Skis to Snowboard

Friday I took a snow day from work along with Woj, Travis, Meredith and Lester to head up to Jack Frost for a WMMR promotion, $9.33 lift tickets for all day, woo-hoo! After longing to snowboard for years, I finally was doing it! I borrowed some gear from Lisa D. and was psyched and ready to go.

We arrived and I started the annoying process of gathering my rental gear. After I finally jammed my foot into my boots and grabbed my board, I headed to the bunny hill with Woj. She shows me how to strap my boots to the board and I get up and start slowly moving down the bunny slope. Forget about making turns, I casually swished back and forth and just noticed how everything handles and made a few falls on my ass, but nothing horrendeous. This wasn't so hard! It was just weird at first to not have be able to correct my balance with a free foot. As soon as you figure out where to put your weight and wear to position your body, it's all good. Despite this I still caught quite a few edges and fell, mostly backwards, but sometimes forward on my knees and hands, ouch. I even fell once on my shoulder that I seperated years prior so that is all grindy and sore now. Turning proved to be the hardest part and I bit it quite a few times trying to turn on my front edge. Scratch that, dismounting the lift with one foot attached to your board is the hardest part.

One drawback of the board over skis was you had to unbuckle one boot before getting on the lift and then strap it back in when you got off. This suuuuuuuucks.

Recap of the Day:
Skills I mastered - stopping, stepping into my boot standing up, looking good
Skills that need work - exiting the lift without crashing, turning on front edge, bangs styling

At 4pm the slopes were closed and we headed inside the lodge. After we warmed up and enjoyed some beers, I took my sore knees and ass home, grabbed a hot shower and reveled in the glorious pain.