Rolling Down Mountains

(Picture courtesy of Anna Gleave's iPhone)

People in Utah but not of Utah consistently complain about the cold weather and snow and all that crap. And I am one of them. But even though it makes driving difficult and causes accidents and other crap, some people seem to find enjoyment out of the white fluffy stuff that falls from the sky. That enjoyment tends to come from playing on a mountain on a slick board that will do everything in its power to kill you, or two skinnier boards that will force you into the splits as they try to do everything in their power to kill you.

Yes my friends, I'm talking about snowboarding and skiing. I realized that I have less than a month before the end of this year's ski/snowboarding season, and there is a pretty good chance I'll have moved out of Utah to the East Coast for a big girl job before next year's winter season officially begins (crossing fingers). And I have never been skiing or snowboarding in my life, and all the Utah license plates claim that this is "the best snow on Earth." So my goodness I've lived here for 4 1/2 years I guess it's about time I learn how to snowboard!

And so I did.

My close friends/neighbors Anna Gleave and Lauren Wutzke made plans with me to get nightpasses for Sundance to do this snowboarding thing last Friday (3-4-11), along with two other friends. One problem. I own absolutely no snow gear. So Lauren was a doll and lent me her snow pants and two coats. I have snow gloves, and rented the board and boots and whatever else for $25 from Sports Authority. If that's not a good deal, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Besides, my willingness to pay was about that much anyway, so economically speaking it was a good deal for me (in fact I probably would have dished out for $5-10 more if I needed to, I have no idea how much this stuff usually rents for). Lauren was going to let me use her helmet, but it was left in her car which her sister took to Draper for the day, so I thought eh, who actually falls and hits their head anyway? I have arms and legs to stop that from happening. Silly me. Plus, I know how to wakeboard (not very good though), which isn't the same thing, but I figured it was similar enough to pick up snowboarding pretty easily. Aaaand, I go to the gym frequently each week, and do a ton of quad work between my beloved spin classes, power pump classes, and even my turbo kickboxing class. I know that sounds stupid that I'm talking about how I go to the gym, but the point was that I felt like I had a valid reason to feel confident in my strength and ability to learn how to snowboard.

We got up there around 5ish and immediately jumped onto a ski lift. Ok, ok...that's a lie. I had to learn how to even put the snowboard on, and then how to waddle over to the lift with one foot strapped in, and one foot out to half walk/half slide/almost fall on my way over to the lift, which should really be like a 30 second trip at most but what took me what felt like 6 hours. Oh and that's with the help of at least two people holding my hands and trying to help me. I'm real cool.

Anyway, I made it on the lift, was shaking on the way up not from the cold wind but from my tense nerves about what I was about to attempt to do. With help, I got off the lift at what Lauren told me days later was apparently a blue circle! My first time! I feel like she's lying. But I don't know. Anyway, everyone took off and did their own thing except for one person who was kind enough to shoulder the burden of having to teach me. After many attempts at trying to just stay up and not fall back down, I realized that my wakeboarding experience and my time at the gym weren't going to save me here.

With much coaching, I finally was able to move but only for 5 seconds before I'd fall again. The trick is apparently to completely trust that if I bend my knees enough and don't lean forward, it'll work. And while my brain knew that, my body didn't feel like complying. I also was supposed to have confidence that if I correctly performed my stop, the board would stop. Well, once again my brain wasn't adequately delivering the message to my body, particularly my legs and my left foot. Since I'm goofy, my left foot was supposed to be steering and helping me to stop.

The best part of this story is my big fall. I felt like I was kind of getting the hang of it, which by the way I so completely was not at that point. Anyway I was on a decline when I decided I was going too fast. Oh I should mention that anytime I felt like I was going too fast, which was like anything more than 5 mph, I got nervous and I would automatically find my body trying to stop myself, even if I really didn't want to and knew I shouldn't. So anyway I was on that decline, tried to stop, but was not bending my knees enough and I think I leaned forward a tad instead of back.

And down that mountain I rolled.

I don't know how many times, I don't remember a lot while it was happening because it happened so fast. I think maybe I rolled down the mountain 2 times, possibly 3. And I'm talkin like head over feet rolling. Not on my side. No sir. Head over feet which where attached to a gigantic board. I do distinctly remember not only feeling, but hearing my skull hit the ice. Not snow, ice. Conditions were awful that day, and pretty much no powder. Right after my head hit, I felt the right side of my body around my love handle area smack the ice rather hard as well. Eventually I stopped rolling, and I was facedown trying so so very hard not to cry. Everything was spinning, and there was a medic nearby that witnessed the incident and called out to my friend to ask if I was ok. He wandered over, looked at my face to see if I was crying, saw that I wasn't, and waved the medic on. After taking another 10 seconds to recover, we got back up and eventually made it to the bottom. It took somewhere between 1.5-2 hours from the time I got off the lift to the time I made it to the bottom.

The second round went much better (remember that "better" is a relative term), and we did it in somewhere between 15-30 minutes. I can't remember anymore exactly how long. I took a break after that because my whole body was just absolutely aching. So much for thinking I was in decent shape. I also felt incredibly guilty that this dear gentleman teaching me had paid money to go enjoy himself, and was stuck making sure that I didn't unintentionally kill myself. So off he went to go play, and off I went to huddle by the fire pit.

He came back, grabbed me, and we went down a third and final time. Very smooth compared to the other two runs. Compared to is also really important here to keep in mind. After that, I was cold and wet after having spent more time rolling around in the icy chunky snow than actually gliding on top of it, and I felt a little light-headed so I went to join Anna who had just made herself comfortable in the nearby lodge. Or some place that was indoors.

I should also mention that I never actually did the snowboarding thing by myself. My kind and patient teacher went down the mountain backwards so that I always had someone to hold onto because I never felt confident enough to fully let go. I think towards the end I was doing it myself, but I was still too scared. Oh and we were doing the falling leaf thing. This is just all to put this in perspective so when I say I "started to get it," I mean I started to get the basics, as basic as you can get. I have yet to even fall leaf by myself. But I will emphasize once more that I started on a blue circle!! (so I'm told)

After the lovely night of boarding, we chowed down on burgers and a million fries at Red Robin. Perfect ending to an painfully awesome night.

P.S. I had to do a thorough cleaning of my apartment that night, which was so unbelievably painful to even move around much less clean, you have no idea. And when I woke up on Saturday I was extremely dizzy, and my neck was so sore I seriously couldn't find the strength to pick my head up off the pillow. After almost an hour of just laying in my bed, wide awake, borderline paralyzed (or so it seemed), I forced myself out and stumbled into the living room where I found Mary. I almost passed out as I was washing my face, so Mary hurried and shoved some crackers and blue Poweraid down my throat. I felt really dizzy all day, and we decided that I may have suffered some kind of head trauma since my skull impacted the ice so hard. The rest of the day I had to move slowly, my neck muscles would barely allow my head to swivel, and basically I just wanted to die I hurt so very very bad. Sunday morning was just as terrible, except I felt feverish as well, so I was a bad girl and stayed in bed through church (Stake Conference, even. Really bad girl). Once I finally got up and showered, I felt tremendously better. And I'm pretty much all healed up by now, except I still get dizzy if I bend over to pick something up or whatever. But it's not bad at all. And My neck muscles are also slightly in recovery. But only when I'm laying down and try to lift my head up.

But I can't wait to go again! If I even get to before the season is over :-(