So me and Dave went snowboarding yesterday. Still had a LOT of falls, but this time they weren't as bad, because I've got a lot more control, so the times I fell wasn't because I was flailing around, it was more to avoid hitting other people who fell. And there were a LOT of people! It was packed yesterday. There were a lot of people out of control on the beginner hills. I got hit from behind about 7 times, and I ran into about 3 people.

But the main thing is that I'm mastering the toe turn. I'm a slow learner. But After many falls on my face, I figured out how to distribute my weight and balance myself without falling over when turning. I even started linking the turns by they end.

Here's some highlights:

- I love snowboarding. I just don't like getting off the lift. I get so much anxiety when I see the end of the lift coming. It's not that I don't know how to come down. Ok, I don't. But still, with so many beginners, I don't think I ever came off the lift without the people in front of me falling. So it's hard when you're trying to avoid the people in front of you. And then when I tried to avoid the fallen bodies in front of me, I would fall, then I wuold have to scramble away so others didn't fall over me. Argh!

- One of my more comical falls happened at the end of the run. I was slowing down to go to back to the lift, and this girl came up next to me, and our boards got tangled. She was saying 'Sorry' and I was saying 'Sorry' and then we both lost our balance then caught onto each other to stop from falling. We then noticed in our two person pretzel that we were gaining speed and there was a guy in front of us. We both shouted, 'Watch out!' but too late, we caught him in our showboarding human pretzel of doom. Finally, we all fell and laughed.

- As I was putting on my bindings at the top of the hill, I saw this guy a little farther down fall over, then lie facedown on the mountain. I got up and started boarding down, curious to see if he was hurt. But then I could see that he was doing pushups. On top of the mountain. In the snow. With a snowboard on. 'What the?!?!?!' I thought. So I came up to him and said, 'I noticed that you were doing pushups. I'm just curious, why?' This guy was dressed up in fatigue-looking snow gear, and was pretty built (and not too shabby looking). He said, 'Well, snowboarding is a really big workout for my legs, but I just wanted to work out my upper body, too. I want the whole body workout.' Um...yeah. OK dude.

- I could totally tell the difference between Kitty and the boards I have been renting. Kitty is a fast little chica! When I started down the hill for the first time, I really needed to get used to her speed. But once I got used to her, she was awesome. I felt really in control. We made a good team.

- Kitty was the prettiest board out there. No lie. But there were a lot of other great looking boards out there. Never noticed that until I got my own board.

- Once, I fell so hard that my hat flew off. Another time, I landed on my hand and knocked the wind out of me.

- I wore a sweatshirt under my jacket, but it was long enough to show. Since a lot of time was spent on my ass, I got a lot of snow at the bottom of my sweatshirt. And as the day wore on, it got colder and colder. So the snow on my ass gathered together and made one big sheet of ice on my ass. It was pretty cold. But pretty funny.

Posted by Yano at February 9, 2004 03:03 PM

---

---

---

---

---