Len Bridges
Hello everyone. My name is Len Bridges. I am a new member of Nisei Ski Club and recently enjoyed the fun and pleasure of skiing with Sandy Kiyomura and Greg Wong of the club, and with Bill Wong who we are hoping will join the club. I am both visually and hearing loss impaired. Sandy with her connections with Achieve Tahoe located near Alpine Meadows arranged for me to take a lesson from this organization. I was pretty impressed with the program and Sandy asked me to contribute an article about my experience, and so here it is.
First, a young lady at reception helped me to fill out the paper work. I didn’t have close distance reading glasses with me so I was unable to effectively read what seemed to be very tiny print. Once I had completed the paper work with her help, an individual by name of Haakon discussed quite extensively my medical health, hearing loss and visual situation.Then, I was turned over to the care of two lovely lady interns, Kristin and Taylor — their photo is on the Achieve Tahoe interns page. The lesson was to be 2 1/2 hours. This team of two young ladies would provide evaluation, instruction, and umbrella coverage for my safety on the snow.
It was indeed a blessing to me to have them provide evaluation and instruction to me while at the same time being sensitive to, and providing effective accommodation for my visual and hearing loss. In addition to providing me training as a student, they both also were open to, and positive about learning from me about my hearing loss and visual impairment, and how they might incorporate that knowledge and experience into their service as interns and as they move on to their professional careers of a medical and rehabilitative nature.
The instruction they provided was open ended with no strict pattern. Kristin and Taylor adapted the lesson content to bring my focus on the use of pole planting to improve my skill in making turns. As I learned to ski as an “older than dirt” guy, I did not develop muscle and brain memory of skiing, and thus, I ski out of my head, constantly thinking of what I need to do and how to do it. Along with this goes the extremely high “fear factor” that shoots out of orbit in the event I find myself on something too steep, going too fast, and facing the disaster of losing control. They helped address this by taking me down what seemed a totally vertical slope using a side step, which I call the slippy slide, and we descended down together, both Kristin and Taylor looking quite graceful, and me, well not so much. However, it was a great learning experience and confidence builder exercise. In addition to the value of the lesson, I had a lot of fun and the time flew by so quickly, well maybe not fast enough on that vertical part.
This program is exceptionally outstanding. They have special equipment, special talent, and special people to provide those of us with compromised mental, physical, and sentient functionality an opportunity to participate and learn in a caring, friendly, and supportive environment. They are truly angelic beings on the mountain.
