Snow Sports

 Wake up sleepy head. Up and at ‘em! It’s a delightful day. There was a blustery blizzard last night and there’s fresh powder glistening everywhere! What a winter wonderland! Strap on your skis or snowboard and bundle up because we are going to hit the ski slopes on this week’s episode of FYI!

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Transcript

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[Music] wake up sleepyhead up and adam it's a delightful day there was a blustery blizzard last night and there's fresh powder glistening everywhere what a winter wonderland strap on your skis or snowboard and bundle up because we are going to hit the slopes on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music][Applause][Music] so[Music] hello hello hello my amigos and welcome to this another exciting edition of fyi for your english the podcast where you learn so much more than english well at least i hope you learn so much more than just english i know myself as the creator the producer i have been learning so much about so many different topics and as always as listeners i want to hear your feedback i want to hear what you want to hear about tell me about topics that you want to see about in the future and of course we'd love to do them we'd love to tackle every topic i should say i love that word to tackle topics oh yes i'm already on my double alliteration kick well let's take a look at the intro as you can tell by my voice i am so excited to talk about today's topic it is a topic that is near and dear to my heart some of my greatest memories have been on a mountain and careful with that word let's start right there that word mountain now you can say mountain or you can say como los americanos mountain mountain so say this sentence i always say are you certain there's a fountain in the mountain okay and if you can say those that's that american glottal stop thing that we do you know it's kind of like a you're in the middle of a sound and you stop it so mountain but you can always say mountain what you can't say is mountain all right so write it down however you hear it that's my advice too when you come across a pronunciation thing write down what you hear don't worry i mean you can learn the phonetic alphabet it doesn't hurt but if you write down what you hear maybe that'll help you next time you need to pronounce the word so mountain and we're going to talk about the mountains i not only did i grow up in the mountains but i have some of my earliest memories playing in the snow and some of my more recent memories playing on glaciers yeah glaciers you heard me correctly playing on glaciers it sounds it sounds like something from the uh the age of the cave man[Music] anyway let's uh let's take a look at this let's hit the mountains to hit us let's hit the mountains today so i said wake up sleepyhead sleepyhead means dormilon and obviously wake up is despertate which is a little bit different than get up right wake up is when you open your eyes and get up is when you stand up it's a synonym so what time do you get up and what time do you wake up they don't have to have the same answer i know a lot of people on weekends they like to sleep in to sleep in is to sleep longer than you should but you can it's okay it's bad when you over sleep when you over sleep you sleep more than you should but not on purpose okay so you over sleep and the sound at the beginning of the show was an alarm going off remember sonar is to go off you can say the alarm was ringing but it would be much more common to say the alarm was going off so i know it's a sound that people don't like to hear who wants to be woken up oh man i know i know i'm a bit of a sleepyhead myself but uh all right then the next thing i said is up and adam up and adam now this is interesting because we never say at them because the real expression is up and at them i think would be the literal translation we say up and adam um we don't say that th and we say um right another example where we always say um is si no puedes conellos une de aellos which we say if you can't beat them join them and i i have to say hardly ever if not ever have i heard anybody say them same thing in this one it's up and adam right up and adam arrive let's conquer the day let's seize the day do you know this expression to seize the day seize the day means carpe diem and if you can't remember that don't worry because we also say carpe diem and here i come with my double alliteration again a delightful day ah you can tell delete delete did i pronounce that right delete i always mispronounce that in spanish well a delightful day oh nothing like a delightful day not just the double alliteration but who doesn't like a delightful day it just rolls off your tongue then i said there was a blustery blizzard more alliteration a blustery blizzard and when i think of the word blustery certain adjectives are associated with certain things so i tell my students when you think of mountains think of majestic when you think of scenery think of picturesque right these are certain words that we use together and blustery means windy and cold it's almost like wintry it's wintery but i needed a bee so i said blustery it's a great word well it's not great if you're in the middle of a blustery blizzard but it's a great word to know and a blizzard is a snowstorm it's another way to say a snowstorm[Music] and for any of you who have ever snowboarded or skied well you'll know that there's nothing like fresh powder oh man it is the greatest feeling after a snow storm i mean you're sleeping you're tucked in to be tucked in as metido en la