Snowboarding with Sauron
I learned to snowboard this past week! This, in itself, is pretty awesome, but its made even more awesome by the fact that I learned to snowboard on Mount Doom. The locales call it Mt Ruapehu, but trust me, its Mount Doom. Its big and imposing and still an active volcano. It turns out that I am better at snowboarding than I expected to be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not good. At all. Rather bad in fact. But I didn't break anything, and my bruising was minimal, so in my book this makes me an olympic contender. By the end of the third day my limbs were too shaky to continue really, and a last minute fall had me hitting my head so hard that it gave me a migraine almost instantly. It really sucked. Heather on the other hand, appears to be some kind of snow ninja, and when she falls, rather than slamming her head on a rock or scraping her face on some ice like I do, she manages to twist her body until she is upside down, board over head, and bobs and weaves around all obstacles while accelerating upside down and backwards down the mountain only to emerge from the tumble completely unscathed. Its like watching fire in space. Despite the fact that I cannot stop unless I slam into a mountain I think I will probably snowboard again, finances permitting. Its way more fun than I thought it would be, and its way less embarrassing now to be buried in snow by a six year old now that I have some ability to give them as good as I get.