My Return to Snowboarding

     Yesterday, I went snowboarding for this first time since I was 11. Even back then, I was not by any means a pro. I had taken one singular, and that was it. I never returned again. Looking back, I wish that I had because after yesterday, I want to be able to enjoy this activity fairly regularly.

    Since I hadn't been snowboarding in 5 years, my brother and I (who hasn't snowboarded in that long either) took a lesson. It started out a little rough, but since we were only going down small hills, falling did not hurt at all. We learned all the basics: what stance we needed to have, how to turn, how to stop, etc. Then, we graduated to the bigger learning hill, which was steeper and had berms. I did pretty OK if I do say so myself. Sure, I might have gone over one of the berms unintentionally, but we're not going to focus on that. Instead, I like to focus on how I did not have as many wipe-outs as I had been expecting. Over a span of four hours, I only wiped out three times. To be honest, I don't think that sounds too bad. I definitely fell less than my brother did, at least.

    My worst wipe-out was technically not even my fault. There was a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, who was quite obviously a snowboarding beginner, just like me. However, she was just standing in the middle of the hill and not going down. So, I had to swerve sharply in order to avoid crashing into her. I, not being skilled enough to perform such a maneuver, ended up turning a little too much, and I went down. She did apologize, but to top it all off, she crashed into me just after. When she tried to continue down the hill, she was only sliding a little bit and very, very slowly. I was still on the ground though, and she ended up running into my sprawled figure. Thankfully, no one was hurt thanks to her aforementioned speed, but she ended up having to apologize again while continuing to slowly slide down the learning hill.

    Despite that one unfortunate experience, I enjoyed myself immensely. I can't wait to go back, and fortunately I won't have to wait long because we will be going back on Monday. I still wish that I had continued to snowboard after my very first lesson in 2016, but you know what they say: better late than never!