12.30.2004

Corrupting Newbies

Ok, if you haven't noticed, I'm a snowboarder. It is one of my passions and the main thing that has me looking forward to winter.

Today, I went snowboarding, and I dragged a newbie who has never been with me. I tend to do that a lot. See, my reasoning is if I can corrupt them into snowboarding with me once, they become a future snowboarding partner when I really feel like getting crazy.

There are three ways I snowboard. By myself, with people worse then myself, and with people better then myself. I prefer to go in that order reversed. Unfortunately, most people I know are worse then myself or have never been, which are almost the same thing. So whenever i get the chance, I talk people into hitting mountains with me.

Though I've had instances where they came off with the lame excuse of taking the hamster to the vet (yes, somebody brushed me off with that very line).

So anyway, today, I corrupted one of my troopies. See, she is a soldier who recently joined the military yet was still in high school, and her unit was on the other side of the mountains, so we kind of babysat her for a while until she went to basic. That was fun.

She has turned into a pretty good troop. That, and she went to the same exact basic training company I did. I got a kick out of that. I could have done so many mean things to her on account of that but I didn't. *kicks self*

Anyway, the story of Lisa, as that is all you shall know her as. Lisa has lived in this town all of her life and though there are five ski resorts within a two hour drive, she had never been. I felt the need to remedy that.

She picked it up pretty damn fast. We finally pulled the camera out at the end.


Lisa is riding here, this was the last run we did, for reasons which I will go into momentarily.

Conditions were interesting. It snowed about three or four inches. The snow covered Ice. Falling was not fun, especially in certain spots where the snow had been worn away, leaving nothing but ice.

Lisa fell right on a patch of ice and banged her knee. She called it quits about this time.


She was still on the mountain, but had to get down, so she converted the snowboard into a sled. I call this, Board Sledding!

Lisa got going pretty fast for a moment, but lost control of her direction. She fell off, and the board kept going. I saw this coming from a mile away and kept yelling "get it! Get it!"

Damn I wish I got a picture of her chasing after it.



This is the board, in the ditch.



This is Lisa, going after the snowboard.



This is Lisa and the board trying to get out of the ditch. About this time I was thinking "you know, I should have gone after it, considering Lisa banged her knee on the ice!"



This is Lisa, laid out exhausted after getting the snowboard.

Well, then there was me. See, I let Lisa use my board and because she is taller then me, I let her use my boarding pants, so I kind of mix and matched my gear. *warning, boarding terminology in use* I've actually got four snowboards (I carry extras for newbies to get them hooked), three are strap ins and one is a switch step in bindings. Because all of the support is in the boot on my Switch Gear, the boot is a bit big. I usually use my other pants to cover over the boots, but unfortunately, Lisa was wearing them. So I reverted back to my other pants.

They have suspenders that I often forget to strap. And I'm wearing Camouflage with a bright blue knit cap.

The result?



I think I'm going for a fashion statement here. And it ain't workin'.

Oh well, who cares? I had fun.

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