The Aros Visit continued

by Liam

Day 2



The creaking of my door awakened me that morning. It was Mom, waking me up. I asked her what time it was. Her reply was 5:30 AM! Then I remembered that we were going to Treble Cone (a ski mountain in Wanaka). The drive was about two hours and we had to be there at nine so that was why we were up so early.

We all were rushing around like madmen that morning, trying to be ready in time, which we did, but just barely. I went in the boys’ car with Ed, Pop, Colin, JP and myself. In the girls’ car there was Mom, Wendy and Gracie.

To get to Treble Cone we had to go on extremely curvy roads (most roads in N.Z. are curvy) so by the end of the drive both Gracie and I where rather green.

Colin’s Q.A.S.T. group had only 2 people that day including Colin and we are good friends with Colin’s instructor, Natalie, so JP, Gracie and I got to take free lessons with her for the day.

We did a couple of warm-up runs before inspection time. Inspection is where you get to go over the course slowly, to see hard turns, icy bits, fast corners, etc.

After inspection we got one more run in. We pretended we were going through the gates, red gate, blue gate, red gate, blue gate, red gate, blue gate.

Going up the chair I realized it was finally time to race! We would get two goes, and the time from both goes would be added together to make our final time. I would guess there were about 40 racers, 5 in each category.

As we pulled up to the racecourse a voice yelled “Colin Kirkpatrick you are next up. Colin?”

Soon Colin was swishing down the course, going between the gates, tucking when he could.

JP’s turn was not long after Colin’s. I thought my turn would be close to his but it wasn’t. After waiting a couple of years it was my turn.

Standing in the starting gate is a tense thing. I learnt in all the many races that it is important to go fast when going through the gate. On this certain course I leant that you shouldn’t go to fast out of the gate because I slid off the course and had to lose a lot of speed to get back on. There was a really fast turn in the course so I could gain a lot of speed back on it. The end of the course was flat and straight so it was necessary and possible to tuck on it.

I finished my first run with 39 seconds. By the time I reached the bottom of the course, Colin, JP and I where all starving but we still had to wait for Gracie to do her run. After a decade or what seemed like one, Gracie reached the bottom. Between Gracie and I there must have been 11 racers.

Before you could say “abracadabra,” all four of us where sitting at a table with energy bars in our mouths. We each managed to have a cup of water and an energy bar before we had to go to the racecourse for our second run.

I forgot to say, from the beginning of the race onwards we all had our jackets off to go faster when racing and the jerseys were too tight over our jackets so we were cold.

Within a couple of minutes I was in the starting gate again. This time I knew about the hard first turn so I was able to go faster on that and I knew that the course would be icier. Also I was able to get into a better tuck at the end. With all the things that were easier I was able to cut I second off my score and complete the course in 38 seconds!

Our results for the race where all not that good, Colin did the best of us for his age group.

The drive home and dinner that night was fairly uneventful except for the fact we went out to dinner.