My brother, Matthew, and I met up around 11:30 Friday night, December 20th. We loaded up on Dew and headed to Paoli. It had been raining all week and the temperature was in the high 30's. Not the most desirable of conditions, but we really wanted to ski and were hoping there wouldn't be many people there. I rented skis while Matthew got his off the car and we met up at the top of the hill. Matthew was having trouble with his skis so he went back and I started an easy run.

They say that if you can ski at Paoli, you can ski anywhere. This is because we rarely get enough real snow to ski. So, the majority of the time, we're skiing on machine-made 'snow'. Machine-made snow is essentially tiny grains of ice. And, with the rain and above-freezing temperatures during the day, these tiny grains of ice clumped into larger balls of ice, some the size of baseballs. In places, it was like skiing across gravel.

There were some rough icy patches but I did okay through the bunny slope and the family ski trail. After I turned off onto a more difficult part, though, I fell...hard. I managed to get up and finish the hill but I was a little upset with myself that I fell on a hill that was so easy for me last year. Back at the top, Matthew was ready, so we took the same route. Again, I fell on the last part. I was still feeling pretty good, though, so we headed over to a blue square (medium-difficulty) slope, one that I had mastered last year.

We didn't get very far before I completely wiped out. I picked up my skis and started walking down to a flatter area to put them back on. Matthew had stopped and told me that it just got worse. Not many people had been skiing that slope so it was solid ice. I think we could've ice skated across parts of it. I carried my skis the rest of the way down and told Matthew that I wasn't getting off the bunny slope.

He went over there with me and told me that one problem was that I was still trying to 'snowplow' to control my speed. And, on the ice, my skis weren't digging in enough to make a difference. He told me to stay on the bunny slope and practice turning back and forth to control the speed. I did this until about 2:30am when we took a break for some pizza. I was feeling pretty good now so I let him talk me into going down the family slope again.

With him skiing right with me and helping me judge when and where to turn, I made it down without falling. HURRAH! We did that route a couple more times and the only problem I had was when he would stop and throw ice balls at me. Grrrrr... Then, he talked me into going back over to the blue square. It was slow going but I made it down. Each time I got better and went down a little faster. I was so excited. I wasn't getting to ski fast down the hills like last year, but I was improving my technique.

We skied until almost 6am, then headed home. All in all, it was a good trip. Maybe someday I'll get to ski on real snow. :-)