skiing adventures

I actually wrote this as a side note in the previous post, but it turned out to be a post in its own right.
I think Sunday was the 10th time I've been skiing now. I was surprised I actually remembered how to ski, despite not having been in a year. Skiing is the only remotely athletic activity I've ever tried that I've been able to do well enough to actually enjoy. It probably helps that it doesn't involve teammates relying on me and is non-competitive.
My first lesson was a complete disaster (the teacher gave up on me and left me behind to try to figure out how to turn on my own, while the rest of the class took the ski lift up to a real hill, then when I did go up in the ski lift (and fell getting off, of course), I ran into another instructor and practically knocked him down the slope), but the second one went so much better (I got to go straight to a green slope instead of the baby one!).
Occasionally I completely forget how to turn (eg after getting off the lift at the top of a mountain at Whiteface last year... that was fun...), but I can actually go kind of fast without falling over! I'm probably not actually at all fast, given the number of 5 year olds who speed past me, but it feels fast to me, especially in comparison to my snail-like pace when I tried cross-country skiing or ice skating. This unfamiliar confidence is not always a good thing, though.
On Sunday, after the people I was skiing went back in to avoid the icy wind, I somehow decided that one of the black slopes I could see from the lift didn't look so different from the blue ones... I was actually doing okay for most of the way, but it was pretty icy so I thought I'd head over to the side where there was nice fluffy snow. Unfortunately, the nice, fluffy snow was covering a solid sheet of ice and when I fell one of my skis remained behind as I slid down the hill. When I tried to get up to retrieve it I just kept sliding further downhill. I spent probably 10 minutes trying to jam the ski I didn't lose into the ice to act as a foothold, pulling myself up a couple of centimeters, then sliding back to where I'd started. I was weighing up the relative painfulness of sliding the rest of my way down with my one ski and trudging the long way back to the lodge over repeating my climb-10cm/slide-3-feet efforts at getting closer to my ski when another skier came past. Luckily, on seeing my pathetic state he came over to see if I was injured and rescued my errant ski. Once I was upright and got off the horrible, fluffy snow, I made it down okay. I did fall over again, but my skis stayed attached, at least and I didn't slide downhill too much.
Since Sunday, every muscle in my legs, as well as my shoulders, has been aching (it probably didn't help that we had to have a window open slightly on the way home to prevent the windows from icing up, so I spent 3 hours shivering in a cramped car) and I have numerous bright purple bruises on my knees, but I want to go skiing again soon!