All our eggs, one basket

Whoever said "The best laid plans often go awry" should also have included a corrollary: "Poorly planned, skin-of-your-ass plans sometimes don't work out either." Being as he didn't, I can only lay the blame for what happened squarely at his door, and vow vengeance on all his spawn. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As previously mentioned by Tyler, June passed in a great big chocolate-flavored lump of waiting. Our plan to become ski instructors had 3 main parts: 1. Take the AADIDE (Argentinian Association of Ski Instructors) certification course, 2. Get jobs as ski instructors at one of the many ski schools up on the mountain here, and 3. totally kick ass. Things were looking good, as we had spoken to a couple of ski schools, and one in particular had essentially said that if we passed our course, they would hire us. Therefore, by my calculations, prior to the 22nd of June, we had accomplished numbers 2 and 3. But, as I've never heard anyone say, God hates people who rock too much, and will do everything in his not insubstantial power to screw you.

Allow me to explain: in order to enter the AADIDE ski instruction course, you have to pass a test. This test consists of 3 hours of skiing, your ability to be evaluated by their instructors. To Tyler and I, having between us a combined 34 years of skiing experience, this was simply a formality, something to be completely ignored and scoffed at. There is but one word for this: hubris.

June 21, the date to which the test had been moved from the 14th due to lack of snow, dawned cold, windy and all around crappy. We headed to the mountain, ready to show these Argentinians a little something about the sport I like to call skiing. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the weather had closed the mountain and we waited around for a couple of hours before they told us to come back the next day.

June 22, the new date to which the test had been moved after all the previous bad weather, again dawned cold, windy, and generally miserable. We again headed to the mountain, intending to give the hill what-for. This time, the tempest let up just a hair's breadth sufficiently enough that they allowed our test to proceed. The 70 or so people there to try-out having been divided into groups of about 10, each with it's own instructor, we rode the six-person chair lift a great distance up to the top of the Andean peak on which the ski resort is built.

The test consisted of about 6 runs, during the first part of which the instructor had us follow them in a long snaking line, doing different sized turns. For the second part, two groups combined together, and the two instructors would ski down a ways and then conspiratorily mock you as each member of the group individually skiied down to them. The key was to imitate the instructors, skiing as they do and not as you would normally, or in this case, not as anyone professing to be a good skier would actually approach the task.

AADIDE, apparently an insane institution run by people who were taught to ski by a renegade NASA space monkey who received enhanced intelligence from a bombardment of radiation while in orbit, has decided that the proper method of skiing is to look like an absolute moron on skis. In order to fully demonstrate their methods, I would need to post some sort of diagram showing exactly how they looked, but I am simply too lazy to do so, and so my crude description will have to suffice. Basically, they crouch very low over their skis, which are held slightly more than slightly shoulder-width apart, with their hands held as far in front and out to the sides as possible, as if their gloves had been smeared with something horrible-smelling and they wanted them as far away from their faces as possible. The overall impression is something like a person trying to perfom Operation Number 2 in a handicap bathroom stall by hanging onto the railings to avoid placing their derriere on the rim. I may be being unfair to them and their skiing style, but they can just go cry into their stupid AADIDE ski instruction badges.

From the bitterness inherent in the above passage, our gentle reader may be asking him or herself at this very moment, "I am simply crapping myself to know, did they pass?" I put it to you in this way: No.

There may be many reasons for this, but I choose to believe they were overawed by our awesomeness, and couldn't stand to ski anywhere near us because we would make them look so absolutely terrible. In all fairness though, it was probably because we simply weren't skiing that well on that particular day. Again, there are a ton of reasons for why we weren't skiing well, but nobody likes people who make excuses for their failures. That said, here's a big list of why we were skiing badly: (Just kidding, but as a side note, I will mention that I had a massive head cold for about a week prior to the test, which continued up until yesterday, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to take 2 decongestant pills with my Irish coffee the morning of the test, and was consequently doped out of my head. For a good chunk of the test, I thought my poles were trying to bite me, the only recourse to which was to try to make them dizzy by flailing them around my head. This isn't why I didn't pass, but probably why a number of my fellow test-takers left the exam with pole-cuts in their jackets and angry looks in my direction.)

So, the long and the short of it is, we didn't pass the test, therefore couldn't take the certification course, which inexorably draws us to the current state of affairs, wherein we have no certifications (except fake ones that aren't recognized here), and thus cannot work as ski instructors at any of the schools here. To put it as eloquently as that to which I am capable: this blows. The people at AADIDE simply can't know how much they have disappointed not only us, but also our loyal readership, who of course have spent the last month on the edge of their seats, nails bitten to shreds, awaiting word that we had indeed achieved step one on the road to achievement of ASPEN EXTREME, that awesome testament to all that rocks in the world of professional ski-bummery.

However, take heart gentle reader!, for while we have failed in that particular dream, a new dream has taken tenuous root in our bosoms, and may yet come to fruition. Having been denied one route to monetary support, we have been actively pursuing other methods of obtaining income, and may yet land jobs as bartenders. Dare I give voice to this newfound direction in life?

In a word: COCKTAIL.

I will of course fulfill the role of Tom Cruise, the awesomely bottle-spinning bartender poet, while Tyler can be that other guy in the movie who does some stuff. Needless to say, we will keep you posted on our new path!
- posted by Micah @ 11:02 AM