From Miami to Rome . . .: January 2007 - Limone Piemonte, Italy

We started off our ski adventure slow and safe on the bunny slope with an instructor.

After our lesson we ventured out onto the easy slope by ourselves. We only fell a few times and we improved very quickly.

Soon we were really skiing!!! So we decided to record ourselves on camera so that we could inspect our parallel skiing technique. That speck skillfully racing down the mountain is Casandra.

As you can see, we have no parallel skiing technique. But we plow with the best of them.

Casandra's favorite part of skiing is riding the lift, especially now that she learned to get off without falling or requiring stoppage of the entire lift.

Here is a great shot of our skis from the lift. Note there is no snow beneath them. It's January in the Alps. Can we say GLOBAL WARMING!!!

This shot is exclusive footage from Kenny's how-to-ski video. This is his first time skiing as an adult but he claims he was a child prodigy with undeveloped talent.

That's almost parallel.

After 2 days of skiing the bunny slope, we took a bus ride to a different set of slopes with a base at 1400m.

These slopes, while beautiful, were much icier and a bit more dangerous.

After one day of skiing the easy slope, Kenny insisted we could move to the intermediate level slope. He even argued that this higher, steeper slope would have better snow and be less icy.

"Look at the slope, it looks perfectly harmless. Besides a group of 4 year olds just finished skiing down it." Kenny moved toward the intermediate slope and Casandra followed.

The photos from the top were worth the "ride" down.

We're glad we got plenty of pictures because we won't be near the top of that slope again anytime soon.

We even managed a signature self-taken shot while all the "real" skiers raced off the lift around us eager to conquer the mountain.

Ok, here we are just before the descent. Funny, it didn't look so steep from the bottom.

There is Paulino from the ski patrol helping Casandra down the mountain. After she tumbled down the 1st half of the slope, they wouldn't let her attempt to ski the rest of the way. Kenny slid himself down the slope on his butt and got up just in time to take this shot.

Casandra looks really happy to be at the bottom of the mountain without any broken bones.

After the mountain taught us our limits, we headed right back for the bunny slope (well after a fabulous party at the top of the mountain and about 3 days rest in Nice and Monte Carlo, see later blog entries).

Look at that sky! Those are people tanning in tank tops next to the slope. We could hardly stand to wear our ski clothes, it was so warm.

"When I eat a York Peppermint Patty, I get the cool sensation of an Alpine breeze blowing through my hair as I race down the slope during Olympic downhill run."