I really don't clearly remember the details of the 1972-1973 winter season, perhaps because it was so dreary that my memory didn't care to hold them long enough. The only bright news was that I had been named the French Demo Team, trained with it, and went to Sweden in December. This, if anything, re-inforced my status inside the ski-school.
At any rate, I got to the spring season totally exhausted, both physically and mentally. I had originally planned to return to Mt. Buller in Australia and switch from the French to the Austrian ski school but was so down that I finally decided to stay in the Alps.
Instead, I first went to Paris to sell Duret skis for a month (instead of “selling” it was mostly visiting potential dealers.) I didn't sell one single pair of ski, but still learned a lot and discovered that part of my future might lay in the hard-goods side of the ski industry.
Then, in June, I decided to travel to Grainau, Bavaria, to learn German. I got a job in that picturesque summer resort as a waiter but didn't have the fortitude to stay and I returned to France to help my brother at his retail store. Early September, we had a new executive committee in which we felt that the process was rigged. We protested. On September 27, 1973, we attended a hearing at the ski instruction association's headquarters in Grenoble, in an attempt to resolve the dispute, but nothing came out of it. A few weeks later, on October 11, I finally threw in the towel and resigned from the executive committee.
Tensions continued to escalate inside the ski school and while I can no longer remember the details, I decided to return to southern Germany in the fall to take a six-week language course and learn German. All my off-winter projects began to form ideas in my mind that would eventually ease me out of instructing.
To be continued...
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