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Articles
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Snowboarding
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Skiing, snowboarding poles apart.
Can anyone tell me what the heck you're supposed to do with ski poles?
After three ski lessons, I still have no clue. I admit to a pole bias. I've ridden a snowboard for 12 blissful years without using metal sticks to help me.
Then I arrived at the rental shop in Breckenridge before my first ski lesson and was presented with poles. What was I supposed to do with them?
"Well, you, uh . . . they're, um . . . good for pushing yourself around and stuff on flat ground," a guy with baggy pants at the shop told me.
He must have been a snowboarder. I think his co-worker who grasped my poles was, too.
He told me, "OK, hold one in this hand, one in this hand . . . then just drag 'em on the snow behind you and yell 'Oh mah God y'all!' "
The advice wasn't encouraging.
Skiing always looked to me like the perfect way to separate Siamese twins. Instead of having one board to worry about, you have two. What happens when the right ski goes right and the left ski goes left, and I'm stuck in the middle? I pictured the ski patrol bringing me down the mountain in two sleds.
But this year I decided I would learn to ski anyway. It probably would be easier than spending another year explaining how I have lived in Colorado my whole life, and even worked at a mountain resort, without stepping onto skis.
A handful of beginner lesson discount packages encouraged me more.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, I thought as I lurched to the chairlift in hard plastic boots. After all, I've seen a lot of guys skiing who look like they know more about Miller Time than Bode Miller. Since I had time before my lesson, I tried my pole-dragging technique.
Apparently my mind exaggerated the splitting power of skis. I went up to the bunny hill and started down, poles dragging. I pointed my toes right, the skis and I both went right. I pointed my toes left, we all went left. Even when a rebel ski shot off at a dangerous angle, I brought it back.
After a few "Oh mah God y'all" runs, I'd conquered the bunny hill without falling once.
When class started, I had just one question. What about the poles?
"They don't do anything really, at least at first. Let's work on our turns," says Fred, my instructor.
We worked on our turns all day. Wedge turns, true turns, green turns, blue turns.
Picturing the skis as two little snowboards carving and twisting in tandem helped me whiz through short turns and long turns, but on every carve I let my hands hang down like a true knuckle-dragging snowboarder.
"Keep your dukes up, don't let those poles drag," Fred kept yelling. At the bottom I asked if I could leave my poles there.
"No, they're very important," Fred said.
For what? I asked.
"For . . . balance," Fred stammered. "And . . . uh, rhythm."
I asked for a demonstration at the top of the mountain.
Fred obliged, dancing down a blue run in a chain of quick turns punctuated at each edge change by quick, rhythmic stabs of his poles.
Jumping around like that, he looked like a Gore-Tex extra from the musical "Stomp."
I followed, trying to do the same thing, but I forgot the pole part and did pretty well. I even worked in a few "Oh mah God, y'all" yodels on the way.
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