wow, today was a marathon session up at Mountain High.  9am to 9pm.  Started good, went bad, turned good, went bad, finished great.

 

good.

Started at 9 on bunny central, and I was still having trouble going from toe to heel.  Just couldn't figure it out.  Group lesson at 11 (part of the package deal) but no one else showed up for lessons, so it turned into a private one - sweet!  received tutelage on shifting my feet weight in the turns, keeping my hips forward, and more bend in the knees.  Sounds simple, but oh, man...  Meesed with the binding adjestments a bit, and suddenly it was a lot easier to control the board - cool.

 

bad.

Lesson over and lunchtime.  Had a chicken burrito and hot dog.  Something went awry here, cause that lunch absolutely demolished me until about 4:30.  Yeah, I tried working on snowboarding, but that was difficult between the GI distress head calls.  Yuck.  Considered going home, cause I was just in torture.  Finally that all worked itself out, and I could get back to focusing on the task at hand - toe to heel.  Stuff just wasn't working - was wondering where the enlightenment from my lesson had gone - pretty much evaporated.

 

good.

And then I decided to just take a step back, glaze my eyes over, and let the body 'go with the flow'.  Put my headphones on for the first time and just started going down the trails a-okay.  That was at 5:29 pm.  Also known as 'AWESOMETIME'.  Kept working it - toe to heel was working fine now.  All was looking peachy.  Was doing so well, that I decided to stay for the night session to reinforce the good boarding.  Also didn't feel like city in rush hour traffic again (sat in that in the morning).

 

bad.

At 7:01pm, I was prolly going just a little too fast for my own good and taking a - you guessed it - toe to heel turn, but I overcompensated on my toe lifts and I busted bad.  WOMP!  Took a time out and just lied in the snow for a couple minutes (with my butt elevated).  Was wondering if I'd ever be able to sit in a seat ever again.  Was amazed there wasn't a blood trail coming straight out of my butt.

 

great.

But I eventually got up, and started doing my turns down the hill again.  Took a Mountain Dew break, was conscious of how I screwed up, didn't do it again.  Went a lot slower, but rode with better technique so that was nice.  Eyes were glazed and I realized that I really just needed to practice the fundamentals - the speed will gradually increase without me even knowing it.

 

Got home at 11:45 and I've got to get up at 4:30 to attend a VTC at work at 5:30am (because of f-in 8:30 eastern time).  Definitely'll need a good cup of joe for that one.  Glad I was able to work out that toe-heel thing, though.  :-)

 

Oh yeah, didn't even have to stop by the ER on the way home this time.

This battle station is fully operational.

 

 

 

footnote :

So I'm sitting here in my living room just visualizing the carving technique - and my intellectual mind mostly envisions crashing nearly every time, even though I know I'm fully capable of linking the turns.  It's really pretty surreal.  Definitely need to put my mind into power saver mode when I'm carving the turns and just feel the board and snow.  wow.