What idiot invented wild horses?

I hardly slept the whole night with anxiety about heading off to ski today. Every fibre of my body was saying "don't go you idiot!".

We went. It had snowed non-stop all night so Hakuba was blanketed in snow. And it didn't stop snowing all day...

It is a nice start to each day when waiting for the shuttle bus that you get these 20 minute snippets of conversation with the same people lining up. Craig has been with a french sounding American guy in his 60s called Peter who is lovely. His wife is not a skier, so she has been doing very sensible things like going on day trips to see the snow monkeys bathing in the hot springs, and heading to Matsumoto to visit the castle. My snippets have been with a family from Cairns who live at Redlynch and the wife is a teacher at Freshwater State School which is where Craig went to primary school.

It was a full bus this morning and we were the last to board, which meant standing up holding skis and poles with one arms stretched out precariously trying to hold on to an ill positioned rail. The bus driver hit a road sign, so there was a lot of lurching and sudden stopping happening too.

Next task, buy lift passes for two days. ✅

Next new experience, getting on and off the moving gondola. ✅

Next hurdle (and it was about now my desire to throw up grew sizably) was launching ourselves over the edge of the green (easiest) run. Hmmmm. First little bit lulled me into a false sense of security, because after the first little bit, there is a steeper bit, and remember that at this stage we have still not mastered turning around or stopping as well as would seem prudent if the edge of the ski slope was coming at you faster than you would otherwise desire.

So somewhere between the top and the blessed relief of being at the bottom, I fell over more time than I can count (and I stopped counting after about 15), hyper-ventilated so much I managed to fog up my goggles, spent a lot of time trying not to cry and telling myself that (nutty in my opinion) people find this fun and it is a mental game not to psych yourself out (a game at which I was failing badly). Pretty sure my quads have never burnt this much in my whole life!

I will add that Craig was doing pretty well, and Kate was skiing down a little bit and waiting for us (mainly me) to catch up, offering words of encouragement. I am very glad I looked up a YouTube video before I left the hotel this morning on how to stand up when you have fallen over. I am beginning to perfect that technique, but man is it exhausting. By about now I am pretty much hating this entire thing.

Now for the chair lift... Kate went with me and tried to prep me for what lay in wait in terms of how to get off the jolly thing. And, somehow I managed it! Success. With that, I caught the gondola back down to the bottom, and Craig and Kate skied down Route 7 to the bottom, arriving only a few minutes after I did. Lunch and a rest!

Those persistent and frankly very f***ing annoying wild horses dragged me back up again after lunch to try and conquer the anxiety which was now meaning I could barely eat. I am not really an anxious type of person, so this is all very unfamiliar territory. Anyways, here I am at the top faced with another torturous journey down the green run. Once again, I lost count of the number of times I fell over because I am just not getting "it". "It" is all so counterintuitive... to lean forward to slow down, and lean left to go right and lean right to go left. Argh.

At the bottom, Katie and Craig decide to go up the mountain to try something different so I say I will call it a day... Which means going back up the chair lift to get to the gondola to get back to the bottom, this time by myself. Well, I discovered why the chairlift occasionally stops when you are on it because I was the cause of it being stopped. I got to the section where you are supposed to stand up and then ski forth down a frankly way to steep hill in my opinion, and my fatigued muscles just couldn't do it. There is no "down" on the chair lift, so you have no choice but to get off. So the chair lift stops as it has turned the bend, with me still on it, so I now had to plop off the chair lift, which thankfully or otherwise was into about a metre of snow below. I didn't land gracefully, so here I am now flailing around in the deep snow trying to work out what way is up so I can crawl out of this mess. Stand up, try to regain what little composure and dignity is possible at this stage, and then amazingly manage to do three beautiful turns slowly down the hill to the gondola. Craig thinks it makes no sense because that bit was steeper than other bits where I was falling over all the time. Hop on the gondola, head back down as Craig and Kate arrive, and we catch the bus home.

At this point in time, I am now developing a sore throat and swollen glands, come home, have a shower, get into bed and fall asleep, glad that this terrible, terrible day is finally over.

Craig is quietly gleeful that I will never, ever try to convince him that a skiing holiday will be a great idea again. Like EVER. I was too whatevered to even go out to dinner, so the husband kindly went foraging and bought pizza for dinner, bless his little cotton socks.Read more