Sunday, January 5, 2014

Skiing at Nashoba Valley

For someone living in the tropics and only have summer and rainy seasons, it's always been a wonder how it feels to play with snow. We went to Nashoba Valley today to try either skiing (or tubing but we ended up just skiing due to time) as it will be quite an experience for sure. It has been snowing hard with up to 14 inches of snow in the area the past couple of days and the sun is up this day so it's a good time to go. I've been to Whistler, BC but its more like a sightseeing than for adventure, so this would be my first.

view upon our arrival

There is quite a number of people in the resort today, although I was told there could have been more. Still it didn't stop us from pursuing our plans. We left around 10am-ish from Brighton, MA and arrived in this resort located in Westford, MA almost an hour after and since we were a bit hungry at that time, we had our lunch first before we proceeded.

The number of people were starting to get less at that time and people started to leave, although the food cafeteria is very packed that we had to wait for sometime before we got settled.

me

After lunch, we immediately signed up for the rentals and lessons. Yes lessons, but more about that later. We paid $92 each, inclusive of lift ticket, ski (or snowboard) rentals and group lesson.

We were lead to an area after to sign some sort of a waiver, formal registration, then had our shoe size taken and we were almost ready to go.

We had a hard time wearing the ski shoes. It is very uncomfortable and tight, and I had a hard time slipping my feet on it. I was told it's really supposed to be tight, but I should have followed my instinct and had it changed to a slightly bigger size because my feet was tired the whole time after.

Wearing the ski shoes itself was frustrating. It took us like 15 minutes or so and needed help from one another to actually have it worn correctly.

Afterwards, we were given our skis and poles and headed out. It was hard to walk with the ski shoes, and slightly harder with the ski blades on it. We went out the ski area and waited for an hour before the lessons started.

I sure am glad we did the lessons, because I don't think I'll have a good time as it is frustrating at first to try to ski. I sure am glad our instructor were very patient with us. I had a hard time though keeping my feet parallel.

An hour of lesson and off we go. We were thought the basics of skiing, walking with skis, maneuvering and most importantly, stopping. I still found it hard to go up the slope by walking and I mostly slide back down that I have to control the sliding with the poles. It was tiring but fun, and felt like I had a workout of weights (for my feet) and cardio right after.

had fun!

It was a fun-filled day. I had a good time actually to finally try to ski minus of course the problem with my shoes but overall, I'm sure glad we did this today. To cap the night, we went to a Yangtze River Restaurant in Littleton, MA nearby IBM Mass Lab - Littleton Campus to reward ourselves for the hard work.

2 comments:

Ian | GoingRoamingWandering said...

I haven't experience winter with snows yet. Nice share of skiing experience. Happy 2014, Jasper!

Marjorie said...

Playing in snow is on my bucket list, so I am quite envious upon reading this. I've yet to experience a winter. I'll make sure to try skiing when I finally do.