When I was in high school, I tried to learn how to snowboard. I had grown up in the San Fransisco Bay area and had never seen snow, prior to my 14th birthday. We had recently moved to Oregon and were only a few miles from Mt Ashland so my mom decided to get my sister and I some lesions. I sucked ass but I had fun.

Later that year I would learn that nearly all my friends loved to snowboard and I would often go up with them but I still sucked. I think part of it was that I never had my own board and was always borrowing others with varying degrees of size and shape, it was hard to get used to anything. I still loved going, even if I was on my ass more than anything else.

Brian, my husband, was a fairly decent snowboarder when I met him. In fact our first real date was when he dropped by my house, on the way home from a snowboarding trip. I hadn't been in years but I was excited to go with him. For whatever reason we never got the chance. We then moved to Florida where there was, no snow and he hadn't been riding since

7 years later...

A few weeks ago Brian got a free pair of lift tickets. I was excited at first and then very apprehensive. I realized I was 28 and hadn't been boarding since I was 17, and I wasn't very good then either. I wondered if I could still do it. We had to keep moving back our snowboarding plans for several weeks due to scheduling conflicts and I was starting to be glad that we might not go, then this past week everything came together and we were able to go up to the mountain Saturday morning.

Now when I think back to my high school snowboarding trips, I remember getting up at the crack of dawn, piling into a car with 6 guys and all our gear and heading up to the slops. Let me tell you, this is not how Brian rolls. We got up at 8am, got dressed, headed over to my folks house, ate breakfast and then headed up the the mountain. We rented some boards and boots and headed out to the slopes.

As I strapped myself in and stood up to look down the steep slope to the lift, I was suddenly frozen with fear. I started to go down bit by bit and I just fell and fell and fell. For a moment I was ready to give up. I had obviously, completely forgotten how to do this and should really just go back to the car before I hurt myself or someone else. As I sat there panicking, I looked up just in time to watch in horror as some idiot plowed into me. It didn't hurt bad but it knocked me tumbling backwards. That was it. I'm not a quitter, so I turned myself around to face down the hill and stood up one more time. Something clicked in my head, and I had it. Granted, it wasn't pretty but I made it the rest of the way down the slope to the lift with minimal wreckage.

We went up and down a few times before I convinced Brian to head up to some of the high runs. We sort of took a wrong turn and ended up going down a very steep hill that was fairly hard and icy. I was trying to take it slow and steady but a quarter of the way down I kicked out my heel to slow my self. I didn't slow but instead I stop, landed on my butt and started sliding down the hill. I tried to slam my board down into the snow to stop myself but it was too icy and I was picking up momentum. Suddenly I turning and then was sliding backwards, on my ass with my snowboard facing uphill. I was going fast and I could do nothing to stop. I didn't exactly panic but it scared the crap out of me. I kept trying to flip myself over and dig my board in but I was just going too fast. After a while I finally managed to twist over, slam my board down and stop.

I sat there for a few minutes trying to catch my breath and get it together. I was scared to get back up and slide and further down the hill but I did finally manage to scoot myself over to another run through some trees.

We got back up and we did a few more runs before I realized I'd really fucked up my neck. I let Brian take a few runs without me and then we headed for home.

I actually had areally great time. I sort of felt like I was doing better than I had in high school. If only I hadn't gone down that stupid slope backwards or gotten creamed by that guy, I think I could have lasted a little longer and I'm actually really excited to go again. :)