong intermediate skier on the cusp of transitioning to advanced. Most of the lessons I've taken recently have been for learning advanced skills. So I felt like I had a lot to teach this student. She's trying to learn how to separate the upper and lower body. Skiing is really a lower body sport. You want the hips and legs to move dynamically but for the upper body to stay quiet. Basically the lower body turns and the upper body doesn't. This is tricky. Most beginner and intermediate skiers turn their whole body, keeping the shoulders over the feet. Learning to turn your feet without turning your shoulders is hard. It's pretty essentially if you want to ski moguls, though.

So, I've been skiing for a number of years, a few as a child, more as an adult, and for a while a number of people have been asking me to participate in something called the Adaptive Ski program, which is basically a program that teaches people with various cognitive and physical disabilities to ski. I reported to my first day of training today. I have to complete a total of six hours before they put me on the snow with somebody, and I'll be paired with someone more senior (so there are always two instructors per student). 

I found the first day of training really intimidating. We went over the program's procedures and there are all sorts of things I didn't think about, like you have to harness people who have a seizure disorder to the lift in case they might have a seizure and fall off, and you have to escort students to the bathroom and what not, and it just reminds me that some of the students are very disabled. Of course, I will probably not be paired with someone who has severe disabilities my first year as a volunteer. But it's very sobering. It's a lot of responsibility.

Also my legs really hurt. I hardly skied at all last year, and I've only been up twice before today this year. I really need to build my own stamina. Granted, I will likely be sticking to the bunny slope. But still. Just hauling around my ski gear takes work, and I am out of shape. There may be some opportunity to do early morning clinics with ski instructors before we start our own lessons, and I am super excited about that possibility, because I've never taught skiing before and I feel a little out of my depth.

I also need to think about what kind of disability I want to specialize in. The first 2 days of training are pretty general. But after that, I have to pick 4 clinics that focus on either dealing with specific kinds of disabilities (like autism or visual impairment) or specific kinds of equipment (like the ski bike or mono-ski). I'm probably not physically strong enough to control a bi-ski or mono-ski. Those are basically sleds that the student rides in while using outriggers on the hands to steer. Like this. When teaching a student to use a bi-ski or mono-ski, the instructor skis behind holding onto the device with tethers. So you have to be a strong enough skier to control the sled, and also be strong enough physically to load the sled onto the chairlift. Anyway, I don't think that's me. I'll probably focus on dealing with blind or autistic skiers, I think. Those you usually just tether yourself to so you can help them steer, or they ski beside you holding onto a pole. All this is still super intimidating to me. But I guess I will sign up for classes and learn.

Anyway, I'll keep you all updated if you're interested.