Blue Mountain blues

I have terrible balance and very low tolerance for the cold, so when I got asked to go snowboarding this past weekend my first reaction was, naturally, "sure, what could possibly go wrong?" It turns out, of course, that a lot can go wrong -- painfully wrong.

Here are some helpful lessons I learned:

1. DON'T wear leather gloves. These tend to freeze and get ruined quite quickly after being soaked in melted snow.


2. DON'T eat a huge breakfast before you go. Tumbling down the side of a mountain on a full stomach is not fun.


3. DON'T leave your good gloves -- that someone was nice enough to lend you -- on the side while you put on your boots because some jerk might take them, leaving you with the difficult task of explaining to the nice person who lent you her gloves why you no longer have them.


4. DON'T wear your loose-fitting stainless steel watch. The metal wrist band does a wonderful job cutting into your wrists each and every time you fall (and believe me, you will fall).


5. DON'T think you're hot stuff and go down at full speed before you know how to turn or stop because you're not hot stuff and you need* to stop or turn at some point or you may have to share your kinetic energy with a tree -- the tree will have been at that spot for centuries but you will only have been there for a couple of hours, so who do you think will win?


6. DON'T put loose change in your pocket because you will only be making a donation to the mountain. My donation: $1.68.


7. DO keep your head down when you trip and fall as you get off the ski lift because they don't always stop the lifts and you will get clocked in the head by the passing chair -- believe me, it hurts...a lot.

Well, that's all the lessons I've learned so far. I had a super fun time learning to snowboard and I think I got to be a better poker player, too :-) Not too bad for one weekend.


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