cama and you can you look out the window and you see that blizzard and you're thinking tomorrow's going to be great there's going to be powder everywhere and something about powder is it glistens to glisten is to sparkle to shine brigha it's a good word glsen and then i said what a winter wonderland are you serious triple alliteration oh i need help guys what a winter wonderland and it reminds me of that song walking in a winter wonderland in the snow you'll be laughing i don't remember how the words go we're happy today we don't go away walking in a winter wonderland so a wonderland is winter and remember we looked at that adjective already to describe a day that is very cold and snowy it's wintry wintry then i said strap on your skis now here i didn't want to you know if maybe you're a skier maybe you're a snowboarder you guys know me i'm a snowboarder and skiers don't worry i won't hold it against you and remember the palos are not called sticks we call them ski poles ski poles and one thing that they both have in common skis and snowboards is they have bindings right and binding i think you say fijafion and it's very interesting because it binds your foot to the snowboard or the ski lo atta so it makes sense this word so i said strap-on strap-on is what we also say with our seat belt as well as um what is the word i think you say abrocha strap on your skis or snowboard and remember i've heard students say i want to go sky sky es el field okay i want to go skiing or go snowboarding so esodic i want to make snow i had students tell me i'm going to make snow this weekend i said oh you have snow cannons you have and they said what i said well that's how you make snow unless you have a hose una mangera and they said fabricar nieves to make snow so he said i'm gonna do snow and i'm like that sounds like a weird fetish and i think you're gonna get cold if you know what i mean so why don't you just go snowboarding or just use the verb i'm snowboarding this weekend perez mucho mas comun as you guys have seen many times when we talk about activities we add a go to it so i'm gonna go camping i'm gonna go snowboarding i'm gonna go skiing then i said bundle up now a bundle is unfardo but this is a word that mom and dad i just remember my parents and my grandparents saying it to me as a child bundle up ambricate vamos and uh something that we always say in the states reminds me when we talk about bundling up is to layer up as well yes that's another we're going to talk about dressing properly as well because a lot of people you know this alberto how could you go you go sit on a glacier all day uh in this you know drinking beer and of course that's part of it too we'll talk about atlas ski um but uh but they say you know you're out there all day freezing i'm like freezing i'm like when i take off my my snowboarding jacket or my coat whatever i'm wearing there is literally steam vapor coming off of me because i'm sweating so much so it's quite the opposite if you're smart and you have the right gear the right clothing you'll usually end up sweating instead of freezing so it's quite contrary to what many people think now the problem is once you've gotten cold once you let the cold in you're screwed all right la cagaste bur lancaster if you let the cold in because once you get that cold in there and if you're sweaty we're talking about pneumonia over there or bronchitis or something you do not want so bundle up and keep those zippers closed you know if you unzip it you're going to let out that heat remember we've got to keep our heat that's just one of my personal tips throughout the years i've just said okay well i've got this heat now this body heat and i'm going to trap it in here under these layers so it doesn't get out and in the end i'm telling you i usually you know when i would get undressed this besties when i went snowboarding i would i mean my clothes were sweaty they would have to go straight to the washing machine so uh yes different things that we talk about of course dressing right the right gear el chipo we call we call it your gear so you'll need a snowboard or skis you'll need bindings you also need boots and of course you'll need a ski resort unless you have maybe a hill una colina behind your house which i know people who have done that but remember ski lifts delicias are very convenient especially if you're going up to the top of a glacier at you know 3 000 feet above sea level i've been to glaciers i was at a glacier called aguilera which is over in france in the french alps and in the second part the bonus part of today's show i'm going to tell you guys a little bit about my experiences snowboarding all around the world from vermont to i'm looking for something in v in french le tre valle now again you guys are going to hear me pronounce a lot of french i should say mispronounce a lot of french words here but uh i'm going to share my experiences in the bonus part of today's show and as i always tell you guys if you're interested in getting the bonus part of today's show plus the accompanying vocabulary and weekly and monthly classes with me then consider becoming a patron if you want more information stop by patreon.com slash alberto alonso or give me a shout di mialgo and i'll give you some more information as well as samples join our online community because it is growing every day and i've got to say i really am a lucky teacher to have such uh motivated driven students i'm looking for the right word there are so many great adjectives so guys join our curious community on patreon.com i want to say thank you right now to all my patrons who make this show