Change and maybe an MOT?

My boss resigned last week!

I guess at least he waited until I got back or rather I'm glad it didn't happen while I was away. That would have been more of a shock but it's still a major event. He's off to another agency good luck to him.

So his deputy gets his job and one of my good friends is now deputy CTO.
This means a change of line management and some choas going forward. It's going to be a tricky time as the new CTO is a good guy but can be a bit volitile. I forsee grief the next time something goes wrong whether or not any of us will be to blame.
This all happened without the boss bothering to get around to my MOT (well his mind definately will have been on other things) to discus my future at the company so I guess I'm an irrelevance and wouldn't have figured in any decision making. My MOT will probably be a bit of a non event.

So I did something to cheer me up, I booked another ski trip! I'm off to St Anton for a week in April. I'm really looking forward to it. This maybe an addicition!

Being Home

Man is cold!! and I've been in a ski resort. The country look very in white on the flight in travelling over the home counties, with little white patch works of fields.

So I back and doing chores, the washing mainly. Getting this blog up to date, particular the exam week entry will take a while we've doing a lot of stuff.

Back at work nothing much seems to have changed, a few more people have left but the nine to five is the same. I'm watching everyone still enjoying themselves on Facebook and its making me want to start planning a return trip. In fact, its odd to be sitting still for so long and I've been going for walks around the office and outside to work off some energy.

Exam Week and Results

So we finally get to exam week.

It started with everyone meeting up at the Roundhouse first thing in the morning for registration. So a lot of nervous people, form filling and queueing. The whole skier group of plus a few extra people are logged in and randomly given a form to fill in. Each form has a pupil number and couple of instructors listed on it for the groupings for the next four days. We have a bit of a confer and I find that unfortunately I don't really know anybody in my group but fortunately I seem to have done quite well with the instructor selection. The two instructors are Nick and Chris. Nick I don't know but Chris I know a bit socially (he was on the avalanche course) and everyone that have had him says he's a really good instructor.
The exam is broken down into two days concentrating on skiing skills and two days of teaching practise. We will be assessed over all the days and then find out the results on Thursday after lunch.

So first up is Nick from Wales, who managed to scary us all straight out of the gate by talking about what gets an immediate fail, only to finish the sentence by saying he was joking! The focus is on the basic skiing skills and getting really good parallel turns. The conditions are very good and much to our amazement we have a really good ski day covering lots of ground including and trip into Whistler Bowl!!! to practise doing our steeps. We were quite happy when we finished and were surprised to find out most of the other groups had just been doing drills and not doing much distance. The others were quite annoyed when they found out what we had done.

The day ended with a couple of lectures on teaching and the basic of the Canadian Ski system. That was bearable but the homework reading was very hard as I kept nodding off. At dinner I tried and failed to get anyone to come out for a beer.
The snowboarders also started their exams today but on the other mountain. They were all pretty tried when I saw them and they had to do a lot more homework that us, including making lesson plans.

Day two was also quite a fun day, we had to cover the basic beginner techniques but we had a couple of breaks to go for a bit of a ski. Nick is a phenomenally fast skier and a don't think I've ever gone much faster than the groomer that we did to warm up first thing in the morning. I had gotten up early and done a couple of runs, on the beautifully smooth slopes, as I had assumed we wouldn't be doing anything fast, so I was warm already as so could keep up. Lessons concentrated on teaching from new to basic wedges and speed control. We also did a selection on moguls and steeps including a slow race (going down as slowly as possible in control not stopping) down a hard mogul field, at which I managed to beat Nick (Not a normal thing according to him).

The day ended with more lectures, homework and a one to one with Nick about my skiing. He seemed quite happy about it and said I need to concentrate on getting low and turning with my feet.

The homework in the evening was better and I manged to go out for a few beers with Pete, Ed, Ed and Mike. I think most of the group were getting a bit too worked up about it all to go out but it was good to decompress.

The second half of the week was with Chris, a Canadian who I know socially to have a beer with. The focus was now on teaching the 'Canadian way', What to look for and how to handle a group. We all had a little go at teaching and I did learner wedges, giving the group the 'Hands on knees with poles'. Chris didn't expect too much from the first lot of teaching as they knew we hadn't done it before. We did a bit of free skiing and Chris gave a few more pointers on our technique, and I would agree with the others that he is a very good instructor. A pity we only had him for two days.

