Blog: One Year Anniversary and Ski Trip

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One Year Anniversary and Ski Trip - Sunday, March 2, 2014
I've been blessed to be at Pure for a year now, and man how time flies. I still remember the small company feel when I joined the other 115 or so employees, among whom were 35 or so engineers. Now we have more like 415 employees and 80 engineers. We're rapidly outgrowing all our available space.

The small company feel hasn't been lost too much, I feel. I know mostly all the engineers by name and have interacted with most of them somewhat well. In the last year, we've done a release party, a San Francisco boat trip, movie nights, a sales kickoff and various impromptu social gatherings.

The people on my team like me (I think), and my new manager, who joined last November, is supportive and doesn't like to micromanage people, which helps with me having a lot of autonomy over what I'm working on. A couple weeks ago, he told me that in honor of my upcoming anniversary and my contributions, I was getting a pretty sizable raise and a stock refresh grant. I'm humbled and grateful for a company and manager who take notice of my contributions, especially when I feel like I'm not doing as well as I can/should be.

So... back to social festivities. This weekend was our second annual engineering ski trip, again at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe. Jay was supposed to be my roommate, but at the last minute he cancelled, leaving me with a large room with two queen sized beds to myself. Poor me.

Actually, it was nice. For one, I could watch all the Flipping Vegas and Property Brothers I wanted without worrying about bothering anybody!

We bussed up Friday morning, and it was snowing in Tahoe pretty heavily that afternoon. I've never before seen so much snow coming down! 60 or so people (employees and a few spouses) attended the trip this time.

Dinner that night was at Stateline Brewery and Restaurant (I had decent mussels, edamame and chicken appetizers and a nice salmon entree), and the next night was at Base Camp Pizza (excellent pizza once again).

This time around, Pure paid for ski lessons for those who wanted them. So I took second-timer lessons for 2.5 hours on Saturday. My instructor Jimmy, an older man with 25 years of teaching experience and a funny sense of humor, helped us learn how to use the wedge formation to control speed, and how to turn. The recipe for turning is all in the feet:

1. Balance: shin good, calf bad. Meaning your weight should be centered around the balls of your feet. Your legs should lean slightly forward with your shins touching the boot. If instead your calf is touching the boot, you're leaning too far back.
2. Wedge: make a wedge with your skis pointing inward, about shoulder width apart.
3. Press: press down the toes on the foot that will be on the inside of the turn. This helps to create a pivot point.
4. Twist: twist the outer foot in the direction of the turn, pointing your big toe in the direction you want to go. 10% more toe gives you 80% more turn.

The upper body should be still, as it is not doing any of the work. Despite having learned what constitutes good form, my turning was sloppy when I was skiing on my own. I think it's because I tend to lean into the turn with my body, which causes there to be not enough weight on the outside ski, which hinders my ability to turn. Also when I start building up speed and get scared, I tend to lean back (calf bad), which reduces the control I have.

But I did better this time, falling only a couple times (when I forced myself to bail out of a turn to avoid hitting something) and never falling out of my bindings (despite them being adjusted to the loosest, most cautious setting), unlike last time when I fell out on a few occasions. Hopefully next time I'll get more comfortable and improve my form. I'm not in a hurry to go skiing again, but it's fun and I'm looking forward to next time.

Until then, here's to another great year with Pure!