Groundhog Day?

We had a deadline this morning of 08:30 for 🎿 on and ready to step out into the ❄️to get down to the ski lift. Breakfast was breads, cereal, and somewhat unfortunately for Jon a "Date bread" that was masquerading as a pain au chocolat, however, spirits not dampened, we managed to keep to the deadline with only a few extra minutes.

Martin, from Haus Martin Tschol , only had to briefly chastise us for keeping the boot room door open before we were ready to slide down the slope to the bottom for an hour of practice.

09:00 to 09:45 was a good session practicing on the one and only baby slope before it was time to split up for my lesson and the others trip up the mountain.

I joined a familiar queue at the bottom of the "test slope" - somehow more ominous this year than last year, knowing the pressure of a circa 75m slope to direct your whole allocation for the lessons. Luckily, this time, I performed well, certainly better than one poor bloke who managed to side step around 100 steps up a slope to suddenly announce that this was the first time he'd had skis on his feet, before being promptly demoted to the "green flag" alongside around 15 other people who also had put themselves into a competition with those with a number of weeks of skiing under their belts.

The instructors hadn't accounted for the number of novices on this Sunday morning, and this led to a rapid redistribution of instructors as the beginners were further shoe-horned into "very beginner", "mild beginner" and "good beginner". My hour of practice had, however, allocated me into the "advanced" class. While this was accompanied with a sense of accomplishment, it was also tinged with sadness that I wasn't to be under Martin's instruction from last year. He must be 83 this year, and still instructing!..

My day was filled with very technical ⚙️drills which pushed my balance, and muscles 💪to the limit today, Michael, my ski instructor was determined to ensure we "made progress" today under his tuition. The drills were useful even if they exercised muscle groups I've not used, probably ever...

I lunched again at Giriabli from last year, enjoying the veggie pizza that mixes italian food with Cauliflower, Courgette, Aubergine and Carrot, not typical pizza toppings, only briefly made awkward when one of our group dared to suggest dining al fresco to which Michael declared "This is a very bad idddeeeaaa, all of your food will be cold withhiinnn secooonnnddssss"...

The others had a fun day traversing to St Christoph before heading back to the main slopes in the sunshine!

The afternoon was filled with more drills, before I felt that my legs would be jelly with another run, and I headed back to join Jon and Colin, while Pete and Chris went back to town to swap their boots to other pairs that more matched their feet shapes.

We regrouped at the house, and made a rapid decision that we were in need of 🍻🍻🍻and so we headed up to Krazy Känguruh at the top of the hill. Something about the 5 of us seemed to scream "these blokes want to sit down" so we enjoyed the first two pints in a table before "Take me home country roads" came on and we joined the party people standing up on tables.

Back home, we put on some tunes, opened a bottle of wine which Pete inexplicably identified as being flavoured with Blueberries 🫐which he would argue was skill....

I cooked a Chilli with rice, and then we had a chat over some Paprika crisps and wine!

Tomorrow brings my last day of lessons, again with Michael, and a further exploration of the Austrian alps!