Rental skis

This week saw the European Google Ski trip. The Google Ski trips go back quite a bit and over the years have grown from a few dorky engineers on a hill to a massive invasion of some lucky ski resort. The evolution in Europe has been much the same and if anything has gone faster. Anyway, it was lots of fun with parties, activities and talks and even, well, skiing.

I do own a pair of skis but unfortunately no ski-stocks and neither boots so I settled for rentals anyway. The rest of this post is much about the good, the bad and the slightly disgusting when it comes to rentals, so if you're easily upset by the last thing, you might want to press the next button on your RSS reader.
After a nice morning of skiing there was the lunch. The food wasn't too great, but we were sitting in the sun with a view on the Mont Blanc. That morning I had a bit of an upset stomach. Something seemed to have been going around, but it seemed equally likely it was just the lack of sleep or the nightly entertainment. The snow was great though.

Anyway, I got back from lunch walking vaguely in the direction where I had left my skis, when I realized that I had no idea what my rentals actually looked like. I asked my ski buddies, but they didn't know either. Hmmm, now what. Good things we had engineers at hand. There were nine pairs of skis roughly in the target area. Five of them were rental skis. I tried them on, only two fitted my boots. I ordered another espresso and decided to wait it out. After half an hour, only three pairs of skis were left and only one of them fitted my boots. I quickly put them on and sped off – explaining to someone that you're not actually stealing their skis, you just couldn't remember what yours looked like is something best avoided I was thinking.

Problem solved. Well, when I returned the rental skis, the guy of the shop looked at me, put his hands in the air like only Italians can and exclaimed, you! You-uh, change-uh the skiiis! At the same time he pointed at another pair of skis with a sticky yellow note on it. One of the pairs I swore didn't fit.

And the good and the slightly disgusting? Let's just say that squat toilets and ski boots make for aiming from high distance and the added circumstances of an upset stomach cause you to take comfort in the fact that the boots are rentals.