Ski (snowboard) 1:30:00 [3]
J & K love our annual Christmas ski vacation and this year the plans were to stay with my mom near Madison & ski the local hills. It's typical midwest skiing but they really enjoy it. However, this year I decided that I'd give them the opportunity to learn snowboarding. With a long time skier for a father it's been hard for them to avoid my prejudice against snowboarding so this was their chance to try it and make their own decisions. This also gave me the opportunity to try the sport that I'd maligned for so long.
So, we arrived early at Devils Head, rented boards & signed-up for a semi-private lesson. Our instructor (Rob) was great and took us from zero knowledge to linking turns down the bunny hill after 90 minutes. Wow! was it hard to stay balanced with both feet attached to a single board, but every run was a little better. When he let us go, we took a few more runs on the bunny hill and then attempted the chair lift. The snowboarder carnage at the top of the lift was one of my pet peeves. I wondered why they often fell & always grouped right around the lift egress. Well, after contributing to the mess, I now know why. We spent the rest of the morning on a green slope and every turn and run was incrementally better & better with the occasional horrendous fall thrown in as soon as I would start to feel overconfident. It was all very humbling, super-challenging and even a little fun. It was neat for all three of us to be at the same novice level and share our experiences, hints & successes on the lift rides up.
After a late lunch, we finally ventured up a lift serving a blue run. It looked so steep but we all managed it (with many falls) and we never returned to the greens. It was so exhilarating to carve along in complete balance and see J & K doing the same right along with me. We just didn't want to stop so we kept going all afternoon and into the night session, what a rush that was. We experienced it all, full runs in complete control as well as head-jarring backward falls, losing your wind after catching an edge and diving forward and even a number of accidental trips off the slope into the deep powder & woods. What a thrill snowboarding is!! My opinion had completely changed.
So we finally stopped and limped to the car for the drive back to mom's. I reflected on the day and why I'd fallen in love with this kids' sport at my age. Downhill skiing has become so easy for me (after living in CO) that it had become boring. This is a new challenge for which I see my potential but can't get there via any shortcut but rather by skiing run after run. Plus, my kids TOTALLY love it, partially due to the novelty of seeing me struggle at their level rather than be on a pedestal way above them (as with most activities and general maturity). All-around amazing day.
Got back to mom's for loads of spaghetti, garlic bread and a collapse into a near-coma of sleep.