i heart the mountains

Happy Birthday DJ! My good friend has turned 30. To celebrate, Kristen (his wife and my friend) threw him a cross country ski event up at Snoqualmie pass. A little herd of us drove up and enjoyed cake and lunch at the lodge before strapping on the ol’ Nordics and hitting the trails. I say that sounding like it was easy for me, which is was not. I felt like a fool with skis on my feet. I couldn’t go, I couldn’t stop and I tripped Melissa with my pole as we got off the ski lift. I was filled with fear as Kristen and DJ tried to convince us that the hill off to the right, which was a blue rated downhill run, was also good for cross country skiers. I couldn’t begin to move either direction and by the time I began to feel confident in my ability to direct myself, we realized that the Nordic trails were the other direction and headed away from certain death.

The rest of the afternoon we made loop trails, had races, videoed each other coming down black diamonds and threw snow chunks at each other. It was beautiful and clean and the air echoed with the crack of distant avalanches. We had a great time, especially when DJ stood under a snowy tree and dared us throw snowballs and dislodge the pack onto his head. It was hilarious. On the way back down, the hills became too steep to manage for most of us, so we popped our skis off and sledded down sitting on them. We laughed and screamed with delight as we slammed into snow banks and bounced around corners. As we were traversing a pleasant flat place, Whitney said in her delightfully sarcastic yet serious way, “I would say that we’re really making some great memories here.”

In addition to the fun, friend-filled snow day this weekend, I ventured up for my second snowboarding lesson last Thursday. I was pleased to have a different teacher this time, 23 year old Mike who teaches ESL in foreign lands during the summer months and speaks Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin. He was a vast improvement to T from the week before who was clearly a few runs short of a resort, if you know what I mean. Example: when I asked T about a problem I was having turning, he said to relax and just learn how to feel it. When I asked Mike the same question he responded by correcting my imbalance issues and reminding me how to flex my board with my feet to turn, not to lean. Much more helpful. I improved greatly and spent the rest of the afternoon with Noah, my classmate, riding the lift and trying to not fall for the length of the bunny slope. Mike even took us on a blue square run, which did wonders for my self confidence. A success! One more fun lesson this Wednesday before succumbing to my laborious fate on Friday. All vacations must come to an end, even those that last 13 months.