Schifahren: Eins Tag bei Nathan

Today will officially be known as Ski Test Day.

However, it will also be known as Epic Fail Ski Test Day.

Ideally today I was supposed to test 2 different ski's. In the morning I was to test a Salomon 2012, and in the afternoon I was scheduled to test a Black Crows Viator.

The Salomon 2012 was all set and I ran it through it's paces this morning, more accurately it ran me through mine. I don't remember skiing being this hard!

The 2012 was a great ski but probably a bit long for me at 179cm.

At lunch time I headed back to the apartment for lunch with Mariya, we had Austrian Knackers, Austrian cheese made with Tirol milk, tomato, mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches, a proverbial feast! After lunch I had to drop my ski boots in for a few adjustments to the shell and was given a pair of rental boots to use for free for the afternoon.

Now back to the ski shop to trade in my Salomon 2012's for the Black Crows Viator ... or not. I was told that the Viator would be ready for me to pick up after lunch but it appears it wasn't and none were to be found in St Anton ... That's ok, I'll test the ski I was told about yesterday that I hadn't even known about, the Kastle (pronounced kayst-leh) James 175 ... ok none of those either ... in fact the only ski they had was a shorter version of the 2012 ... ok I guess that will have to do, the one I had was too long for me anyway. So with a shorter 2012 on my feet I headed up the slopes to run this ski through the paces again. Not an optimal solution as I wanted to test multiple skis and pick my favorite, but atleast I got to ski the 2012 in a length more suitable to me. Still a great ski and even better as the length was much nicer. The only problem being the mountain was ski'd out alittle and the 2012 isn't a super ski for ski'd out conditions.

So a bit of an anti-climatic day on the ski testing side. I headed back into town with Mariya to pick up my adjusted Ski boots and to speak with the guy at the Ski shop about testing some more skis. The guy I initially spoke with managed to find the Kastle James 175's for testing in about 2 minutes in the computer system ... and they were downstairs at the shop ... ok so the other rental guys were a bit fail but what can you do?

So after a bit of organising we walked out of the shop with the Kastle James 175's for me to test tomorrow ... I'm hoping I really like these ski's because they look amazing and they're Austrian! The only problem being there's actually no new pairs of these skis in St Anton so if I do end up liking them I'll have to order a pair in from Salzburg and this would mean the ski's wouldn't arrive until next Monday ... we'll wait and see how the skis go tomorrow before I get too excited one way or the other, they could be terrible =p The guy did say that we might be able to arrange something where I could hold onto his Kastle skis while I wait for mine to arrive from Salzburg.

After all the Ski drama we headed home for Mariya to cook up our dinner, chicken breast with onion gravy, rotkraut and spaetzle, accompanied by a bottle of pear cider from Sweden, a feast for a king, the dinner was absolutely amazing!

We may have a later night tonight as we have recovered from the jetlag and should be ok with less sleep from here on in =)