Tag: 1992

1992: Spellbound from take to mistake!

The body soon knows where the nose goes!

(updated: 16 February 2025)

* In the video above, I mention using my brother Luke’s stereo and bike accessories (tyre pump) after he left for boarding school.

That clip was shot in February ’92 and when he returned for term 1 holidays, I admitted to using his stereo and other stuff. It was just a casual conversation we had. Sharing is caring, right?

My mother was somewhat okay with me doing so, but only under certain conditions.

He also used some of my stuff in the following year. We ultimately shared our stuff… within reasonable limits under the constraints of the time.

Also, from 1989 onward we used to share a number of things including a single 8088 XT clone for school work and gaming. Luke had the computer in his room for a while (so I was in there a bit) until it was moved into the family room, and it was often a source for conflict or disagreement.

[ colorized ]

Who knows, maybe it caused my visual short-sightedness (I got glasses in 1994) and derailed my handwriting but I was handing in printed assignments at school before anyone else and topped the class consistently, except for Hebrew.

So in around 1990, my mum was kind enough to bring home a pair of Bauer rollerblades from the USA (around a decade after giving birth to me.)

Then by 1992, Bar Mitzvah = gifts = much unused clutter.

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At the end of that year, I broke my nose snowboarding in France and I had only just started out shredding

[Buller, 1992]

And before that, Jeremy had initially lent me his board – an early Burton.

That was a year or two earlier and the boots weren’t great – I think they were rentals, though.

So I didn’t find snowboarding easy, but it was fresh and fun. So I ended up with a bump, like so many others.

[ Courchevel, early 1993 ]

Like being in Luke’s room, maybe I shouldn’t have ever ventured onto that steep run. I think it was Face de Bellevarde (Val-d’Isère) the Olympic downhill run and it was so foggy that day that I never intended to board there. Also, I lost my way and ended up tumbling over some rocks on the the side of the run at the bottom section. It really hurt.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you’re nosy.

It was a week or two after the pics below.

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So my grandfather once told me he broke his nose, I think during the war, and he just used his bare hands to snap it back into place. There were no doctors around. He laughed about it.

But for me, I didn’t think of that. When I told my mum a few days later she suggested seeing a doctor. But I didn’t want an operation, and if I could still breathe through it, and it looked okay, I’d be fine. Yet perhaps the doctor could’ve manually reset it like with Fred. That’s possible if done within a week of breakage – but they could also wreck it more. Interestingly, I recently learned that mouth-breathing is actually risky to dental health, as it disrupts the oral microbiome.

“France is not really herself unless she is in the front rank,” wrote de Gaulle at the start of his war memoirs The Call to Honor. Only the French ?!?

As with de Gaulle, Freddy too also fought in the French resistance, whereby some fighters helped him cross the Pyrenees on his escape to Barcelona from Toulouse where he learned Spanish. I don’t think he handled a gun and am not sure how long he was with the group, though. I think he said his nose was broken in a battle – not sure. So he left in January, 1944. His younger brother (Jacques,) sister (Lily) and mother (Manya) followed in July with the help of “passeurs.” It took them 4 days and nights to make the trip over the Pyrenees to rendezvous with Freddy in Spain (see below.)

As a child, Fred showed me once at Mount Buller how to pierce an egg and drink the contents through it, which the resistance fighters did. Must’ve worked. Interestingly, to this day (Nov 2024) my mother speaks French and Spanish – both very well, as did her father.

Anyway, prior to the ’92 trip, I had also skied in France in 85/86.

With ski instructor Lionel at Club Med, Tignes Val Claret, for a 2-star award… great teacher and person.

So I had two other risky falls that trip while skiing in early 1993.

On the first day, I took a minor fall but a single ski catapulted almost to the height of the chairlift and almost landed on my head. I didn’t see any of it, but that’s what I was told. Some time later, I took a fall and ended up sliding down a steep run (in Val Thorens?) with only one ski attached, but picking up speed.

People on the chair were shouting at me but I didn’t know what they were saying. I managed to break my slide by doing some kind of self-arrest with the poles. Later from the chair I saw I would’ve dropped and slammed really hard into a traverse track had I kept going, maybe over the edge of a cliff.

Around this time, Rikka’s father saw me fall at the bottom of Bull Run chair amongst the moguls, when he stood there and said “Nice Stack” in a French accent. At least he was honest.

I had taken big falls on race courses too, unwilling or unable to ride the big ruts when they emerged in the fog.

[ 1993 ? – Shakey Knees, Mount Buller ]

Yet, I had been skiing since I was two so how could I overcome the discontent?

Maybe the equipment was the problem. Why carry poles if they were never even planted? I wasn’t using poles while rollerblading. My uncle once suggested to wear weighted gloves as an experiment. But in the end, the ‘right’ technique was dictated by the ski shape – yet that wasn’t enabling me to become the endorphin machine I know was possible.

So a little over a decade later in 2002, I did an introductory ski instructor’s course at Mount Buller, but didn’t end up teaching. A good thing as ski schools have very clear ideas of what’s right and wrong regarding technique. Yet so did I. I have the certificate somewhere.

That year I had started to Heartcarve in New Zealand (Mt Ruapehu) on some of the earlier parabolic skis and basically never fell from then onward as a result of my quiet revolution in style.

[ Salt Lake City + Snowbird – March 2003 ]

So skiing then became a sport about endorphins for me rather than adrenaline and that became possible due to my rollerblading practice and analysing the planes of Heart-motion, which I ended up describing in an article in 2008.

[ diagram ~2003 | March 2008 ]

And people on the Newschoolers site wondered if I was serious or not.

There are actually 6 separate carving styles within these planes. This deconstruction and re-imagining of skiing occurred consciously as I thought about new ways to use the parabolic skis that began arriving in the late 90’s from Elan which I had yet to use. I wanted a way to abstract myself away from the micro-management of movement that can lead to rigid thinking and limit flow-states. As mentioned elsewhere, “if nothing else, free the left-hand,” yet “free the heart” would also be great.

So Heartcarving was enabled by an evolution in ski design.

[ 2007 Buller x 2 | 2008 Whistler ]

And by January 2013 I was fortunate enough to be able to head to Zermatt with a pair of custom skis that I designed in snoCAD-X, were built in France and then sent to me in Jerusalem.

[  2012 Chamonix (Idris) ]

Just ask Pierre.

Because who wants to break a leg?

[ Aug, 2017 ]

Furthermore, upon returning I started buying inexpensive crystals from ebay to help continue with this shift to the heart in day-to-day life – well that’s what I believed or wanted.

Heart Rhythm Meditation was something I came across in 1999 – and to me it makes sense to be aware of the heart and lungs simultaneously – along with everything else going on. The idea is to get more exit from the mind and more presence into the body because the body is always present. That’s what St Germain spoke about also in 1999.

[July 2014]

Others have said that the heart chakra is the most important one because it keeps the others in balance.

And even though I haven’t skied since 2013, (as of 2024) I feel I am possibly 50 years ahead of my time. Time will tell. And those custom skis ended up warping anyway, so perhaps the delay can mean better materials to construct true super-skis.

To this day, I don’t see why the body can’t naturally restructure itself to its original blueprint. Perhaps it never will whilst under a Witch’s Spell.

The original blueprint – can carving take me there?
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