Snowboarding HURTS!

Last Thursday was about as hectic a day as any I've had in quite a while. It rarely fails that when I've got plans to leave town for the weekend, I'm bound to have the busiest day of the month...that day. This particular day was no different. I was meeting a group of friends for a 10 hour drive to Snowshoe, West Virginia. That's John Denver country bitch and we were going to tear up the slopes of Denver's home far away.

The ride was crazy because it included 6 (Robert Long, Matthias Blackshear, Jimmy Long, Chris Gore, Troy Tarpley and Josh Marsh) wired guys, 8 anxious boards, too many bags overflowing with insulated clotches and enough alcohol to open our own little club. Funny thing was the alcohol was consumed mostly by two guys, which made the trip all the more entertaining and difficult. Bathrooms stops were really like reloading stops. Piss some vodka out, take some vodka in. Red Bull cans dropping from the opened doors of the Tahoe like little rabbit droppings. Luckily, three of the 6 in the group were proffesional computer geeks, albiet drunk geeks, and had their laptops in hand to entertain everyone not driving with movies. Suprisingly, no porn. Now I know why DVD's in cars has become such a big industry. The cost/benefit ratio is not hard to understand. The benefit of keeping everyone preoccupied and quiet greatly outweighs the cost of a couple hundred dollars.

We left Atlanta around 8pm and drove all night, arriving in Snowshoe around 6am Friday morning. The temerature guauge on the car read 1 degree farenheit. We were told that when you calculated for wind chill it was near -20. Snotcicles were guaranteed! We checked into our plush tree bedroom condo on the slopes and prepared for battle. With our warm clothes on and our boards in hand, we headed to Starbucks for some energy. Thirty minutes later, we were set for launch. To the bunny slope I headed!

I locked myself in and shoved off for my first experience on a snowboard. It was a very very short experience. I made it about 8 feet at about 8 miles an hour before falling on my ass. It hurt a little the first time. By the 25th time, it hurt a lot. We were skiing on packed granular ice that was man made a few days before we arrived. This was not powder. In fact, I don't think Snowshoe knows what powder is. Anyway, the ice was to my ass what a meat tenderizer is to a steak. After two hours and many many attempts to travel more than 15 feet without another anal impact to the freezing floor I was now well aquainted with, I decided to move on to something a bit more challanging...like a "green" slope.

Suprisingly, that's exactly what I needed. The greens had a little less ice and much more slush. I was able to make the edges of my board hold a line while moving and NOT falling....immediately. I fell and fell some more the entire weekend, but the falls became more spread out as the hours passed.

Saturday, I woke with pain in parts of my body that I didn't know I had. I have muscles in my neck and didn't know that they could be exercised to the point of ouch, but they can. My left ass cheek and left forearm felt like they'd been sucker punched by Mike Tyson and all I could think of was getting my hands on some Aleve or Advil or Tylenol or bottle of Beefeaters. I settled for a venti Christmas blend and a blueberry muffin at Starbucks. After a little breakfast and working the stiffness out of my legs, arms and neck, I was good to go.

The rest of the weekend was about the same as far as snowboarding goes. I continued to painfully land on my face and continued to bitch each time, but I continued to get better and continued to brag about it too.

I'm now a snowboarder and look forward to going again, but I sure am glad to be home too. My awsome girlfriend was waiting with a smile, our Christmas tree was flickering through the window and the house smelled much better than that Tahoe.

Some pictures of our trip: http://drunken-snow-2006-4th-annual.blogspot.com/ and
http://picasaweb.google.com/cdgore/DrunkenSnow2006?authkey=GLmp6V6Eu-8