Posts tagged germany

I snow­boarded! Is that the right verb for it? Or do I have to "went snow­board­ing"? No mat­ter. I went and did it. Start­ing on Fri­day with pur­chas­ing lots of gear includ­ing snow pants, jacket, ther­mal under­wear, gloves, hat, and gog­gles. On Sat­ur­day I went with Emily to get some socks which I had for­got­ten and she needed as well. Sun­day morn­ing dim and way-too-early (6:30 AM on a Sun­day is a ter­ri­ble time to be awake and active) Emily picked me up. Also with us was her room­mate Laura.

We had a two-hour drive out to Aus­tria. Where exactly, I have no idea. I need to ask because I just don't know. We had rented gear at a shop there and arrived just before the big morn­ing rush. With our gear we went up the moun­tain and Emily and I broke off from our ski­ing friends to go snow­board. It was my first time and she had been half a dozen times.

Things started badly. Really badly, as in I could not get upright on the snow­board. The tech­nique is to have the board down­hill from you with the back­side dug into the snow. Then you inch your body for­ward with your hands until it is under you, then quickly shove your body over it. This is the­o­ret­i­cal because I never accom­plished it. I could not get my weight over the board either because I couldn't bend my knees far enough with the snow pants on or my arms are too short. I ended up walk­ing the board down most of the way on the slope were on, which was an inter­me­di­ate bunny slope type of thing lead­ing down to the real lifts that go way up the mountain.

About halfway down we changed tac­tics and I did the reverse stand-up which involves lying on your chest and shov­ing your­self up on to the board, at which point you are fac­ing uphill. That worked! And then you fall over, which I was also good at! Actu­ally I picked up on that really quick and bal­anced pretty well. From then on I spent the entire day back­wards on the snow­board fac­ing uphill. This is how they teach you ini­tially in begin­ner lessons but I invented it inde­pen­dently. I got pretty good at mov­ing left and right and slow­ing and stop­ping that way.

After we got to the bot­tom of that slope we took a lift to the top of the bot­tom. I suc­cess­fully dis­mounted the lift on my first try (not so easy on a snow­board). Then had the ter­rify prospect of mak­ing my way down a tremen­dous steep hill. Oh lord was it scary! It was pretty cer­tain death as far as I was con­cerned. How­ever Emily went on ahead to wait for me at the first flat­ter spot, so I had to get my butt mov­ing. Slowly and care­fully I began my back­wards snow­board­ing down the hill saw­ing back and forth and falling a lot, some­times on acci­dent some­times as a way of stop­ping myself. I got pretty good at it though it never became less scary.

With these rest breaks at the flat spots mixed with ter­ri­fy­ing downslopes and my total beginner-ness it took all morn­ing to get down to the orig­i­nal spot. I was so exhausted! My back­wards tech­nique held up pretty well but is exhaust­ing because all the con­trol work for aim­ing, bal­anc­ing, slow­ing, and stop­ping is done essen­tially on your toes and ball of the foot — com­pletely exhaust­ing for the calf mus­cles which were scream­ing. For a while my board straps were too tight which was cut­ting off my cir­cu­la­tion also, which didn't help. I regained a lot of con­trol after loos­en­ing them up and get­ting some blood going again.

We had lunch at noon and fin­ished just past 1pm. Chili con carne and apfelschorle and water for lunch — good stuff. Emily and I went down to the ski shop to get her snow­board adjusted. I went along partly to be chival­rous but mostly for the break.

Even­tu­ally we made it back up to slopes. We then spent an hour going down the bunny slope a few times. I wanted to prac­tice in a more con­trolled way and try to get over my fear of fac­ing for­wards on the snow­board. How­ever every attempt ended in quick falls onto my face. Back­wards board­ing seems to agree with me more. Emily was hav­ing a rough time also. She was frus­trated because in the past she always used 'goofy' style which means the right foot is for­ward on the board as opposed to reg­u­lar or 'daffy' style which has left foot for­ward. She found she was tend­ing put her left foot for­ward; the unex­pected change from her pre­vi­ous times left her frus­trated and con­fused. We never did resolve that. I told her it might just be a ran­dom sud­den change in pref­er­ence: when I was tak­ing ice skat­ing lessons as a child I always did hockey stops to the right, but one day sud­denly I found it totally nat­ural to go left and that going to the right was now awk­ward and hard. It was an overnight change and stuck with me ever since. Maybe it was the same sort of thing for her.

We went down 3 times, each time tak­ing the t-bar lift back up, which is dif­fi­cult on a snow­board. I actu­ally got pro­gres­sively worse each time, I think because my mus­cles were totally exhausted; I just had noth­ing left to con­trol the board. We went for one final run down our first inter­me­di­ate slope and I had a really spec­tac­u­lar wipe­out involv­ing a cart­wheel bal­anced on my head and my gog­gles fly­ing 20 feet down the hill. That, I decided, was def­i­nitely it for the day.

We met up with Laura, returned out gear, and came home then. The two-hour drive seemed much longer com­ing back even though Emily was still doing the dri­ving. It was fun talk­ing to them. I dis­cov­ered Laura has a Wii and wants some­one to play Mario Kart and Smash Broth­ers with, so we are going to have some Wii game nights. Also dis­cussed going to the Munich Inau­gural Ball for Obama's inau­gu­ra­tion next week — it's a fancy dress party here in Munich with danc­ing and a live broad­cast of the events. I don't par­tic­u­larly want to go alone so I haven't signed up yet. If I don't hear from Emily in the next day or so I will ask Anne.

So all was well with snow­board­ing. It was ter­ri­fy­ing, exhaust­ing, really dif­fi­cult com­pared to ski­ing, and a good expe­ri­ence. Last night I went to bed tired and a bit sore. Today though I found my neck really stiff and hurt­ing. I actu­ally slept a few hours this after­noon to rest my neck it hurt so much. All day I could barely type, but it has got­ten bet­ter com­pared to this morn­ing. I must have really whacked it hard on one of my two big wipe­outs, prob­a­bly that very last one.

I will def­i­nitely give snow­board­ing another shot, but I don't think it is for me. This com­ing week­end is pos­si­bly my first week­end ski­ing trip though. That should be an eas­ier time since I seem to have a good knack for it. Also the snow­board­ing work­out will strengthen my legs and calf mus­cles up a lot so it will be less tiring.