perldiver

My family is currently up in Vermont for the New Year's holiday and, seeing as there's been about twelve feet of snow this year in these parts, we figured that we'd go up to Smuggler's Notch today and go skiing.  Dad (who is an expert skier) really wanted to try snowboarding; given that I'm almost thirty years younger than him I couldn't very well let him go alone, so I tried too.

So the plan was that me, Dad, Lando, Ty, and Mason were going to leave at 7:30 in order to be on the mountain and skiing by 9:30 or 10.  Sadly, Mother Nature missed the memo; we woke up to find howling winds and super-freezing temperatures, so we held off leaving until 9:30 and Lando, Ty, and Mason decided not to go after all.  Dad and I drove up, got our gear, and were ready to ski at about noon.  We had a 2 hour lesson with a guy named Jim. 

For those of you who have never done this, snowboarding consists of tying both of your feet immovably to a board and then sliding down a mountain on your back, butt, face, head, and whatever other body parts you feel are in need of a good pummeling.  Once you start to get the hang of it, however, you can actually travel five or six feet before falling!

Snowboarding is actually a lot of fun, and is probably easier to learn than skiing...you only have one thing to control instead of two, you can't cross your tips or get them separated, and you edge with your feet instead of your knees.  About an hour into the lesson, Dad started ignoring Jim and treating his snowboard as if it were skis (e.g., using his upper body to help with turns) and started getting things put together.  I didn't figure out that I should be ignoring Jim for a further half hour or so, but then I focused on the things I needed to work on instead of the more advanced stuff that he was trying to teach me and immediately, I started to master the important parts...like, say, stopping.  Both Dad and I continued to fall regularly and frequently, but we could see progress, and that made all the difference.

At the end of the day, I felt beat up, but it was no worse than an aikido class.  Oh, and it turns out that aikido is very useful for snowboarding--all that practice at ukemi (literally "blending with the mat", aka "falling") is very useful when you're trying to blend with the mountain.   Also, the time Dad started sliding into me, I instinctively did tai sabaki #4 (enter deep to the outside, deflect with both hands; tai sabaki = "method for making sure your nose is somewhere other than where the incoming [or, in this case, snowboard] is").

We drove home, I took a nice hot shower, got some clean dry clothes on, had dinner, sat in front of the fire and chatted over a crossword...it was a good day.  And I did something new that I'd never done before...go me!