Snowboarding for Tourettes

Like most people who manage a web site of some sort, I look at traffic-management software to see what other web sites are bringing people to the Grays on Trays site. The other day I found something a bit unusual: Snowboarding for Tourettes.

The about page explains the origin of the site, and introduces the publisher, who might qualify as a "Grays on Trays" person--if he had hair.

Bob is a 41-year old man who has Tourettes, "a neurological disorder characterized by repetitive vocal and motor tics affecting about 200,000 people in the United States."

Here's what he says about himself--and why the site showed up on my radar: "There are many older snowboarders than myself." He gives a link to GOT and then says "I am not gray since I am bald, besides I enjoy the younger more hip look."

Not to worry, Bob, or anyone else. You don't have to have gray hair--or any hair--to enjoy snowboarding in the adult years. Some of us are more hip; some of us are worried about our hips. But we all enjoy sliding down the snow on a board. Thanks for the link!

Shop for Next Season Now

If you're looking for new snowboarding equipment, clothing, or anything else related to sliding on the snow, you can get some discounts if you shop now.

I'll be heading out to a local shop later this week as they start to clear out their winter gear and turn their floor over to summer goods. It will be a bittersweet experience, I'm sure: a chance to save some money, but a reminder that we're heading into the cruelest month when the lifts close, the ground is soggy, and the winds blow.

You can supplement your in-store shopping by going online. The other day I mentioned Steep and Cheap (SAC). You can find similar deals at Whiskey Militia and The Daily Steal. Whiskey Militia offers up yet another version of the pseudo-gangsta feel that plagues snowboarding, while TDS is more of a conventional shop. SAC, meanwhile, has more of a "I'm a fan of the Hitchhikers Guide" feel to it. If you know what you're looking for--or at just lucky--any could serve your needs.

Humor and Learning to Snowboard or Ski

The challenges of learning how to snowboard or ski have long been fodder for comics. You're dressed up in funny clothing, giving up something you're competent in (walking) for motions that are unusual and unknown, and there's always the opportunity, in slipping-on-the-banana-peel style, for aches and pains. Early in the days of snowboarding for example, Dave Barry reported on his adventures. He reported that the day after his time on the board, he went to a coffee-and-Advil diet.

While en route to a short trip away from the frozen tundra to the Sunbelt, I listened to a comedy channel on the airline entertainment system. The comedian repeated one old story about learning how to ski.

He explained that when he was 48, his wife decided that they should take up skiing. He started out with his exasperation of taking up a sport at that age. Here are a few of the lines that I remember from his routine:

• "I told my wife that she should just throw me out the third-story window. I would get the same experience and she would save money the lift ticket."
• "I got hit in the head by the chairlift. It knocked me cold. I called the insurance company about it, and the guy on the other end asks 'So you got hit by a chair?' 'Yes,' I told him; I stood up, looked around, and got hit in the head by the chair.' He told me 'You got hit by a chair? You're a moron. We're not going to cover a pre-existing condition."

So what does this say about our attitudes towards learning how to slide? A number of things: fear of the humiliation that can come from being incompetent at a new task; fear of injury and--here's the one part of these routines that has a kernel of useful truth--not taking yourself too seriously. Especially when you start out, you have to leave your pride behind if you want to find bliss on the slopes.

Now THAT'S the Spirit

When it comes to sports, you can be passive, or you can be active. Being passive--that is, cheering on soneone else--can have its value. After all, I've spent many hours watching my favorite college football team.

But what happens when the season is over? The Green Bay Press-Gazette ("Bad case of Packer's withdrawal?," January 27, 2008) has the right idea: Get out of the house.

now that the Green Bay Packers season is over, an even harsher reality is slapping you in the face.

It's cold. It's depressing. It's not even worth leaving the house without 18 layers of clothing and an army of ice scrapers.

But winter's frigid chokehold on the state doesn't have to feel so miserable.

Here's what we suggest: Don't just face it. Embrace it.

Now that's the spirit, and author Thomas Rozwadowski goes on to suggest some winter activities, including snowboarding. You may find that you don't even need to be a mere spectator.

Don't Drink and Ride

File this in the "It shouldn't have to said" department: Don't snowboard while intoxicated. Granted, you're not wielding a 2-ton vehicle, as you might be on the road. But a collision on the slopes can leave you just as dead as a collision on the road.

The Scotsman has an article ("It's snow joke on the ski slopes," February 23, 2008) about insurance and safety on the slopes. Much of the topic is not directly relevant to the U.S., due to differing insurance laws here, but here's something that should grab the attention of any U.S.-based rider:

Allan Burns, head of Tesco Travel Insurance, explained: "People need to be careful over their drinking. And everyone should also be aware that resorts in the United States have traditionally taken a tougher approach to skiing under the influence of alcohol.

In America, teams of "piste police", known as "yellow jackets", patrol the slopes targeting out-of-control skiers or snowboarders, sometimes breathalysing and prosecuting them for causing injury. In Colorado, the fine for being caught drunk is up to $1,000. European resorts are starting to catch up with this approach – and don't forget about the morning after.

