Wipe Out

We had a blast yesterday at Blue Mountain! I snowboarded and then Jennifer and her friend Matt skied. It only took us about an hour and forty five minutes to get to the mountain. So close! I knew that I needed to take a lesson, so after we rented all of our things, I headed to the Valley Lodge for my lesson and they went skiing.

When I got to the school area, it was so packed. There were so many people learning how to both ski and snowboard. And they were most all way younger than me. They put about 6 of us in a group. I was the only girl, and the guys were probably all pre-teens and high schoolers. My teacher was also younger than me. They were probably thinking "who is this stupid girl who sucks? why did she have to be in our group". Our first drill was to first learn how to get into our snowboard. Got that one down. I did learn that I snowboard "goofy". That means that I put my right foot forward and my left foot back. "Regular" is the opposite way and what most people do. That's just awkward for me. Our next step was to learn how to skate (i think that's what it was called). We had to keep our front foot in our board and propel yourself across the ice. Then he taught us to put our back front on the back and skate and glide. Yeah, I pretty much sucked at both of those. I knew it was going to be a long day if I couldn't even get those two down.

We also learned how to walk up the hill with our board on one foot and then we got to practice falling. I think we all mastered that one pretty quick. It was then time to learn how to go down the hill. It was hard to keep yourself upright and I always wanted to keep my weight on my back foot which apparently is wrong. Well, I think I did a lot of things wrong all day. We practiced coming down the hill several times. Then he let us lose. Scary. I decided to stay on the bunny slopes to get the hang of it before meeting Jennifer and Matt. I don't think I even got the hang of it. But, after lunch, I went down the slopes with Jennifer. It probably took me an hour to get down. I would go a little ways and then crash. I just never felt in control. I would fall forward, I would fall backward. I would fall trying to get up. I just fell a lot. I felt bad that it was taking me forever to get anyway and Jennifer was skiing and then stopping to wait for me. At one point, I crashed on a turn. Well, I think I made some dude mad. As I was sitting there, I could hear Jennifer trying to get one of his friends to help me. Well, it turns out the dude that I made mad came over and helped me. He was very encouraging and helpful. Somewhat. It's hard to tell someone how to snowboard. You just do it. Plus, he's been doing this for 15 years. I tried to go a couple of times and fell hard. Right on my butt! It hurt so bad. Not only were my knees hurting and bruised, but now my butt hurt. There were a couple of times that I got going real well. Even made a turn. Then crashed! At least I was laughing every time I crashed. Even though I had more snow on my butt and face than was on the mountain, I was having a blast! I finally made it to the bottom. And in one piece.

After snowboarding for awhile I decided to go tubing. It looked like so much fun. You basically sit in a tube (much like the ones we use to float down the river in Texas) and slide down the mountain. There are people on each of the chutes that will push you down or even spin you. To get up the mountain, they have a magic carpet that will take you and your tube up. Apparently it hadn't been working earlier in the day, so people were having to walk up the mountain. Even after it started working, people were still walking, so that's what I decided to do. Much faster too. You didn't have to wait in line. It was a workout though! They had 5 area, two for single tubes and 2 for family tubes. There were then about 5 chutes per area. What was great is that they were pretty icy, so you could pick up some great speed. I was able to go down about 3 times. First I went down straight. The other two times I had the person helping at the top spin me. What fun! It went to fast and there were even some bumps along the way. I had never down anything like this and it was great!

After were were finished, we headed back to Philadelphia. On the way we decided to stop in Allentown for dinner. We wanted Mexican so we pulled out our phones and tried to find something. We ended up on the main drag of town and found some Columbian place. It was pretty authentic too. They hardly spoke English and we had a hard time deciphering the menu. I recognized one entree because my friends in Texas talk about it all the time: arroz con pollo. When it came out it was a HUGE plate! It's chicken and rice mixed together. It was really good. It also came with fried plantains. So yummy! It was so much food though. All of our plates were huge. Once we were satisfied, we headed back to the city. It wasn't the most comfortable ride either. My butt was really starting to hurt. I couldn't get comfortable. Every time I would move, it hurt. All I could think about was my half marathon next Saturday. Hope this heals up so that I can run.

All in all, a great Saturday! Something else to check off my list of things to do while I'm here.