Respect Your Edges

My husband loves the cold and snow for two reasons: snowmobiling and skiing. Since there is no way a snowmobile could get into our apartment (once in our apartment it would have to replace our couch, which I don't really mind since our couch has golfers on it--see entry about living in a bachelor pad!--so we can't get much worse), my husband is left with skiing. Since I am the supporting, loving wife that I am (I think I just heard my husband guffaw...), I try to go skiing with my husband when he has no one else to go with. Personally, I'm not a terrible skiier, and I can at least hold my own on most mountains. But do I stick with skiing anymore? Needless to say, I have left the confines of what I know and wandered into the realm of the unknown, also known as snowboarding. Let me tell you, the unknown hurts and is much harder to master than you think! Falling while you are snowboarding is much worse than falling while you are skiing. If you fall while skiing, you just kind of crumple up and roll down the mountain. If you fall while snowboarding, your body is like a plank of wood so you have no time to crumple into a protective ball before falling flat on your face or the back of your head. Also, sometimes the only way to stop on a snowboard is to fall, usually on your knees or your wrists. Such physical trauma drove half of my class to quit midway through our lesson, and we were only on the bunny hill! Our instructer kept telling us to respect our edges, and believe me, I learned to respect my edges plenty by the end of the lesson. I have bruised knees, wrists, and skull to prove it. After seeing me go down the mountain, my husband asked me if I was sure I preferred snowboarding to skiing. Here's the funny thing, I really do prefer snowboarding. It's crazy, but despite all the pain I really like the challenge. Plus, I know if I can conquer snowboarding, I can do anything!