Jennifer vs. Snowboarding

I did it. After having lived here for 2 years, I finally went snowboarding. I decided to go last Thursday. So, in order to force myself to go, I signed up for a lesson on Monday. In doing so, I had no way out. I was extremely nervous because I've never done any sort of sport on snow before, but I was determined.

I arrived about an hour before my lesson, which was nice because then I could relax and get myself psyched up for it. Right before I got on the gondola that took us up to the base of the mountain, I asked a guy a question about where I should get my pass, and this was his response, "Hey, you know, you're making the wave, I'm just riding it." That cracked me up, because he was completely serious. I didn't think people actually talked like that. Anyway, I took this stoner-sentence as a good sign that I was going to have a good day. When lesson time came, I joined the others at the meeting spot and waited. All of my girlfriends kept saying, "if nothing else, you're going to have a hot snowboard instructor!" and they were right. Dustin was pretty cute, but he seemed really young, which means our relationship started and stopped with the lesson. Plus, he lives in Florida for 6 months of the year, and if I haven't said this before, I hate Florida.

The lesson started with learning how to strap into the board, and how to look cool while carrying your board. Then we got on the lesson hill, where you stand up for the first time on your board and try to go down the hill. I actually surprsied myself and did pretty well at that part. Then, they chose about 5 people who were feeling pretty good at this point, to actually go up on the lift and try the easiest of the hills. I was included in this group.

Dustin taught us about a few certain kind of turns. I was doing pretty well, not hurting myself too much, until this one jack-ass from our group ran smack into me. I landed directly on my tail bone and it hurt like hell. At this point, I was tired, my tail bone hurt, and I was frustrated because I wasn't quite getting the hang of the last turn. For those of you who don't know me that well, I can sometimes get an attitude. (This may be why, when growing up, my nickname from my mom was "Mouth". I guess I talked back a lot...) Anyway, after this I got a little lippy with Dustin.

He kept telling me to do things with my feet that were supposed to help me succeed in doing this one turn. At one point I told him to just stop instructing me. Luckily, he laughed at that. Nothing was working, I wasn't getting this stupid turn. Then he came over and fixed something on my bindings and noticed that one of my boots should be tighter. I made him tighten it, which made him start complaining about going from a snowboard instructor to a boot tightener. Anyway, with my bindings fixed, and my boots tight, and no instruction from Dustin, I nailed the turn without falling! Unfortunately, that was my last run down the mountain and I had to go. Overall, I had a great time and am really excited to go again.

In fact, this weekend I'm going to Steamboat with some friends of mine from Ohio, Nissa and Ryan. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay up a lot more than I did during my first attempt at snowboarding.

Oh yeah, on my drive home I passed a tow truck with a U-haul on the back! Stupid U-haul.