When hate turns to love

It has been a lovely Winter in Finland so far. Temperature has been mostly between -2 and -10 degrees Celsius. To me, that's the perfect weather for skiing. The only weather, I might add.

It sounds crazy that when I was young, we talk about late 70's and early 80's here, the temperature for not skiing at school was -25º (also for skating)! These days it's not, but that's hell of a cold weather to ski, especially for children. And those days -25º was a pretty common temperature in the midst of Winter. The most difficult thing for me was when it was something like -27 degrees in the morning and the sports class was due in the afternoon. It was usually at the end of the schoolday. Sometimes the Sun warmed up the weather during the day so that it was "only" -23º when the sports class started. I remember on several occasions, when our angry sports teacher asked me: "Where are your skis? It's not -25 degrees out there!" Those days a child was expected to handle things like that.

I have had a lot of bad memories about skiing. I started to ski in my third grade (aged 9,5 years) when we moved to live in another part of Tampere. We used to live in the center before and there was no skiing; just skating in Winter (I was lousy in that too). Soon the skiing contest was about to happen and I had skis that someone had left in our new home. They were wooden and been broken and mended with small nails. I had no idea about lubrication of the skis. We didn't have any stuff to put in the back of the skis anyway.

It was no surprise that I finished last in my first ski competition. But I got better all the time. Later in another school I finished in the middle of the lot. And always without lubrication. Later I have thought about how much help some other classmates got compared to me, because their dads were helping to spread right kind of paste into their skis. And that affected directly to your sports grade. Skiing was and maybe still is very highly appreciated sports in Finland, so if you were good at it your sports grades were good as well.

In the army skiing was awful. Bad skis, but "luckily" the circumstances were equal to all. We skied a lot, with or without snow. We were skiing in the middle of the woods. The first one created the ski track and the others followed. Sometimes there were a lot of trees to dodge, tight curves etc. I had eyeglasses by then and they got steamed. I could see basically nothing. From the second ski trip on, I didn't wear glasses at all. Being almost blind was a better choice. It's amazing that I hardly ever fell on my ass during those trips. I could have injured myself pretty bad. We had a heavy load on our backs, and guns too, so the normal type of skiing was mostly out of the question.

It was only when I met my wife, when I skied next time. She had had success in her school days in skiing, so I didn't have to beat her in that sports. I couldn't stand a chance. Her father had done the ski service for her in her youth. We learnt how to wax our skis. When the lubrication was done well, it was fantastic to ski. It was like a whole different sport. The first time in my life I didn't hate skiing; I loved it instead.

When we had our daughter, she joined us in our ski trips. She does a good job already now. We haven't waxed our skis lately because the speed was gone down to our kid's level. And, without a help of lubrication, we'll get a better benefit from it. Especially now that I'm trying to lose some weight. Sweat is welcomed today. Of course, when our kid is fit enough to ski longer trips, we will start waxing again. She'll have her first ski contest at school next week. We must take care of her ski service then. It would be foolish not to do it, because the other kids' parents will do it anyway. And our daughter won't have to suffer from the same kind of disadvantage I had in my time of schooling. Hopefully she'll love it, like I wish I had too.