Welcome to Midland Ski Club
When does the new Ski Season start?What a odd question, you're saying. Surely you know when the ski season starts. Ah! But it's not that simple in the Midland Ski Club. Because before you can start a new season you have to be certain that the last one has finished. Is the Summer Skiing Trip to Hintertux the end of last season or the start of the next one? Is the Training Week in January the beginning because it is the first event of the New Year? If so, what about those Club members who will have already been skiing in Tignes in November or those who have skied over Christmas.
What about the Gloucester Summer Race League? Which season is that in? It starts just after the Family Holiday at Easter and goes on for months after the Summer Holiday. And don't even ask about our Dry Skiing. That doesn't have a season, it goes on all the year round. Although come to think about it I suppose it has two seasons. One is when Ackers, the Ski Slope in Birmingham we use, closes at 9.00pm and the other when it goes on until 10.00pm. The only difference is that for part of the year we get to the pub an hour earlier.
Our Membership Secretary certainly doesn't have a mid-season break. New members are joining all the time. The Editors of the brochure and our regular Newsletter never feel that the job has come to an end for the year. There is always a new series of events which they have to tell the membership about. The point I'm making is that MSC never rests, it just keeps rolling along.
We organize several Club holidays every year and the organizer of each holiday has to start work on next year's trip as soon as this year's has ended. Or even sooner; we started talking to our Tour Operator about the 2006 Training Week on a chair-lift in Sestriere in the middle of the 2005 one. And they are already looking for a hotel for us in 2007.
If you are a regular skier you will know that desolate feeling when the bus is taking you back to the airport at the end of your ski holiday and you know that it will be another whole year before you can do it again. And if you have just picked up this brochure with the thought that you might like to start skiing, let me assure you that you are about to find a passion for life. You will not be satisfied just to practise your new found love for only a few days a year. And you don't have to. By joining the Midland Ski Club you will be giving of Great Britain yourself every opportunity to enjoy the sport all the year round.
And our activities are not limited to the actual sliding down the hill. We have a regular programme of social events. There is the opportunity to go walking, either as a serious activity on our so-called High Altitude Training Weekend or in a more relaxed mood as we stroll around Warwickshire looking for a good pub lunch.
I suppose that I have to admit that we do tend to think of autumn as a new start. The holiday brochures are out - not that they are very important to us as we will already have had the Club's holiday newsletter telling us where we are going this season. But they do get the juices flowing again as we see those pictures of the glorious alps. We are just about to start our winter programme of evening meetings, there will be the Ski Show to visit and the numbers at our dry-skiing sessions will grow.
Yes, MSC does operate all the year round, but it is now that we really get going and nothing spurs us on with greater vigour than the arrival of new members whom we can help to enjoy this great sport as much as we do. We all look forward to meeting you.