There was then more lectures, on what to look out for and fix and homework on teaching kids. Dinner was dramatic as the snowboards only had a three day assessment and so knew their results. We kept meeting up with little groups of them not knowing if they had done well. The results were generally quite good but not everyone was OK. One group, randomly assigned like us, only got half the group through. A case of a very hard examiner.
But mostly they were very glad they had finished. Pete, myself and the successful snowboarders went out afterwards to the GLC, although we left them getting very happy after three beers, after all the next day was D Day!

And so to the last day. Fortunately it was only a half day but what a half day as the weather was snowy/cloudy and the visibility wasn't good. The format for the day was to let all of the group having about 10 minutes teaching for each of us in our group of 7, each teaching a group of 3 and rotating around the group until we have all had a go. In the end I was one of the last in the group to get my turn and the nerves where steadily getting worse and worse. We had to teach either wedges or parallels and because I did wedges yesterday, today I got to teach parallel turns.

So I got my little group and started with a bit of a ski, with Chris the examiner just behind me the whole time watching me. The rest of the group stayed out the way a bit further up the hill also watch me. After a bit it was time to find a good place to stop which was a bit tricky as the slopes were busy with too many other groups doing the same thing. Next I stopped to watch my group ski for a bit and try to work out what needs improving. having come up with something to fix, which is very hard to do as unlike normal skiers the issues are quite minor and hard to spot. Anyway I suggested a drill deciding this time to get rid of poles and picked the hands on knees drill again. This time making them raise up to the zombie pose and back down to touch the outside knee at the end to focus on correct body position. The time went pretty quickly in the end and I don't think I stopped talking for the entire time. Chris said cool and said I didn't need to be so nervous, so it must have been quite obvious. I was very relieved to have had my turn and that was it nothing left to do but finish the last couple of people to go and wait for the results.

Results was a very stressful process with highs and a big low.

First up was some bad news as they read out the people who only passed half of the exam. Unfortunately Alice, from my original group failed the skiing part and had to go up in front of everyone to get a round of applause and get her exam summary sheet to find out what she needs to fix. This was meant to celebrate the part they did pass but it was a pretty humiliating process in the end. It also made the rest of the ceremony a bit odd with trying to comfort the ones didn't pass while being happy for the ones that did (Alice, successful resat her skiing part a couple of weeks later so is now fully qualified).

They then started to read out everyone one person at a time to go up and get their certificates, for fifty people this takes a long time. It was ages until Chris said
'This person has to be at work on Monday' and I thought 'Oh no that's me!' ha ha and I was up and walking to the front before he had even said my name. What a buzz after all these years since Banff going up and getting applauded by a whole room of people.

So, Yes I'm a ski instructor!

We got a little pack with a metal badge and a certificate and the exam summary sheet which detailed several bits for me to work on, like making sure I'm not in too tall a stance and making sure I finish my turns. It fitted in whole ethos of continuous development and improvement.

Now that was all done and dusted we hit the town.

It started to get surreal very quickly as, in the first bar were we all decided to meet, we bumped into the cricketer Freddie Flintoff, who was in town to do some filming. A very nice chap, he was having a quiet drink with a friend not being recognised by the locals. Once the British turned up he got surrounded but took it well and there are loads of group pictures with him. We ended up quite a big group not the full 70 but a good proportion. So the plan for the evening was set with loads of drinks a good time and still quite a bit of adrenalin washing around our systems.

Eventually We all end up in the same night club, and took Freddie with us. There was drinking and singing and dancing and from this point on things definitely got blurry even the photos are fuzzy.
So finally Nic and me headed home and on the way back we searched the town for a some sort of
food and after a long long search we ended up at Domino's Pizza. Finally home at 3AM.

Next morning was an earlyish start fortunately I was mostly packed but still had a bit to do. So it was a case of just jamming it all in and sorting out when I get home.
Guy, the organiser turned up at 10:30am with the bus and so with a big farewell to the lads in the flat, it was goodbye to Whistler, Canada and back to reality.

Week four - wedges and exam prep

Things are getting a bit more serious now as we head towards the exams next week. Our instructor for this week is another Canadian lady, Jo. She too is a very experienced instructor, who when she's not instructing seems to work at the hospital and plays ice jockey! She also seems to have had the most injuries including bust knees, a broken back and lose of depth perception. Not that any of that slowed her down much!

