Hot Chick, Cold Chick

Two things: I've always wanted to learn to snowboard. I hate doing things I'm not good at. (You can call me a quitter if you want, but nobody can argue that it's not fun to suck.)

This year I decided to finally cross "Snowboard" off my bucket list (See below). My lovely friend Jacki, concerned that my first experience needed to be the best it could possibly be, decided we should take a road trip to Utah...aka the "greatest snow on earth"... for my rookie run. So we did.

DAY ONE:
We started with a night ski trip. Background info: We drove all night the evening before and slept for about an hour and a half before going. I don't think this was an actual factor, but I thought it might somehow excuse the fact that I couldn't put my boots on myself, grasp the concept of propelling myself around with one leg on the board, or think to tuck my shirt into my pants. Any one of these things would have made the situation slightly less pathetic.

Up the mountain we went. Choosing what we thought was an easy route, down the mountain we started. The first half of the ride down consisted of me spending a lot of time on my butt.  At one point I fell directly under the chairlift.  I felt I needed to toss a thumbs-up and a "No worries, I've got this!" to the guys passing overhead. To this, one responded, "Hey, you're a hot chick on a snowboard. That's all that matters!"  Indeed.

We met up with a snowboarding class (full of people much younger than I) where I was offered a few quick pointers before my next attempt. That attempt wasn't terribly bad. I know that because the instructor yelled a commendation down to me on my form. If there's anything I can say for myself, it's that I'm pretty good at pretending I know what I'm doing for brief stints of time.

By my second run I kind of felt like I was getting the hang of it... staying up longer and falling less often.  Third time's a charm, right? That is, unless the path you take on your third run is fraught with awful flat parts which require you to hop and shimmy your way to the next hill every time you fall and lose momentum.  I'm pretty sure it was a decade and a half before we finally reached the bottom.  That was it for me.
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DAY TWO:
Bright and early-ish the next morning we headed back for a full day on the slopes.  You would think I would have been better on my second try.  Maybe I would have been if every bone and muscle in my body wasn't aching from eating snow the evening before.  All of the muscles required to get back up from a fall were refusing to function.  I came to the conclusion that it would be a whole lot easier if I just didn't fall. Evidently I like to challenge myself, because I ignored that idea entirely.  At one point I'm fairly certain I left a perfect outline of my body in a snow bank like in the cartoons. No joke.  I was beginning to celebrate the small victories... like getting off the chairlift without face-planting. Things were bleak.

By lunch I had only come down three times and was about ready to quit.  My company convinced me to try another route one more time from the top, so up we went.  They were going to wait for me at the bottom of the first slope before the next hill. I started down, and somehow, in a physics-defying stunt, I manage to fly into the air, swan dive pelvis and rib cage first into the packed snow, and flip over my head and onto my back.  All wind, pride, and possibly future children knocked out of me, I unclipped my bindings and started my nice alpine hike down the mountain.  And so the "hot chick on a snowboard" became the cold chick carrying a snowboard.
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I decided to go back to the lodge and play in the snow by myself while my friends finish out the day.  The next few minutes were a very real illustration of the idea that the night it darkest just before the dawn.  On my way back to the lodge, I took one step with my right foot which dropped 4 feet down into the snow. If you can picture a dejected creature, one leg on top of the snow, the other buried four feet down, snowboard in hand, 3 year olds flying past on skis... that was me. Evidently this was my threshold of ridiculousness, because I broke into a fit of hysterical laughter before awkwardly digging my way out.

I determined my time and money would be best spent if I could at least find a decent place to make a snow angel.

This became my saving angel of mercy, because as I got up from making it...

What did I see? Another chairlift. Slow-moving. Short. With a sign. What was on the sign? A happy polar bear. A happy polar bear in a ski cap. Beckoning to me. Saying, "Here, Ami. Let me show you how to snowboard."  So onto the slow chairlift I sat. And down the perfectly delightful, easy slope I went. By myself. Without falling. Then I did it again. And again. Until Jacki came to find me and we rode it together. Aww...

I won't always snowboard. But when I do...I'll prefer the slope with the happy polar bear.

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"Snowboard" has been replaced on the Endless Bucket List with "Take a Trapeze Lesson."