An Offering: Waxing Skis/Boards for some Zen

There is a particular hour that arrives on a chilly, clear weeknight. Late enough that the sky has mostly dimmed, early enough that responsibilities still hum in the inbox, when you might notice your skis or board leaning by the door. They look tired in the way tools do when they’ve done what you’ve asked of them, over and over. You owe them ten minutes. No more, I promise. Absolutely, it can be less. I could probably pull this recipe off in under 3 minutes if I panic and have all the ingredients on hand.

Note: Read the entire recipe before waxing.

Remember, this wax job can be whatever you want it to be: Brief, utilitarian, quietly intimate, elaborate. Whatever kind of ritual you desire, be it one that makes you feel the conspiratorial anticipation of glide, or just a quickie to get out the door. Your skis are whispering, “Do what you like to me, I promise I won’t tell anyone”.

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Ingredients

• The skis/board in need by the door.
• A stick of wax.
• An iron (see note*).

Extra Credit Ingredients if you are feeling fancy:

• A Roto Brush or a Goat-Leg-Hair Training Roto Brush. (Seriously, Google that phrase and you can get a drill-compatible rotor brush for around $30 or so, probably even less.)
• A drill, I like a corded drill in this case, because roto brushing annihilates batteries.
• A basic hand-powered ski brush.
• A clean microfiber cloth that may have already wiped down many things but has been recently laundered.

Preparation

Step 1: A Surface, A Breath

Lay the skis flat on your ski blocks or on a couple of pretty tall piles of books. Don’t use library books; ask me how I know. Wipe the bases with your clean microfiber cloth. This is only partially about cleaning and more about greeting your skis, acknowledging the places you’ve been together. Maybe down the scary side of that corniced ridge, or onto that soft slope where you finally let yourself go too fast.

Let the skis warm to room temperature. Empty your mind. Breathe in Warmth. Breathe out Love.

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Step 2: Wax Without Ceremony

Take the stick of wax with a firm hand, and rub the shit out of your ski bases with it with some serious back and forth vigour. You won’t have to scrap with this wax job, so use up some of your reserved scraping energy here. Some enthusiastic momentum with the wax stick will generate heat where it meets the base, and the wax will start to glide a little bit, and you’ll see that you are laying down a nice micro layer of wax. You’ll feel it more than anything. Pay attention here. The first time it happens, it is magical. Be bold and take it there, all the way until it’s finished. This is art, not science. Your skis will accept whatever you give them; it’s in their nature.

Step 3: Bring Out the Shine

I hope you already plugged in your iron. I shouldn’t need to tell you that. But sometimes people will give a recipe two stars out of five because the instructions fail to mention that turning on your oven is the very first thing you should do to make cookies or something. I mean, come on, people, we are waxing skis here. So anyways, if you followed the instructions at the beginning, and read the recipe all the way through before beginning, here is your instruction: *Set your iron to the temp stated on the wax container, or whatever temp you feel is right, plug it in, and let it warm up. Now that your iron is hot, starting at the tips and working towards the tails, melt the wax into the bases. I don’t think it actually matters if you go tips to tails, but we are going for homeopathic dosages here, and the micro gains can add up. Move the iron as slowly as you dare. You will feel it here too, where the iron glides smoothly but the wax doesn’t smoke. Go tip-to-tail once, minimum, three times maximum, but never twice. No one knows why twice is a no-go; it just is. The wax will shimmer and spread out, but don’t worry that it isn’t perfectly uniform. Imperfection is where beauty hides. Let the thin spots breathe.

Step 4: The Final Gesture

Now, you could just call that good. As long as you weren’t super, ridiculously aggressive in your aggressive rubbing on of the wax, it is pretty hard to get so much wax on the skis that these next steps are totally necessary. I ski on just-rubbed, ironed skis all the time, and I haven’t even suffered for it. But, should you find yourself with some extra time/ you are bored/ and or stoned/focused/meditating/ hiding in the garage, this final step should satisfy your innermost perfectionist. Or at least the inner bargain hunter that feels the cost-benefit ratio works out such that it gets pretty dang close to perfection, vis-à-vis effort to reward.

Get your Goat-Leg-Hair Training Brush fired up on that drill going at full chat, and let ’em have it. I like to spin my brush in the opposite direction of my drill sweeping motion, if that makes any sense at all. (This is such a hard thing to describe.) The brush should spin in an anti-clockwise direction as you move the drill tip to the tail from your left. I mean, maybe you put your tips to the right, which is fine, just figure it out for your own setup. This gives the most bang for the buck in terms of brush action, if you know what I mean.

Do that until it looks pretty shiny and you aren’t finding any extra waxy spots to brush out.

Then give the skis a couple of swipes, again tip-to-tail, with the hand brush.

Buff out that fast wax powder that is left after all the brushing with a microfiber cloth, and you are ready to go give ’em hell.

Serve

Lean the skis back up against the door. They may seem to stand a little straighter now. In the morning, when you click in before work or in the brief light after it, you’ll feel the difference; the small, private piece of yourself, given back to the eternal cosmic relationship with your planks.

This isn’t a wax job. It’s an offering to your skis. They will return your love.

*You can also wax a snowboard the same way.

Shiny is Fast.