Back on Board
With another wakeup call that was far too early, Andy and I staggered around getting ready to leave for Boyne. After a quick breakfast, goodbyes to his folks, and packing up all the booze, we hit the road to Boyne Mountain for another day of snowboarding. I planned on taking another beginner lesson to reinforce what I’d learned on Friday and improve the basics as much as I could.
Honestly, I was dreading this rather than looking forward to it, and I had several moments where I just wanted to go home. Whenever I try to learn something new, especially something physical, I demand immediate competency at it from myself, even if it’s something I’ve never even attempted before. When that doesn’t happen as fast as I want (and it never does, of course) my frustration starts a slow climb, crosses into rage, then peaks with a “Fuck this, I quit!”, which is what happened on Friday after bouncing the back of my skull off the snow one too many times at Crystal. Once I hit that breaking point, though, I typically stop to cool off and clear my head for a bit, then go right back to it after I’ve “reset”. Even though this kind of expectation is totally unrealistic, and probably a bit unhealthy, the upside is that I really do learn very quickly, even if I don’t give myself enough credit for it because it’s not as quick as I think it should be.
So I was kind of dreading riding because I was sure I’d just continue to fall a lot, not be able to turn, or stop, and just generally continue to suck at it. Seriously, I’d had four hours of lessons and practice, I should be able to do the basics perfectly, right?!
Anyway, we pulled into Boyne at about 9:45 a.m., got to the registration desk at 10, and discovered that the class I wanted started at 10, not 10:30 like we’d thought; too late to get my gear rented, suit up, and get to the class. Oh well. I got my stuff anyway, my free lift ticket for the Boyneland beginner run, and went to the baby hill to practice. I felt kind of conspicuous among all the toddlers and kids, but ignored it and soldiered on.
After a while it became obvious that the baby hill was actually impeding my progress rather than helping. The slope was so gentle, and short, that I couldn’t really build up enough speed to practice any turns before I reached the end. On top of that there was usually someone in my way and, because I couldn’t confidently turn to avoid them, I’d deliberately fall to avoid a collision. After that happened twice in a row, I decided to brave the Boyneland run, which is about 1/2 mile long. As I got on the lift with another rider the attendant asked, “Are you having fun yet?”, to which I replied, “Not really.”
“What?! Why not?”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.”
“We have lessons...”
The lift was pulling away so I couldn’t explain, and just parted with, “I’m kind of at the in-between stage.”
After a 5-minute lift ride, I pushed off the chair at the top and promptly fell over, scrambling to get out of the way of the next chair. I scooted down to the top of the fun and stared downslope.
And stared.
And stared some more.
“Alright, let’s do this. There’s only one way down, and you are NOT taking your board off and walking this time.”
I strapped my right foot in and started down. I fell a lot, of course, but made it down in one piece. I went back up and did it again. I even managed to stay upright coming out of the chairlift this time. One of the first problems I managed to overcome was unintentional rotation, by learning to flex my leading foot up or down to correct my heading. Then I made progress on braking by applying steady pressure on my leading edge, instead of “chattering”, which inevitably dumped me on my ass. I was still having problems turning, and just couldn’t seem to cross the slope, turn, and cross back. This was made worse by the fact that the run slopes to the left after a nearly-flat stretch about halfway down, so not only would I lose speed, I’d end up like a gutter ball. Everything else showed improvement but, even by the end of the day, I could not, for the life of me, stay off the left edge of the run, which was getting me all wound up and cussing like the sailor I once was.
Here’s a tip for anyone interested in riding: get step-in bindings. You really don’t have a choice with rental boards, but you will get really sick, really fast, of sitting down to ratchet your ankle and toe straps closed before every run. I envied Andy’s ability to just step-n-click and ride off.
Andy and I rode for about another two hours after lunch, then called it a day so we could get home at a reasonable time. A storm system had parked itself over the upper end of the state, causing near-whiteout conditions until we drove out of it near Roscommon. I was actually sorry the snow stopped, because I love watching it, and the roads weren’t all that bad yet.
