So, after being trapped in my apartment, except a few trips to the store here and there, I decided on Friday that I just had to DO something, something that would take up my entire day.
Hm, well mountain biking is generally the only thing that comes to mind. Obviously that’s out.
So… turns out I can handle the cold and snow better then I thought, and I’m used to driving in the snow now and don’t flinch going over ice. What does that mean?
Snowboarding!
I asked around about borrowing equipment and borrowing an instructor (thank you facebook, and all those who replied!), and managed to procure both (including a real jacket so I wouldn’t have to wear my dorky neon yellow rain jacket). I bought myself some lobster style biking gloves (which I was looking at buying anyway), and figured those would get me through one day of snow, and I just brought my bike glasses since I have no goggles. And away we went!
And it was raining on the way there. And raining on the way up. And raining in the parking lot at Meadows. The only other time I did a winter sport (nordic skate skiing), it was raining and miserable. I can’t say I was too happy about it. So we got suited up, and I was ridiculously happy to be wearing sweatpants under my rainproof pants; I long ago swore off cotton for sports, but I figured I’d be spending most of the day on the ground, and got coffee and tried to wait out the rain. The rain turned into freezing rain and only 2 of the lifts were open, one of which was the beginner one. I was apprehensive and kind of wanted to just stay in the lodge in the safety of the heat and bad, expensive coffee, but alas, winter sports do generally involve mountains which have fairly unpredictable and wild weather. I was not looking forward to just donning my sunglasses in the crazy wind, but I wasn’t about to spend hundreds on whatever they were selling there.
I looked up… and up… oh wow the beginner hill was a lot more of a hill then I thought it would be. We waited in the chairlift line surrounded by 4 year olds who could probably kick my ass on the slopes. Finally it was out turn to get on the lift; thankfully Javad was really good at explaining everything so I got on the chair without falling off or knocking my head into anything. Getting off the lift was a whole different story; I fell every time except maybe twice. Oh well.
Once we finally got ourselves clipped in (strapped in?) we stood up and I thought how the hell am I going to do this? And then I just stopped thinking about much of anything. I have a problem when I learn new things to massively over-think them, especially when they involve falling over. It turned out that Javad had never taught anyone to snowboard, and had never actually taken a lesson (he taught himself). At first I thought (“oh shit”), but then I realized that it was almost better that way. No one can tell you how to maintain your balance. You just have to do it and figure it out. Certainly Javad gave me TONS of help and I could never have figured it out by myself, but it was nice just going down, falling down all over the place, and just allowing myself to figure out the balance.
While I fell a ton at first, I started feeling like I was getting the hang of it pretty quickly, much to my surprise. While I wasn’t attempting too much speed, I got down the slope once with only one fall. And only because I almost hit a pole. The freezing rain turned into snow about halfway through the morning, and from then it snowed half the time and was dry the other half, and around 2pm the fierce winds died away, so it turned out to be a pretty nice day.
Lunch came WAY faster then I thought it would, and we ended up taking a 2 hour break getting completely sloshed in the pizza place. We ordered a pitcher at first, but they were changing the keg so our waiter brought out 2/3rds of a pitcher of Drop Top and said it was on the house. So we each had like… 4 or 5 beers and a pizza. Man ohhh man. When I got back on my snowboard after that, (and giggling and swearing REALLY LOUDLY), I thought I might die. But the drunkeness wore off after about 2 runs. Which is probably a good thing.
My knees, hands and forearms hurt right now from falling; hopefully I won’t be too sore tomorrow. Since I have an LT test. heh whoooooops.
