Hey Jealousy

Ironically, I heard that song yesterday, and hated it just as I've always done.

I'm jealous today because I read my friend Sarah Brown's blog earlier, and she's headed to Tahoe to go skiing this week. Many southerners have to specify that as "snow skiing," but everywhere else, it's just "skiing."

Anyway, Sarah expressed some insecurities about her skiing abilities...well, this one's for you, Sarah.

A few years back, I was visiting my Uncle and his family out in Colorado and we decided to hit the slopes at Winter Park. I'm a pretty competent snowboarder. I'm not afraid to hit the double diamonds and hammer them out. I'm a far, FAR cry from that mutant Shaun White, but I do like to try and hit the jumps when I can.

There were about 10 of us who went up there together for the day, so we all went to our favorite parts of the mountain and agreed to meet for lunch at noon or something.

For most snowboarders, the mogul field is a nightmare. For me, however, it is a smorgasbord of jump after jump after jump...and I LOVE IT! I found a huge field of moguls that ended in a big powdery section with a sweet jump in the middle of it and dug in.

Perhaps I'll venture a bit more honesty about my snowboarding capacities: I can carve and go fast for days...no problem. I LOVE jumps, but the truth is that I get to snowboard so little that my landings are often a textbook definition of "tumultuous."

I spent the WHOLE morning riding through that mogul field over and over...run after run. I would just go as fast as I could through them until I simply couldn't control myself anymore. Then, I'd crash hard and smash into the next few moguls with whatever body part gravity hated most at the moment. At the end of the mogul field, I'd stand for a second so my eyes would uncross, then head full-speed toward the big jump to attempt some trick that I didn't have a chance in the world at landing.

Lunchtime rolled around, and I was giddy. I dragged myself into the lodge to meet my crew for some nourishment. My uncle said, "Hey Graham, give me your backpack. I put the bread and pretzels in there." I sheepishly handed him my backpack...which I had been wearing for the WHOLE morning crash session. After opening it, he just smiled and looked at me with incredulity asking, "Man, what the hell were you doing?!?" The whole loaf of bread was flat as a board, and the whole bag of pretzels had been reduced to crumbs too small to see with a microscope.

Fortunately, those guys have come to expect a certain degree of crazy from me, so we all had a laugh about it. You guessed it. I went right back out and did the same thing all afternoon.

Anyway...not sure what you should take from this. Go for it? Falling is more fun than not? Don't volunteer to take the bread and pretzels if you treat yourself as a human crash-test-dummy?

Whatever. Have fun Sarah - do some shredding for me!