The focus this week is on teaching and learning how to do wedges correctly. There are a series of steps in the Canadian teaching system which roughly go as; introduce yourself, assess the class, warm up ski, assess the ski level, introduce drills to improve them, reassess and then integrate knowledge into normal skiing. We tried a little bit of teaching to get a feeling for it, and the general feeling was pretty nerve racking.

As part of the qualification we need to be able to take a complete beginner all the way to doing parallels so we need to be able to do wedge (or snowplough) turns. This isn't easy when its been years since you last had to do them. So we went through the steps and concentrated on getting the weight over the outside ski and the correct pivot of the foot. Being able to do this all correctly in the wedge builds a base for when you go back to doing parallel, if you carry the correct feeling across then you will be in the correct position in the parallel turns. I think I learnt quite a bit doing this so I didn't mind doing it, however most of the rest of the group weren't happy as we stuck doing this on the green runs when there was good powder conditions.

We had some instruction about beginners, including how to explain how to put on skis and how to explain how to move around in them. We even went over to the magic carpet area and did some drills in with the learner groups so we could see what issues they have and a bit of learning to detect issues in others.

This week's focus on my technique was getting the feeling of falling down the hill (sounds weird but it means getting far enough over the ski to have good control) on the steeps (making me commit to the turns), more turning the ankle to edge, so much so my ankles were getting sore by the end of the week (really the only niggle apart from being knackered all the time).

Also another fun thing we did was one ski skiing. We left one ski at the top of the Cat Skinner chair and then went down Easy Out on one ski. The idea, switching skiing foot several times, is learn to a turn, left or right depend which foot the ski is on, using just the one edge and not cheating by using the other ski. This helped in two ways; one to get the idea on balancing on one ski, as you should do normally, and two to rediscover the feeling on being out of control on skis so we know how the beginners feel :). Also we tried to turn both ways on one ski, which is a level two skill, we were quiet a sight to see with legs and arms all over the place.

One piece of information from Jo that really helped me this week was the idea of the 10 percents of turning. Basically think of the turn in 10% blocks and have the various acts of turning broken up between them. So get the balance and pivot and edge all working through the whole turn smoothly rather than going all full on edge just at the end. So make it all nice and smooth.

So now we have a couple of days to get our heads together and revise the detail, then it's time for the exams!! (actually the weather at the weekend was nice enough to get a bit of a tan and a few people like Kieran to do some T-shirt skiing!)

Week Three keep in control at all times

This week our instructor is Kim, a French Canadian lady who seems to like being in the trees alot.
So trees figured alot in the week as we learnt the best ways to travel through them, taking the line below a tree and committing to the turn so your body doesn't get caught up in the branches. The key piece of advice for trees is don't look at them. if you look at them you will ski into them, better to look at the gaps and plan a couple of turns ahead (if you can see for all the trees!)

On the technical side we worked on our turns and I particularly worked on remembering to use my polls and have my arms out in front of me. The correct pose is something like what you would be in if you were getting ready to jump off a low table. With bends at the knees and ankles, weight on the balls of your feet. With your stomach held tight and your arms out in front of you. They call it an athletic stance. We also continued to increase the hardness of the steeps we journeyed into.

The weather this week gave us a huge amount of snow and with the change in conditions we got chance to learn about powder or Pow! skiing. The two main things to think about in pow is to still be centrally balanced on the skis, not to lean back and to keep the skis a bit closer together as they cut through the snow. The general techniques on skiing don't change, be it in powder, or on steeps or moguls or on groomers. Getting the weight on the down hill ski, pivoting, edging and planting the polls are all the same. Powder is great fun and Kim took us to some great bits of the resort to experience it.

On Friday I had a day out with Ed the snowboarder across to Symphony bowl to play in all the trees and the new pow. Symphony had been closed for the past couple of days due to the Avalanche risks and so it hadn't been over skied. We had a great couple of hours messing about in Staccato grove.

The weekend which was still in mostly white out conditions was the Avalanche course. This is separate from the Ski instructing system and focuses on skills which would be useful in more back country situations that are not ski patrolled. We covered the types of Avalanches and how to spot the conditions that cause them. There was some interesting science into the way the snow pack forms and ways they forecast what the conditions will be like. We also learnt how to use radio transponders, probes and snow shovels so we can self rescue in the event of an avalanche. This was quite fun as we pretended to find and rescue buried people.