Snowboarding 101

I went on my first snowboarding trip late last week. I thought it would be a nice way to end my winter break with a bang. And it did.

The morning began at 5:20AM. Got ready, headed to a friend's house about 45 minutes away, and then headed to Minneapolis in the infamous "Blue Paradise". BP was the ride of choice--well, it seated 7 people, so it was perfect in that respect. BP did have a heater, however, floor heating was inadequate and the outside temperature must have had something to do with the cool floor temp. I'm not sure if you have experienced cold feet lately, but there is just something about it that makes you miserable. Your entire body can be at optimal temperature, but the second your feet start freezing, you're gone.

We finally arrived at Afton Alps, got our lift tickets, rented a board and got on the good ole bunny hill. There were many challenges from the day, so let's just start them off now...

CHALLENGE #1: The Ski Lift
Getting on the ski lift isn't too bad, but the anticipation of getting off is terrible. I was planning the whole time how to do it that I couldn't even think of what direction to go once I got off.

CHALLENGE #2: Getting Up
Once you have your feet strapped in this thing...you are completely immobile. The thing about snowboards I've learned, is that they have this intrinsic ability to make a fool of anyone. You get half way up...and then just fall down. Repeat 9 times. Once I got up I made it about 10 feet, fell, and then did everything all over until I found the bottom of the the hill.

CHALLENGE #3: Black Diamond
After ONE run through of Nancy's Nursery (the bunny hill is seriously called that, I'm not sure how they could have made the name any more humiliating) I got some encouragement from my friends to go on a green slope. They told me it was exactly the same as the bunny hill, just longer. This sounded good, so we headed up another lift. A friend and I were on the lift together and she was giving me pointers and then ended by telling me to go to the left and she would go to the right.

What she meant was she was to stay to the right and I was to go to the left down the hill by myself. What I interpreted that as was so we wouldn't run into each other. But, those directions didn't really matter because I can't steer a snowboard anyways and just ended up going right with her. I felt Like I was holding them back, so I said you just go down, I will watch, then give it a shot. So, I started down the hill, picked up some speed, started turning in wrong directions, my board caught on the ground and my face made really good friends with the ground. But...this while this was all happening, my friend Morgan was on the ski lift watching and yelling at me to stop. But did I hear her? No, way. That would make it all too easy. So she skied down to the rescue and asked what on earth I was doing on the blue hill right next to the black diamond! Yikes! Well, the story just goes on from there and it took about 20 minutes to tackle the rest of the hill.

SO, I will give you a great visual of my day. It's like in Kung Fu Panda, when he decides to take the challenge of being the dragon warrior...The furious five all take him on and give him a taste of what it is like to be a kung fu master. They relentlessly show their moves and whoop up on him. After each member gets a shot at him and he is laying in a really uncomfortable and unnatural position he is like...."THAT WAS AWESOME!" Exactly my day.