This just in: skiing is easier than snowboarding

I am a mediocre snowboarder. The older I get, the harder I fall, too. I decided this year to join the ranks of snobbery and try me some skiing. Yesterday, the Telemarking VBM and I went up the mountain. We arrived at Scene-o-rama Ski Resort right about the time they open, and lo, it was bad. The main lot was already full and we had to park in an overflow lot and ride a yellow school bus to the lodge. The wind, it was blowing.
The thing about wind is, I hate it. Wind is only good for me if I am on a sailboat. Wind on a ski hill turns someone like me into a projectile. This is not a good feeling. Screw you guys. I'm going home.
I had to stand in many lines which were moving speedily. I rented skis, boots, and poles. I chose to take a lesson, and I made it barely in time. Learning new things in a public setting is difficult for me, but I would rather do that than have the VBM try to teach me. While he is a gifted teacher and has plenty of patience, when VBM tries to teach me something, I just get mad at him. This is because I feel dumb, and I hate that. So: lesson. The instructor was a tall dark and handsome argentinian named Matias. His english was not the greatest but he looked pretty good to me. There was only one other person in this lesson, an older german guy whose English was also not so good, and whose spanish was even worse. As it turned out, the german dude, who nodded and smiled alot, had a really hard time staying standing up on his skis. At some point early on in the lesson, Matias managed to convince another instructor to take the german guy, and there I was, getting a private lesson! Yay!
Besides almost losing my arm on the towrope, I found I easily mastered things like Standing Up On Skis, and Wedging, and Basic Turning. The wind was howling and it was snowing birdshot. "You are ready for de Buttercup," hot Matias told me, and off we went to the lift. We got to cut the line because he is an instructor. Yay!
A note about my relationships with ski lifts: they freak me out. First, they are high and I do not like high, and also I tend to fall on occasion when exiting the lift, which further squelches my pride. We rode the lift and I confessed to the Matias that I was not so keen on the lifts being high. He said, "Oh, I know what you can do about that! Don't look down." I swooned. He was so smart.
The wind was kicking the shit out of us on the lift. He swore in Spanish. When we got to the top, I of course fell trying to get off the lift. When I stood up and prepared to ski my first run, a bad thing happened.
The forty mile an hour winds coupled with sleet effectively blew me down the sheet of ice that was the hill. Upon arriving at the bottom, Matias had this to say: "Dis is impossible! Impossible! You do bery well. If you can ski in dis, you do everything. I am sorry I took you up there. Impossible!" We went back to the towrope and he had me slaloming between ski poles and working on my left turn until the lesson was over. He told me I was excellent fun to teach.
He also said this:
"You. You must leeb the snowboard. Eef I catch you here on a snowboard, I veel crash eento you!! I veel!"
He handed me off to VBM. My knees were weak, but I wasn't sure why.
And then? VBM gave me his dry hat and eagerly asked me all about my lesson and was very excited that I had done so well.
This morning I awoke with no soreness save for the arm that was nearly taken by the towrope. And I'm excited to ski again, like later today. Hooray!