possible and uh well i don't have time to shout you all but uh a nice shout out to my super duper students roberto jose maria javier eva mila alex patricio edgar and lolis and don't forget about my interstellar students diana pilar diego and carmen if you want to find out more information about patreon drop me a line or stop by patreon and take a look at all the different options and thank you thank you thank you to all of you who already have discovered patreon so are you ready to hit the slopes as i said in the intro we say to hit the slopes the slopes las pistas now i want to clear something up today's show is about snow sports and there are so many different kinds of snow sports out there but we're going to focus on two of the biggest ones they're almost like a rivalry of sorts too and we're going to talk a little bit about that snowboard skier rivalry which well that's been since the beginning and as i always say it makes things interesting so the most popular outdoor winter sports outdoors are skiing and really let's be honest alpine or downhill skiing because yeah people do moguls i think las bachas you say or paneras i think my friends called them moguls or you have you know different kinds cross-country skiing but the most popular one i think the one that is done by skiers all over the world is what we call downhill or alpine skiing albino alpine and snowboarding but uh let's not leave out i mean i'll mention a few right now just because you know people are always coming up with new ideas and things to do in the snow the last time i was on the slopes i remember seeing a scooter and it's called snow scooting that's right it's like this scooter and it's got skis on the bottom and it looks like a lot of fun but i got to say something i would wipe out to wipe out es mamos to fall down i would definitely wipe out on that thing but it looks like a lot of fun and then there's ski touring i mean there's all there's new stuff coming all the time which is interesting people are still experimenting and they've been since the beginning i mean think of snowshoes very popular not just popular but necessary in alaska that could be considered a snow sport as well if you're racing no carreras or snowmobiles oh man those are fun snowmobiles you say motos de nieve those are dangerous but fun um but i'll tell you something on a snowboard you can go really fast i think my record was like 85 miles per hour now i don't know in kilometers but let's just put it this way if you fall at 85 miles per hour you are definitely gonna break a bone or two so uh yeah but you know what i've talked about it on past episodes i'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie i'm always looking for a rush and well nothing better than a natural rush the one you get from nature and i think that's part of the attraction as well to uh winter sports you're outside some of the most beautiful views i've ever seen as i said on the agile rouge uh glacier and looking at mont blanc at uh during april ski or you know i mean really really views that i don't think i would get any other way uh thinking speaking of sierra nevada in spain you can see the mediterranean ocean from the top on a clear day i think you can even see africa and let's not even talk about the view of granada and the alhambra you are towering over the alhambra so you know it's the nature it's doing sport thing and it's also the fact that you're getting fresh air and who doesn't want fresh air and some of the sports we're talking about are quite expensive let's be honest snowboarding is costly whether you're renting or buying your equipment it's costly skis i mean i've seen skis that cost upwards of a thousand dollars upwards of us masque and but you don't need to do this we're going to focus on skiing and snowboarding but you know we you could skate that's a ice skating is a winter sport sledding uh in fact in the bonus part of the show i'll tell you about uh ice skating and sledding those are two winter sports that i did where i grew up and uh we used to skate no we didn't have an ice rink not in my town we waited for the lakes to freeze over and we played ice hockey so remember you know we're talking about these expensive sports where you have to go get a ski pass um forfeit a ski pass but you can also have fun for very little for peanuts you can go buy a plastic sled a sled and you can go down the hill behind your house and as i said i'm going to tell you about all the crazy things i did as a child i remember making jumps saltos but yeah it's a miracle i'm here guys all right so let's uh let's split these in two okay because they're they're done on the same mountain but they're very different you use different muscles you have different injuries for skiers and snowboarders so where did skiing begin we we know that at least on the modern slopes at the modern resorts skiing came first so where did it start well we have to go to norway remember people from norway are norwegian and the word ski comes from old norse and it's a word i'm i don't know how to pronounce it there's a weird thing but the word is ski which means a piece of wood so again it was primitive at first and in the end if you think about a snowboard what is it it's a lot of pieces of plywood layered with you know all kinds of special high-tech stuff i guess that's what makes it expensive but when you really break it down what is a board so it makes sense that the word ski comes from old norse a norwegian word for piece of wood and some ancient carvings that were unearthed we've looked at that word before descent by archaeologists in norway suggested that skiing started