My first winter in the air force

Just fifty years ago, the winter of 1968 was probably the worst time in my whole life. I was working on an air force runway, near Marseille, in the cold, battered by the terribly damp Mistral wind and thinking of skiing in my faraway valley, in the Alps, 285 miles north of that forsaken air base.

To kill time, I was learning English with the French method Assimil. I had only watched the 1968 Olympic slalom that Saturday, February 17, and anxiously followed Killy winning his highly controverted 3rd gold medal.

As much as possible, I would go back home on weekends to train for slalom at the base of the Pleney hill, in the hope of finally getting a coveted “Chamois d'Argent”, a ski school, Nastar-like test, that once obtained, would finally open the door to the first exam in the French ski instructor certification process.

That wasn't to happen until February of the following winter...