Winter sport experiments #2: Snowboarding

In spite of my rather embarrassing end to my last winter experiment, I decided to once again try a winter sport. Henry was pretty enthusiastic about this decision, because he loves to snowboard and most of his snowboarding friends moved away up north, so he promised to teach me (and let me borrow all his old equipment, so all I had to buy were boots!).

I can't really say that I successfully snowboarded today, because the biggest hill I attempted was about a foot high. I learned from my last experience that I need to start ridiculously small because I HATE the feeling of sliding along when I'm not controlling where I'm going. So, I spent what felt like about 6 hours but was probably only about 45 minutes (at most!) jumping, shuffling, sliding and being pushed around Henry's yard while strapped to a big piece of wood polished to be very, very slippery.

It reminded me again, several times, that something about the cold makes Minnesotans go a little nuts. The worst part is, we've only had snow for a couple weeks now--what am I going to decide to do when the cabin fever actually sets in?

At any rate, when I was just going very slowly on flat ground, it was a little less scary than I expected. I still fell down upwards of 15 times and learned that long jackets and high pants are VERY important (I've been inside for half an hour and am just starting to regain feeling in my butt) BUT by the end, Henry pushed me in a circle all the way around his yard before I fell down! This was a very big step from the 3 feet I made it the first time and leads me to believe that maybe by March, I'll be ready for the bunny hill (although Henry's plan is closer to early December....) On the plus side, if I keep this up, I will absolutely not need to take Steamboat Willie up one her offer to have a trainer friend come up with the strength training plan. About five minutes in, my calves started to feel vaguely like they were on fire...it slowly spread to the rest of my legs and I'm pretty sure that I ended up getting better exercise there than I have in anything since Tae Soo Do.

I'm sure there will be more updates...hopefully in them the number of falls will go down! I promised to try again on Wednesday night, so hopefully I'll be in good enough shape to head all over Minnesota to eat turkey!