Surfin' The Snow

Friday I scheduled myself to be sick from work and relied on the good clean mountain air to make me better again.

My great friend Shannon goes to Snowbird all the time because her mom works and there and she got a killer deal on a season pass - hooch! - and so they scored me a half price day ticket. I have never been to Snowbird and thanks to Shannon, I got to experience the BEST snowboarding EVER.

Here we are on the top of the backside of Snowbird:

I can't believe how much space there is up there and how many runs you can find. The day was amazing - I had to dump my coat finally cuz I was working up a sweat. The snow was fantastic and the runs made me work for it. I have never had so much fun on a slope!

On the way up, Shannon was telling me about this guy who is always there and he dresses in leopard from head to toe. When we stopped for lunch up the middle of the mountain, I spotted some woman dressed head to toe in zebra. I thought how bizarre, what a coincidence. And as I was showing Shannon, we both spotted the man in leopard.


Apparently the man paints his stuff himself (we found this out from a guy at a nearby table). I HAD to take pictures of this stuff - where else would you find a man and woman dressed like an African safari...complete with capes??

We saw people dressed in the weirdest stuff. One guy was even wearing his cowboy hat, trench coat, in his jeans with his holster and gun strapped on. So weird.

It was such a fun day and I don't do all-day boarding but that was fantastic. Shannon and I had a great time remembering the rodeo days, all the fun things we did together on our horses like running through the trees in our neighborhood like they were poles, running the poles at the same time from the opposite direction (very tricky) and running bareback through our speed events - at full speed - at out of town rodeos while the arena was empty. I had forgotten how much fun I have with her so I'm very happy to have had her as my Snowbird tour guide...and now I feel much much better. I must have not been sick after all :)

The Funs & Frowns of Snowboarding

Last night Paul and I went night boarding on my niece's request. Bronsynn turned 14 (Holy Shite!!) on Friday and she is very determined to learn to snowboard and received her very own snowboarding pants, gloves, and coat for her birthday. So we headed up with her, Gaven and Paul's brother, Matt.

Bronsynn in her socks being piggy-backed over to the Lodge to rent her boots:

It was a perfect night for snowboarding. It wasn't too cold, in fact, I was hot most of the time. And the slopes weren't too hard and icy. A great combination for night boarding.

Paul, me, and Matt in our Riverton Silverwolf football jerseys. I put mine on (and by mine I really mean it was my brother, Morgan's, old little league jersey I stole when he was going to get rid of it) and then when we picked up Matt, he had his High School jersey on and so, to be all cute and matchy matchy, Matt got Paul his other jersey to wear:

Our first run up....and the last time Bronsynn would be so smiley without tears in her eyes because....

She biffed going down a small slope and sprained her wrist. We were lucky because there were two very nice First Aid patrol men on the skis passing us just seconds after she fell. She was carted down the mountain on a sled since she is a beginner and wouldn't have been able to make it down without needing her hand. The nice man who brought her down on the sled let us play with Jake, one of their rescue dogs:

After filling out a bunch of paperwork, calling her mom and figuring out insurance, she was carted into the back room of the resort's clinic for an X-Ray to see if she broke it. She may have slightly fractured it, which she will be having to see another doctor to make sure, and so they put her in a splint and I managed to keep her laughing despite all the crying:

Poor girl. At least she looked stylin' in her new duds. After she was all bandaged up, she camped out in the Brown Bag Area and I joined the boys for a some runs and we all had a great time finding as many jumps as we could and practicing on the half-pipe. That was the fun part....fyi.