Kevin Snowboarding?! What?
It's true. Colin expressed some interest in trying out snowboarding and Chelsea was giddy. Over the years, people always end up asking me if I've tried it. I say 'no' like the true die-hard skier that I am.
But life is short. I kept thinking that I really didn't want to keep saying "No, I haven't tried it" for the rest of my life. I knew it would be difficult at best and quite painful at worst. Well, I guess it was somewhere in between.
Colin and I rented the gear but decided to give it a whirl without a lesson after watching a couple of "how-to" videos on Youtube and with some helpful tips from Chelsea. I knew this would be quite different from skiing as soon as I strapped (imprisoned?) my two feet onto one plank. Yikes! What have I gotten myself into?!
In the morning, Chelsea took us to the magic carpet beginner's area and Colin and I managed to do some "grape-vining" on the heel-side and I actually began to feel comfortable heel-side on a 2 degree slope. Rapid improvement! We completed a few toe-side turns and thought we were ready for a Ramcharger ride to the beginner trail called Safari.
Ha! Laurie met us for this challenge and, as you can imagine, she had quite a chuckle at Colin and I struggling to simply coast straight ahead to keep up our speed. Needless to say, this run, which normally takes only a few minutes on skis, took more like 20 minutes. BUT, I finally linked a couple heel-side to toe-side turns without crashing and felt like a hero.
After lunch, Colin and I were feeling the effects of 2-3 hours of snowboarding but still managed to take 4-5 magic carpet rides and one run off the Explorer lift. The Explorer run was better than Safari because it was wider but there were some steep pitches that seriously freaked me out. I made it down without any significant face plants but I was definitely done for the day by 4. Ouch.
A big thanks to Chelsea for staying with us all day and encouraging us enough to keep us going!
To all my ski buddies out there, have no fear. I'm already looking forward to clicking into my beautiful, beautiful skis. But at least I can always now reply 'yes' when someone asks me if I've ever tried snowboarding. "Yes. Yes I have and I will stick with skiing, thank you very much!!"
posted by Kevin @ 12:45 AM
3 Comments:
That's just not right. There's a warp in the universe somewhere.
JK - I've tried it too, and actually I can see it might be fun in a teen-alternative-universe kind of way, especially in 5" of untracked.
But...commmee baaack, Kevin, coooooommme baaaaaacccckkkkk!
I'm back!!!! Got on the skis today and was happy, happy, happy. But I'm glad I tried it. It gives me a better perspective on the feeling of the sport. No worries, the force is still with me...
Phew! It can be seductive, but there is an 'activation energy' required to get to the point of really enjoying it I think. Maybe it's more of a bad fall pain hump you have to get over. I do find the on-off-on-off of the one foot at the bottom and top of every lift very annoying though. I would like to try it again on a day with 2 - 4" of powder...
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