Tag: snowboarding

Sunday morning, around 7 AM… I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, suited up, and went out snowboarding.

The local ski/snowboard hill doesn’t even open until 10AM, so I just found a local sledding hill (which was empty at 7:30 on a Sunday morning.) Now, I’m still pretty much a beginner, so a small-to-medium sized sledding hill is all I need to keep me busy for a while.

I think I lasted under an hour. Going down the hill is no problem, that’s the easy part… The hard part is hiking back up the hill. It also started snowing pretty heavily, so the stupid eyeglasses were getting foggy and snow-covered.

Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’ve scoped out about 3 or 4 other hills in the area to try out. Luckily, we’ve got a good amount of snow now, and it should stick around until March if we’re lucky. Yay snowboarding!

I first saw snowboarding about 20 years ago. I was skiing, I think it was at Little Switzerland, and saw a few guys with these crazy boards instead of skis. Not that I was a stranger to boards, as I had been riding one with wheels on it for many years prior to that, but the only snowboarding I had ever attempted was going down our sledding hill with my old Madrid longboard, sans trucks… It didn’t work very well.

Time to remedy that!

Maybe it was the Olympics, or snowboard cross, or, I dunno, but the time was right. We headed out to the hill. Er, slope.

That’s right, the little slope + rented equipment + not knowing what we were doing = fun + pain. Or something like that. It was a blast. It was also frustrating. The two words that best describe trying to snowboard are fun and frustrating. Is frunstrating a word?

The next day we were in a lot of pain. Not really due to wipe outs (of which there were many) but more from just using all those muscles you don’t use too much while sitting at a desk. It’s two days later and I’m still sore. The sad part is that depending on the conditions and schedules, we may not get to go again until November. Bummer…

(Of course my goal is to someday be as good as this old guy.)

I’ve already mentioned that I love watching the Olympics, but the love is fading… I’m starting to miss a few of the NBC shows I actually enjoy. Nevertheless, out of everything I’ve seen so far (and I’ve had the Moxie running overtime) without a doubt, the greatest event has to be snowboard cross.

Man, I love the freakin’ snowboard cross. It’s somewhat similar to a game we used to play with skateboards in the empty parking lot of some closed down store, which involved more than 4 guys, definite contact, and many cuts, scrapes and bruises… Ahhh, good times…