Dallon's First Day of Snowboarding!

To celebrate the passing of my skiing exam, I decided to finally try snowboarding!  Ever since I can remember my friends have been trying to convince me to come to the dark side and I have always held firmly to my skiing roots.  Not wanting to disrespect the ski gods and sell out in any way, I have never seriously tried snowboarding.  Until now.  There was a time several years ago on a ski trip to Colorado when I broke a binding and while my ski was in the shop, I put on someones snowboard to burn the time until my ski got fixed.  So for a couple of hours I tried it, on a rope tow.  I wasn't good.  So last Saturday when I went with John and Christie (thanks guys!) I was pleasantly surprised that all those years of poaching snowboard lessons by listening to instructors as I passed them overhead on a ski lift seemed to pay off.  I didn't completely suck, but by no means did I tear it up either!  I might have actually torn some muscles though!  Apparently I have really learned how to fall well on skis because I have done some massive falling and haven't come close to getting hurt as bad as I did snowboarding!  Holy crap, it really is true what they say about being sore after learning to snowboard, 4 days later I still can't rotate my shoulder back.  Wow, I caught that toe edge and took a face plant that any blooper reel would proudly boast of.  I thought everything was broken from my nose to my ribs and probably some internal bleeding too.  It wasn't that bad, but I really haven't felt that much pain in a LONG time.  The irony is that 20 minutes earlier I told John that I'm getting too confident and I'm going to eat it real hard soon to bring my pride back down.  It was a good experience for me though, now I can relate a little better to people that I teach how to ski.  I had forgotten how formidable a ski hill can look.  I have taken for granted the fact that on skis, for me, it's super simple to get down a hill.  Those gentle bunny hill slopes never looked so steep before!  It was very humbling being the beginner again.  All in all, it was a good time and I'll go again.  But don't worry...I'll always be a skier!

I need baggier pants, so I can look super steezy!

My snowboarding coaches!