Day Two Ski Building Class
The second day started off, and while it took me a bit to get back into the groove of handling the tools, it took much less long, and by the time lunch rolled around, I had gotten as far as I had the day before on the second ski – in half the time. My shavings were still not as nice as Woodworking Man’s, but they could actually constetute as shavings, rather than little shards of wood chissled out of my plank. I was quite pleased with myself, and broke for lunch with Dan.
I fell apart when I came back from lunch. I took my two skis, and lined them up next to each other to compare them…and WHAT? What on earth was going on? One was A LOT thicker than the other. I puzzled over it for quite a while, then decided to fix the bigger one. I took it and traced the outline of the thinner ski, and then took the planer to it. It still didn’t feel right. I stop, unclamp the ski from the table, and begin comparing the skis again. The more I look at it, the more wrong it feels. The tip didn’t look like what I’d done with it. Neither did the tail. And my name had been written in pencil on the tip, and it wasn’t there anymore. Where had it gone? And why was there the tracing of a tail on the tip? I was so confused. I stood there, turning them both from side to side, trying to fathom what was going on.
Finally Woodworking Man looks up from the ski he was working on and asks how the comparing is going.
“Terribly!” I declare. “Absolutely terribly. I just don’t understand why they’re so different.”
“I used a different ski than you did for your model,” was his reply. Wait…what? Turns out, the thinner ski had been his. I’d somehow mixed up our skis and thought I was comparing mine. I was so glad that I wasn’t losing my mind. When I picked up both of my skis, they were pretty much the same shape – minus the little bit that I had shaved off when I thought that Woodworking Man’s ski was mine and that they didn’t match up.
Feeling so much happier, I went back to work. But that incident had opened the flood gate for the inevidable heckling a girl gets in a situation like that. A little later, when I was comparing my tails, I said “I think one of them is a bit fatter.” Maybe I should have said “wider”. Anyway, Gary started poking fun of me saying comments along the lines of “Just like a girl. ‘Do these skis make my butt look fat?’ Dan had better not put on a single pound.” I don’t give a damn how much Dan weighs. I didn’t marry him because of what he weighs. I was only saying that I thought one of the tails was a bit ahem, wider than the other.
They also started saying things about how the tools I was using were never going to be useable again, as once a woman touches a tool, it’s never good again. It’s all in good fun, so I’m not offended by it.
So I went home that night, content. (Exhausted, yes, but quite happy with the day’s work, as well.)
Alta Backcountry 