One Finger, Two Finger, Red Finger, Blue Finger

Reading over my previous posts, I realize I forgot to mention one of our biggest problems with the language barrier: hand gestures.

After Alpine Skiing, Phil and I were faced with a monstrous walk back up to the top of Sestriere, where the bus would take us to the next event. The trek down was muddy and icy (Phil slipped and fell with very bad results, as you might recall) and the hill made my limp very pronounced.

So we opted for the ski lift instead. As did everyone else, it seemed. The lift lines were full of people from the event--so much in fact that they pulled the skiers out and put them on a different lift.

By the time Phil and I got near the front, people were pretty impatient. They were putting 3 to a chair, and when a couple in front of us got on, the lift operator looked to us and a few others for one more. Phil said, "We have two," and to make himself better understood, he held up two fingers.

The lift operator gave Phil the middle finger and said, "One!" Phil was very surprised, as was I. I turned and saw that Phil was using the baseball symbol for 2 outs, his index finger and pinky. This is very common for infielders to signal to the outfield how many outs there are. But, unfortunately, it means "Your wife sleeps with other men" in Italy (and likely elsewhere, but I won't be testing it).

Phil repeated the gesture toward the lift operator and said, "No, 2!" thinking there was a communication problem. Which there was, of course, because the lift operator gave him the finger again.

By this time, we'd missed the chair lift, and the couple in front of us went up alone, to the sound of booing from the line. Phil and I got on the lift, and the 3rd guy that was supposed to join us bailed out for some reason I don't understand, but Phil and I went up alone to the sound of even louder booing.

The Olympic spirit was in the air!