When Klaus Obermeyer started skiing 93 years ago, he skied on thin pieces of chestnut wood. The wood was from an old crate used to carry oranges. He nailed a pair of his buckle shoes to them with a couple of inches of nail sticking through the bottom, and tied one end of a string around the tips, and the other around his knees to create ski tips.
“When you’re three, you’re not a very good carpenter,” Obermeyer says.
It wasn’t until he was about 5 years old that he got his first real pair of skis … More