Sometimes It’s OK To Throw Yourself on the Ground

I promised myself when I was younger, that I would always, as long as I was healthy and able, try new things.  At least one thing every year. (This does not include food. As it’s harder for me to try a new food than to jump out of a plane… and that’s no lie.) So this year, I thought we ALL needed to try something new.

For our birthdays.

Snowboarding.

So we headed to Snowy Range, the smaller ski area where I felt we could be a little more safe and comfortable with the number of skiers flying past us. I have never skied there. (We normally head down south to Colorado.) We were lucky enough to get to learn together. Just the three of us with a one on one teacher.  He was patient. Especially with my little one, who of course got frustrated very early on, but he got the hang of it a little.  We also, since it is Wyoming after all, ran into some great friends, learning the ropes too.

Now, here’s something I learned about snowboarding: It’s perfectly acceptable to throw your whole body on the ground backward  on your ass to get yourself to stop. And it’s perfectly acceptable to scream and laugh while doing so. That is just fine to do. It’s also fine to flail yourself down to the ground, and then reach inside your pocket, take out a sandwich and have lunch right there on top of a snow drift. That’s just fine.  That is not normally fine to do whilst skiing. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I also learned that snowboarding is hard. Really hard. It’s a lot easier to learn to ski…at least in my opinion. And that I am a slow methodical person when it comes to both. I have no desire to go fast.

So, we were all exhausted even after just a couple hours. The wind was blowing at about a billion miles an hour.  But we all survived. No broken bones. And now we can say we’ve done it…..and I might even do it again!