many thousands of years ago and when i say many thousands of years ago they found a rock drawing uh rock drawing is on a in a cave right and this was uh dated back to 4000 bc so people have been having fun in the snow and in the sun uh since 4000 bc and uh and modern skiing you know we've got to make a distinction here people standing on a piece of wood and what we know as skiing now well modern skiing owes a lot to uh debe muchoa right a big debt una deoda to sondren norheim again you'll have to forgive my norwegian and french pronunciation sondre norgheim from telemark in norway and they invented the telemark bindings las vegas which gave skiers the ability to jump and turn they didn't just have to go straight down the mountain as i always say you know the hardest part is not skiing or snowboarding it's stopping you know controlling the thing if you stand on the snowboard or the skis you'll go down it's called gravity ask isaac newton he'll tell you all about it and you know what i know a lot of you guys are saying right now you know what makes sense that uh skiing was kind of invented in norway but what about asia isn't asia involved in everything well guess what yes there is evidence they found evidence that there were these tribes in the altai mountains between china mongolia kazakhstan and russia and it seemed like they were practicing a form of skiing remember some of it is similar to modern skiing but the idea uh even earlier than the scandinavians they found a wooden ski that is thought to be 8 000 years old so that's 4 000 years older than uh our amigos our nordic scandinavian friends and uh so yeah there it is again guys china everything comes from china because just when you think oh we invented paella here in valencia i know i'm going to make a lot of enemies right now i'm sure somebody in china was like yeah we've been making that rice for for light years and now you know uh skiing we're talking about the sport aspect but skiing um you know there's so many other uses think about mountain police who go and patrol mountains and they get around on skis think of soldiers some of the battles speaking of russia out in uh in russia were one because the russians had skis so the germans went in there with their panzer tanks and their fancy tanks and you know they said we're gonna we're gonna knock you guys out and the russians were just like all right well we're just gonna ski around you as you get stuck in the snow so some people say that you know it was skis that stopped the germans when they were in russia so you know aside from being in the olympics and all that and we're going to look at the olympic stuff too when these became olympic sports so there's a little some nuts and bolts como de timos the nuts and bolts the bare bones as we've looked at before all right so now let's talk about my dear snowboarding man i i'm just the only thing i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't discover snowboarding sooner in my life i think i started when i was 24 i took up snowboarding to take up as a third nuevo hobby we say to take up and i discovered it and i really loved it i loved zipping down the mountain and as i said the view the fresh air the adrenaline rush being with my friends you know sometimes it's snowing but also sometimes you're sitting in the sun having a beer after a totally you know after an 85 mile per hour run a run in this case so snowboarding we got to go okay skiing 8 000 years right china well 1965 not so distant future not so distant past excuse me a guy named sherman poppin okay related to mary poppins no i'm just kidding sherman poppin from michigan made a snowboard for his daughter and what did he how did he make this snowboard pretty easy he bound we looked at that word before binding so fijo he bound two skis together and he kind of created this skateboard without wheels or surfboard without wheels and he called it a snurfer you guys can take a look at this on the internet there's something called the snurfer makes sense it's a portmanteau of the word surf and snow and i know in spanish you guys say ah este we don't say surfing we call it snowboarding or riding tambien he's a rider he's a snowboarder right so there were about a million snurfers which isn't bad but the united states remember over 300 million people so uh you know a million that's not that's kind of a little niche over there it's not a big part of the population and that snurfer is not exactly like a snowboard today uh this one was steered to steer as manejar with a handheld rope there were no bindings so good luck with that one and for about 10 years those sold but it never became a craze a craziest sensation not until jake burton came on the scene now this guy is the king of snowboarding you probably recognize his last name burton or you say barton which is very funny because that last name we don't say barton we say burton burton all right como montagna burton burton lopez barton so it's not tim barton or jake barton it's jake burton burton and interesting thing about his him aside from being the guy who invented the modern snowboard and popularized it um well jake burton his last name is carpenter jake burton carpenter so i think that would have been a cool name too huh carpintero for a snowboard something made of wood but he went with burton and now the word burton his last name is synonymous with snowboarding so snowboarding the world of snowboarding owes a lot to this man who was born in new york in 1954 and died in burlington vermont i'm going to tell you guys about vermont it's uh it's just one of the most important places uh in the united states