J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Dustyfog,
The videos were great, thanks very much.

I think ski instructors are a bit more careful with the children, and very rarely lose one.

Caron-a, I agree with you, you can't be too careful where kids are concerned. I think it's a very good idea giving them those cards and walkie-talkies, just in case,

Ally

Dustyfog,
I'm afraid to say this story is entirely true. I did write about it somewhere else, on another thread, somewhere else in this tangled ball of string, I mean ski forum.

The instructor regularly used to begin the lesson with, say, 10 students, and at the end there would only be 8. He lost me the first morning, when I fell over on a green run, because although he knew I'd fallen he didn't wait for me and skied off with the class to the next lift. If it hadn't been for my daughter, who waited for me, and told me where everyone else was, I'd have wasted the whole morning's lesson.

I did complain about him to our T.O. rep, who followed it up, but apparently the ski school just laughed about it - he was well known for it but he'd been there teaching for years.

I am now quite phobic about losing my instructor, and follow them so closely that during the last holiday my poor instructor stopped rather sharply and I had to do an extreme emergency stop and showered him with snow. He was kind enough not to tell me off but to tell me that my emergency stop was much better than the one I'd done when we were practicing it as an exercise.

Ally

Ian,
I think it depends on how much the instructors get paid. In Bulgaria, for example, I believe they get paid very little (or they did when we went there 6 years ago), and I have heard it said, on another website, that the instructors tips make up half their wages (don't know if it's true though). I tipped both the kids instructors in Bulgaria, even though one was awful, because I felt sorry for them. And I tipped the cleaners as well.

I didn't tip the instructor last year in France though, because I got the feeling that he had plenty of money and the instructing was just a winter hobby for him. I think you have to be careful with tipping. I did pay for his lunch though, when he took us around the 3 valleys on an all day trip, but it was a prior arrangement because he had a nasty habit of losing his pupils during the day, and I didn't want to be left behind somewhere, lost, in the wrong valley, and I was the worst in the group. The deal was, I would pay for his lunch on condition that he didn't lose anyone during the day.

Ally

Amanda,
That's a very good point. I don't think I'll risk reading anything written on April Fool's day, in case it's a joke, and I go taking it seriously and telling everyone that, for example, all flights to Geneva will be half-price if booked by the end of today (1st April).

Ally

Ian,
I'm glad I'm not the only one getting males and females mixed up - but at least you hadn't been sitting next to Lota on a chair lift all week, like I had been with that boy I thought was a girl.

Ally

Amanda,
I have a degree, but yet I do lots of unskilled manual work, as well as management type stuff. I reckon one feels happier, and more balanced as a person, doing a bit of each. Of course, it is a bit different with me, because I'm self-employed, but I still have to do lots of gross stuff when cleaning, worse than toilets, and I spent years shovelling cow muck etc.

I admire your determination. If you're prepared to do anything, I'm sure you'll get a job, and then you can work your way up to doing whatever it is that you decide you like best. And the mountains are SO beautiful, I reckon it will be worth all the hard work, to live there.

I decided to be a farmer because I like living in the country, although I was brought up in the city, and I like working outside and manual work.

Best of luck with getting a job in a ski resort,

Ally

Lovely photos Pablo,
I'm glad you had a good time. I've walked up part of Ben Nevis in the summer, but never skied in Scotland.

Ally

Bandit,
What a good idea, how stupid of me not to think of that. My brain must have died - I've had a very busy day today, not ski-ing though, unfortunately,

Right - I've looked it up now. It seems to be the same thing as zovirax, an anti-viral, which I've used for cold sores, but I didn't know it worked on chicken pox as well.

Ally