Despite my little temper problems, I really did have a great weekend, and I’d definitely try snowboarding again, hopefully before I forget what I learned already. Big thanks to Andy and his parents.
Honestly, I was dreading this rather than looking forward to it, and I had several moments where I just wanted to go home. Whenever I try to learn something new, especially something physical, I demand immediate competency at it from myself, even if it’s something I’ve never even attempted before. When that doesn’t happen as fast as I want (and it never does, of course) my frustration starts a slow climb, crosses into rage, then peaks with a “Fuck this, I quit!”, which is what happened on Friday after bouncing the back of my skull off the snow one too many times at Crystal. Once I hit that breaking point, though, I typically stop to cool off and clear my head for a bit, then go right back to it after I’ve “reset”. Even though this kind of expectation is totally unrealistic, and probably a bit unhealthy, the upside is that I really do learn very quickly, even if I don’t give myself enough credit for it because it’s not as quick as I think it should be.
So I was kind of dreading riding because I was sure I’d just continue to fall a lot, not be able to turn, or stop, and just generally continue to suck at it. Seriously, I’d had four hours of lessons and practice, I should be able to do the basics perfectly, right?!
Anyway, we pulled into Boyne at about 9:45 a.m., got to the registration desk at 10, and discovered that the class I wanted started at 10, not 10:30 like we’d thought; too late to get my gear rented, suit up, and get to the class. Oh well. I got my stuff anyway, my free lift ticket for the Boyneland beginner run, and went to the baby hill to practice. I felt kind of conspicuous among all the toddlers and kids, but ignored it and soldiered on.
After a while it became obvious that the baby hill was actually impeding my progress rather than helping. The slope was so gentle, and short, that I couldn’t really build up enough speed to practice any turns before I reached the end. On top of that there was usually someone in my way and, because I couldn’t confidently turn to avoid them, I’d deliberately fall to avoid a collision. After that happened twice in a row, I decided to brave the Boyneland run, which is about 1/2 mile long. As I got on the lift with another rider the attendant asked, “Are you having fun yet?”, to which I replied, “Not really.”
“What?! Why not?”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.”
“We have lessons...”
The lift was pulling away so I couldn’t explain, and just parted with, “I’m kind of at the in-between stage.”
After a 5-minute lift ride, I pushed off the chair at the top and promptly fell over, scrambling to get out of the way of the next chair. I scooted down to the top of the fun and stared downslope.
And stared.
And stared some more.
“Alright, let’s do this. There’s only one way down, and you are NOT taking your board off and walking this time.”
I strapped my right foot in and started down. I fell a lot, of course, but made it down in one piece. I went back up and did it again. I even managed to stay upright coming out of the chairlift this time. One of the first problems I managed to overcome was unintentional rotation, by learning to flex my leading foot up or down to correct my heading. Then I made progress on braking by applying steady pressure on my leading edge, instead of “chattering”, which inevitably dumped me on my ass. I was still having problems turning, and just couldn’t seem to cross the slope, turn, and cross back. This was made worse by the fact that the run slopes to the left after a nearly-flat stretch about halfway down, so not only would I lose speed, I’d end up like a gutter ball. Everything else showed improvement but, even by the end of the day, I could not, for the life of me, stay off the left edge of the run, which was getting me all wound up and cussing like the sailor I once was.
Here’s a tip for anyone interested in riding: get step-in bindings. You really don’t have a choice with rental boards, but you will get really sick, really fast, of sitting down to ratchet your ankle and toe straps closed before every run. I envied Andy’s ability to just step-n-click and ride off.
Andy and I rode for about another two hours after lunch, then called it a day so we could get home at a reasonable time. A storm system had parked itself over the upper end of the state, causing near-whiteout conditions until we drove out of it near Roscommon. I was actually sorry the snow stopped, because I love watching it, and the roads weren’t all that bad yet.
Despite my little temper problems, I really did have a great weekend, and I’d definitely try snowboarding again, hopefully before I forget what I learned already. Big thanks to Andy and his parents.