definitely on the east coast as far as skiing and snowboarding is concerned so he passed away pretty recently in 2019 uh november 20th and i highly recommend if you want to hear the story of how snowboarding got popular and and jake burton's story he's a visionary really uh listen i recommend this podcast i've recommended it before it's called how i built this and it's with guy roz guy roz is the host he's fantastic uh just perfect host he really knows how to make his guests feel good and the listeners and everybody and there's an episode uh of how i built this on jake burton and i highly recommend it it's great listening and it's an inspiring story um and uh all right so that's uh snowboarding we've looked at snowboarding skiing the basics as i said we could talk about each one for years there were tons of different breakthroughs you know when they started using different material and lightweight and you know there's a lot of r and d involved r and d is research and development right so when did uh when did skiing become an olympic sport because obviously it became an olympic sport before snowboarding cross-country skiing has been a part of the winter olympics every year since the competition began in 1924 but alpine or downhill skiing the most popular one it became an olympic sport in 1936 so quite a bit later and the first downhill race downhill is cuesta was decades later that was 1879 in sweden so those were some firsts for skiing 1924 cross country came on board 1936 alpine downhill skiing and in 1879 they had records of downhill races so that's fun but that's again dangerous i've done if i have any technique that's my technique you know full steam ahead or full speed ahead i told and my friends and i we always race each other which of course that's not too good because if one's a speed demon and the other's a speed demon where does it end right a speed demon and speaking of a speed demon uh someone comes to mind as far as snowboarding in the olympics now the united states has dominated this event but uh now you're seeing canada you're seeing japan with some truly amazing snowboarders but uh a lot is owed to the flying tomato yeah well that's what that's what they call them uh the flying tomato is sean white and he is an american snowboarder and you know like what tony i think of it like this what tony hawk did for snowboarding he did for snow uh skateboarding okay i bet meliwaki what tony hawk did for skateboarding sean white did for snowboarding and you know what's interesting they both do the other sport tony hawk is a snowboarder and um the flying tomato sean white is a skateboarder i guess you know it's cool what do you do in the summer when you know uh you can't snowboard well you jump on your skateboard or you surf it's not the same but there are certain similarities so 1998 is when uh it made it into the olympics uh 1998 incredible uh that was in nagano japan and now it's a very popular sport the half pipe is popular because you literally see people flying through the air twisting and turning through the air again why do you think they call this guy the flying tomato well cause he flies like michael jordan and he's red he's a redheaded he's he looks like he's always gotten too much sun well maybe he's sweating it's when you do four flips in the air off a half pipe i'm sure you you end up sweating but he's got plenty of gold medals to show for it so now i wanted to finish up here talking a little bit about the rivalry la rivalidad and my thoughts on it and you know what i know i know that you guys had the mountain first you know i'm i'm aware of that i know that uh snowboarding wasn't allowed on board until a lot later in fact uh snowboarding was banned in many many places many resorts did not allow snowboarders and this is probably what led to the popularity of snowboarding in vermont because vermont had one of the first areas that allowed snowboarders so we weren't even allowed on the mountain for experimenting for trying something new they said no if you don't ski this is not for you and we said but wait we've got something else to do another way to have fun on the mountain and people are saying no no and i think there's a big mountain there's a lot of mountains there are tons of resorts and we can all share as we say in english share and share a like and i think if we share the slopes and we respect each other it doesn't matter what sport you do or even if you're just there sightseeing some people go up and they take the ski lift or the gondola just to take a look um just think about it when you look around that we're all friends and if we all get along well then we will all reap the benefits and uh so let's share guys i think we can share it there's plenty of mountains for all of us there are plenty of slopes for us to zip down and enjoy the wind whipping through our hair all right well guys that's the end of today's show remember there's a bonus part of today's show where we're going to talk a little bit about safety some of the gear that we need as well we'll also talk about the sherlock holmes connection what did sherlock holmes have to do with skiing also we'll talk about the record for the fastest skier uh yeah he beat my record by quite a bit uh we'll talk about that and we're going to talk about some unheard of resorts in solito unheard of resorts in some places that are off the beaten path off the beaten path esporun camino menos recorrido and as always i'll tell you about my experiences uh going down slopes all over the world and some of the coolest and funniest stories all that and much more in the bonus part of today's f y i[Music] you