What do you do on a beautiful winter day off that your son isn’t off running around with friends? You go snowboarding!
I enjoy every minute I can with my children. When one of them says, “Hey, you’re not working tomorrow. Do you want to go snowboarding?”, I just have to take advantage of the opportunity. That just happened the other day. To be honest, the first thing that ran through my mind was, I don’t want fall. That quickly faded away when I saw the excitement on my son’s face.
I’m not an avid skier or snowboarder. And I don’t feel the slopes calling me every free moment. However, I do enjoy going once a year when I have a free day and the snow is good. The other day turned out to be one of those days. My son called it a Bluebird Day.
After buying a ticket online and getting a good night’s rest, we headed up the highway to the Steven’s Pass Resort. There’s something special when you’re on the road and able to see the sun rise in front of you. The temps were in the 20’s the whole way up the pass and the snow line was pretty low which helped build on the excitement we were already feeling as we moved closer to the pass.
On the way up we stopped at a ski rental shop to pick up snowboards, boots, and helmets. We are a couple of tall guys and needed the only large snowboards and boots they had. Our snowboards were taller than many of the people on the slopes.
Morning view from the parking lot. 
Morning view from the lodge.
This
was only my third time on a snowboard. The other two times were over ten years ago.
I’m certainly not an expert and don’t have the confidence that I had when I was
younger. What I do have is an acute
awareness of how long it takes to recover from an injury.
I noticed I would give myself a pep talk to remind myself that I could make that turn. I had almost no trouble turning left. It was turning right where I would hesitate. Most of the time I would go down the stepper sections on my heels. Boy, did that fatigue my quads but I had a great excuse. I was facing downhill which gave me an excellent view! Any excuse will work if you let it.
I knew that making excuses were not going to help me improve so I forced myself to go on a few runs that made me uncomfortable. There were stretches that made me nervous as I got very close to a double diamond drop, some that made me very aware of my mortality, and others that would have me cheering inside for cutting some nice curves.
After several runs, we hooked up with some friends for lunch that happened to be there, too. They are experienced skiers and tackle anything in front of them. They even joined us for a couple runs even though we slowed them down. Thanks Jeff and Micah for your patience.
One of those runs was on the back side of the mountain. The runs on that side seem a lot longer and I needed to take a break if I was going to continue so my son and I headed back to the lodge for a break. We had jackets and hats off while sitting outside on the terrace. We were amazed how warm 32 degrees felt sitting in the sun with no breeze.
Throughout the day, I would have flashbacks of the last time I went boarding. That time I fell forward at an odd angle onto my left arm. I didn’t hurt my arm but I did a good job of knocking the wind out of me and straining something in my ribs. My ribs continued to remind me of that fall for weeks. This time I didn’t fall like that but I did have a few good spills. Once we peeled ourselves away from the amazing views at the lodge, we enjoyed several more runs before I realized it was time for me to stop.
I was sure I would have sore quads the next morning because of all the braking I did with my heels. Instead, my arms and shoulders were the ones I felt. I take that back. After standing up a moment ago I can say my quads are sore, too.
At the end of the day, the best part was being able to spend time with my son. To all of you parents out there, make time to create memories with your children since the time you have with them is way too short.
