One Long Pole
Saturday, March 4, 2006
I was speaking to my grandmother on the phone the other day, and she was telling me about my Opa. As you may know, I'm extremely interested in my family's history (on both sides) and have been passively working on various projects (very passively).An interesting tid-bit that Oma mentioned was how when they first started skiing (circa 1934), turning techniques had not yet been fully developed. They used, instead of two poles, one long pole.
Back in the day, according to the Colorado Ski Museum:
"Skis were handmade from pine or spruce trees and ranged in length from 8-14 feet in length. They were usually 1/2 inch thick and about 4 inches wide. They weighed about 25 lbs. One long pole 8-10 feet long was used to steer and to brake (sometimes by straddling it.) Turning was practically impossible on the long boards and one usually had to slow down and step around the pole to change direction."Now that's not the really neat part. The really neat thing is that, when Opa and Oma would strap their skis and pole to the top of their car (somehow?), they would often get pulled over by the police (remember, 1934) because the police didn't know what it was, exactly, that was being lugged around on their automobile.
Living in Colorado, where 9/10 cars have ski racks, bike racks, luggage racks, etc., made this an even more potent anecdote.
And, by the way, those poles up there in that photo are NOT the one long pole. But we used to have poles that looked just like that. I wonder if they're still at the 8778 house?
Labels: family history, oma, opa, ski
