Je fais du ski nordique.

This past Saturday Leigh and I were lucky enough to be given an excellent free lesson on cross-country skiing by one of our favorite friends. We successfully learned the following skills:

• Falling down safely
• Getting back up
• Moving forward without "walking in skis"
• Going uphill via the herringbone method
• Going downhill and controlling downhill speeds
• Fall down
• Getting back up again
• Did I mention falling down?

It was really, very fun and I think we did pretty well all things considered. We're hardly naturals or particularly good at this, but I think we will eventually be able to do this sport without embarassing ourselves. We skied for about 2 hours. Afterwards we felt great and had really enjoyed our time enjoying the snow and sunshine. Later that day we were completely exhausted: a true testiment to what a great workout this sport provides.

Without further ado, we decided to buy ourselves some skis to finish out the nordic season. At first we planned to take advantage of REI's package program where you can get a full set of brand new equipment for as little as $269 or as much as $580 depending on how fancy of stuff you want. I was literally on my way to pick Leigh up to go buy our sets at REI when some work friends told me that Play It Again Sports was having a sale on nordic ski equipment and that we could probably get the same set-up for a lot less. My colleagues were right.

When all was said and done, Leigh and I each got full sets (skis, bindings, boots, and poles) for $422 total. We saved about $100 from what we'd planned to pay at REI for their cheapest option. Our skis were 50% off and our boots and poles were 20% off, so we only paid full price for the bindings and $10 in services to have the bindings attached to the skis. We were thrilled because saving that $100 meant we could go ahead and buy our roof rack attachment from REI instead of waiting till March.

I bought a pair of Alpina Tempest skis. Unfortunately my weight is a bit on the lower end of the sizing for these and too much for the smaller skis. If by some miracle I lose 10+ lbs in the next year or so I'm going to reward myself with a new pair of skis, but keep the rest of my equipment. If not, these should serve me well while I'm learning.

...and my poles are red and grey too, so they match. This is very important to me :-)

Leigh walked away with a slightly higher end set of skis by Salomon, but I can't find a picture of them to post. Her poles don't match as well, but they are really nice Fischer poles, very lightweight, etc. We got the same boots, except mine were junior size (because they use European sizing, though they actually fit a little bigger than some women's 7s I've bought in the past) and therefore $10 cheaper. Awesome!

We get to pick up our skis+bindings on Friday evening and are planning to go skiing for about an hour afterwards. We won't do a trail, but will probably just test out our new toys in the stadium at Kincaid Park. Then Saturday afternoon we have a double date with our friends the Tuckers, who will be trying the sport for the first time. Whether we can impart any knowledge on them or not remains to be seen, but either way it will be fun to play in the snow with friends.