A Comedy of Errors

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Morrow
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2007-03-27
still haven't found what i'm looking for

08:39

I know, I'm averaging once a week. Sorry. I avoid updating at work and I've been anti-computer at home lately. But here, read this; I wrote it during the ski trip for just such a situation. It's Wednesday, February 21st.
_______________________________________

Becca's friend, M., and I took an all-day snowboarding lesson at Vail while everyone else went snowmobiling. I was a little worried when I couldn't even stand up without falling down at the start of the day, even though it *was* only my third time and *had* been a year since my last lesson and several months from my last snowboarding attempt. I shouldn't have worried. By the end of the day, M. and I were breezing down the bunny hill. Sort of; greens are actually rather difficult for new snowboarders as it is hard to turn on the flat. At 3:30, the lesson was over and M. and I decided to head up the mountain; Vail weirdly has it's greens at the top of the hill. (Tangent: When we were hiking the Incan Trail in fall 2004, we'd often ask our guide what it was like ahead. We learned very quickly that when he said "flat", as if ANYTHING in the Andes could be called such, it was only comparative to the rest of the terrain, so we soon coined the term "Peruvian flat". Now, too, has "Vail greens" become a quantifier because the greens on Vail are green only in comparison to the difficulty of other parts of the hill (as with most hills), and were actually more like the intermediate runs on other mountains, much to Sarah and Jose's dismay). The instructor said that we'd be a level 4 if we could do the run, and by golly, we wuz gonna be level 4s.

On the lift to mid-mountain, I worriedly eyed the endless cat tracks snaking their way down the hill. Beginning boarders + busy cat tracks are NOT a good combination. At the top of the mountain, M. and I made it down the "Vail greens" with no problem. I even managed the first third of the (by now empty) cat track, wondering why I'd been so concerned. No problem!! Then, I fell. HARD. On my tailbone. That took it all out of me. I limped through the next third; I'd been well ahead of M. till then, now she always had to stop and wait for me. Finally, about a third of the way from the bottom, a passing Ski Patroller offered me a ride down on a snowmobile. I pathetically attempted to refuse, but after her comment of "it's pretty brutal on a snowboard" and the coolness of riding a snowmobile down, I gave in. We went STRAIGHT down the hill, and kinda fast, too! It was awesome, but I was worried about M. who had gone ahead of me and was out of sight. At the bottom, I tried to call her, but then she came down on a snowmobile, too! SHE had actually had enough juice to finish, but due to a memorial for a recently-deceased ski instructor on the part of the mountain that we were trying to go down, they'd told her she had to take it. Darn! ;) Anyway, it was fun to tell everyone that we, too, had gone snowmobiling.

The instructor had said it'd take us roughly an hour. We headed up at 3:30. Even with the snowmobile ride, it was 5:15 when we made it to the bottom and the shadows were getting long. Oops.

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