Travel & Work Stories
Practicing what he preaches, Cool Works staffer Tom shares joy of skiing, almost dies eating a bagel...
My life flashed before my eyes, I felt weak. But just as soon as these feelings had come over me, they were gone. The seemingly baseball sized chunk of bagel, cream cheese, sprouts, and lettuce sandwich that had taken up residence in my throat had moved on down the line. Thankfully.
Such is one of the perils of having a job that
allows only a few minutes for lunch. This is the 
case
in my job as a ski instructor. The morning lessons end at noon and
instructors are to be lined up for afternoon lessons by 12:20. That's
twenty minutes to inhale whatever your calling lunch that day. Twenty
minutes if your lesson ends on time, if there is no line in the
cafeteria, and if you can find somewhere to sit/stand/lean in the
locker room. Any way you slice it, that's not a ton of time to take
in 1/3 of your daily caloric needs.
In any other job, labor unions would have organized and shut down the firm running the sweatshop. But in this case, as ski instructors, we are not only glad to oblige, we are lined up to oblige. In addition to short lunches, we also enjoy modest pay, and hazardous, snow-covered commutes. Once again, for some reason, many of us line up day after day, and for some, year after year. I work with one instructor who celebrated his 50th season last year. THAT is a lot of swiftly consumed bagels.
Okay,
so there are a few differences between ski instruction and working
in some turn of the century sweatshop. As a ski instructor, I enjoy
many days of free skiing, an environment where I am constantly learning,
and the satisfaction of knowing that I play a role in people's discovery
of a sport that serves up plentiful amounts of beauty, freedom and
the thrill of sliding down mountains. From what I have read, sweatshops
do not have plentiful amounts of beauty nor do their workers enjoy
the thrill of sliding down mountains.
Having worked several years in Yellowstone National Park, some
of them as a cross-country ski instructor, I felt teaching alpine
skiing at a local resort would be a great way to get back to my
seasonal beginnings. Working at the resort with eighty other instructors
turned out to be a very different experience than working in Yellowstone
with two instructors. The teaching and learning curves were steeper
than I expected. The culture was more difficult to break into than
I imagined. Having learned to ski when I was 19 put me behind most
of the 20-year-old college folks I was working with. I have been
skiing for about ten years; most of my peers have been skiing since
they could stand. But for the reasons mentioned above, I wanted
more;
more time on the hill, more practice, and more lessons.
And more is what I got; more students, "Tom, we have 175 mighty-mites signed up, you're going to have to take eleven with you today." (Mighty mites are beginner to intermediate level skiers age 7-13) Eleven, I thought to myself, I thought the maximum class size was ten and even that number can be frightening, "Uh, okay" I said. I also got more experiences they don't talk about in training. For example, I was riding up the lift with three students when I noticed that one of them had only one ski on. Let me qualify the gravity of this situation for you. This was not an adaptive skiing lesson for people who may be physically challenged in one way or another - this was a plain-old ski lesson, for people with two legs. Here is an outline of our conversation: Me: "Where did your ski go?" Student: "I don't know." Me: "Did you notice where it fell off?" Student: "No." Me: "Remember when we practiced standing on one leg.well now were going to practice it again, just while getting off the lift, do you think you can do it?" Student: "I think so."
It is at this point when one must put 
faith
in your ability as an instructor and the ability of the student
to learn. It is also at this point that you start thinking what
to do once you make it off of the lift and exactly how your class
will proceed with the now one-skied student. Fortunately, for the
student, my teaching career, and the other class members, the elusive
ski had come off just as we had loaded the lift and it traveled
up the hill with another skier a few chairs behind us. Skier and
ski united - a beautiful thing, indeed.
In addition to the unexpected challenges, there where also unexpected
rewards. "The toughest job you'll ever love" is what the
Peace Corps used to advertise, all of the sudden I kind of knew
what they meant. One of the most frustrating things that can occur
in a class is when one student is way behind everyone else. This
situation requires a lot of patience and some creativity. As a ski
instructor, one of the things you learn to do really well is to
ski backwards - facing your student and in a case like the one mentioned
above, you spend a lot of time skiing backwards. But here's the
payoff, after a while, the student that is a little behind will
"get it." This might happen during the lesson, maybe later that
day, maybe next week, but when they do and if you are fortunate
enough to be there, suddenly you realize why you have been working
so hard. It's great when your riding the chair lift and you see
a former student below having a fun time skiing and enjoying the
sport you choke down bagels to promote. 
This story would be incomplete if I did not mention some of smaller experiences that make up a day on the mountain. Here are a few just for example: riding alone on the chairlift and hearing the soft whistle the chairs make moving through the air, having a friend show you a seldom-skied area of the mountain, doing nothing but ski on one ski for two hours, just because you have the time to kill, being stopped in your tracks by dramatic lighting coating the mountains. I could go on for a while and I suppose my point is this: so much of what makes my job enjoyable are the tiny moments that by themselves seem insignificant, but together they assemble a pretty fabulous experience.
As I mentioned earlier, many instructors at the resort have been doing this for a long time and I was and will be for some time, the new guy. Which, as most of you know is not the easiest place to be on the social food chain. But, like the bagel, the challenges of being the new guy will pass, and knowing the payoff, I am willing to risk oversized bagels, icy roads and steep learning curves anytime they come along.
(Photos thanks to John Saxon)
Other stories from the road:
Sharing the Road in Europe with Patty
Teaching
English abroad with Ben
Traveling
in Korea with Sarah
Sea
Kayaking with Joel
A
Panama Peace Corps story from Cat
Do you have a fun, happy, sad, adventurous or amazing work or travel story you’d like to share? If you do and you like to write, send it on and we’ll have a look. greatjobs@coolworks.com