Europe!

          I had a great two weeks of training in Europe. The snow was difficult to figure out (pretty peely and inconsistent) but still was well worth it. The schedule didn’t end up having as many starts as I would have liked, but I still got three GS starts and a ton of time on snow.

          I had forgotten how much I love everything over there! The little shops, the amazing food, the people, and basically the entire environment are just awesome and smile inspiring. Each day after training we would all go out free skiing as a group for a few hours; what a blast!! The Italians don’t seem to mind fast skiers like many American ski resorts do…  At home you blow by a group of beginners too close and you get reported to the ski patrol for being reckless, over there the entire group starts tucking and straight lining trying to keep up! However, they do mind people skiing the “off piste.” One afternoon we decided to hit up some cool looking powder lines just off the main trails. It wasn’t roped off so we figured it was fair game and sent it. We also figured that the man yelling at us at the bottom was congratulating us on some awesome skiing, and failed to notice the “Carbineri” patch on the back of his coat.  After asking for documents and lift tickets, he took us to the Police station on the top of the mountain and paced back and forth talking animatedly on his phone. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time he told us to stay on the groomers in the future and keep the speeds slow. I could swear he wanted to arrest the lot of us, but apparently I need work on my Italian hand signal diagnostics. Thank goodness they liked us there!