Remember, the first rule of the responsibility code is to stay in control. And for many riders, being at elevation is a physical challenge that is only made more difficult by alcohol.

Marks of a Good Online Trail Map

Many ski areas offer online trail maps, but only a few do it right.

Some places require you to down load a PDF file. For the resort's staff, that's the easiest and least time-consuming approach. Vail, offers as PDF, as does Michigan's Boyne Mountain. If you don't have a color printer, a PDF map loses some of its value, and on some computers, it takes a while to open the Acrobat Reader. A nice supplement to PDF maps is to give site visitors the option to view a JPEG map as well. Ohio's Mad River Mountain does this.

Not quite as desirable is a JPEG map. Jackson Hole, Wyoming presents an overview map that is fairly useless for anything but drilling down to a smaller area of terrain. But even then, the result is unsatisfying. Zoom in on the Gondola area, and you get an unreadable JPEG file. You can zoom into that file, but only once.

Flash technology can be useful; with that, you can click on, say, a blue square to see all the blue slopes. Click on another icon and all the lifts show up. (Minnesota's Afton Alps gives an example of this approach, but the results don't work out too well. The trail names are printed in a very small type size.)

Some resort maps let you zoom in quite a ways. Aspen/Snowmass uses this approach. The company offers three versions of maps: low- or high-resolution JPEG, or Flash. But again, the maps can be hard to read if you look at a large section of the map, and if you zoom in too much, it's easy to lose perspective of the rest of the mountain.

How about having multiple options? Mammoth Mountain offers three choices: a PDF map, an interactive Flash map, and what the resort calls a "static map." Actually, it's better than a static map; you can scan and pan the terrain, and the fonts are a reasonable size.

I've been experimenting with the trail map at Gunstock, New Hampshire. (Here's the page from which you can launch the map.) It's interactive, meaning that you can select from trails of various colors. That's fairly common.

But Gunstock goes one better by giving you pop-up windows that dispense more information. See that squashed little oval icon at the base? Hover over the icon and you'll find out that it's the tubing area.

Then head to the slopes and Gunstock shines. Want to find black diamonds? Easy enough. But then click on a specific trail and you'll find some commentary on that trail. The note for Upper Recoil says "A couple of steeper pitches, but wide." The intermediate snowboarder looking to advance to diamond slopes might might find this to be a good place to start. On the other hand, the notes for Tiger Steeps reads "like skiing through Volkswagons." These notes--assuming that they are accurate and are not merely marketing fluff--make the map more valuable than most.

New Grays on Trays Video

Video can be a useful tool for learning how to ride. Unfortunately for adults learning how to ride, snowboarding videos focus on freestyle tricks. Not that there's anything wrong with freestyling, but if your focus at the moment is learning how to ride from the top of the lift to the bottom, a video about 50/50 boardslides on a rail won't do you much good.

For a little inspiration, here's a video of somebody's grandmother (or at least mom) riding at Gunstock, New Hampshire.



She writes, in describing this video, she says "you say I'm not exactly shredding, fellow riders, this could be your own mother! Or even someone's grandmom."

Yay, grandma!

And thanks for the plug for Grays on Trays.

Is Snowboarding Killing Golf?

As a cultural artifact, snowboarding gets credited, or blamed, for many things that it isn't, including the game of golf.

Since I plan to play a round this weekend (far from the Midwest!), an article in The Independent (UK) entitled The Decline of Golf caught my attention.

The article discusses the extent of the decline, offers some reasons for it, and mentions what a few people are trying to do about it.

The golf industry does have reasons to be concerned: the number of golfers in the U.S. has declined from 30 million a decade ago to 26 million today. But why has this happened? You might blame the fact that some golfers find it hard to ever improve (count me in with this one), making it difficult to justify ongoing expenses.

But some folks blame snowboarding

Mike May of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, which tracks US citizens' participation in sports and leisure activities, has another theory for golf's decline over the course of this decade. "We now track 114 sporting activities in the US," he says. "A few decades ago, golf would have been one of say 20 major activities, but there is more going on today to capture people's time and attention, and there are still only seven days in the week and 24 hours in the day.

"Americans are choosing snowboarding, skateboarding and other things on top of traditional sports such as tennis and basketball and, of course, there has also been a surge in the numbers going to gyms and health clubs to work out.

In sheer numbers, of course, golf holds the upper hand. Golfers outnumber riders by a ratio of 5 to 1, and even if you add in skiers, golfing still dominates. One reason may be that even though it's harder to become an expert golfer than an expert snowboarder, the perception of danger (attracting some people, repelling far more) just isn't there in golf. If you can walk, you can golf.

To finish on a note of the obvious: there are very few days in the year in which a person must choose between golf and snow sports on a given day.

But for one of those days, see this photo from the Grays on Trays discussion board.

UPDATE: Welcome, readers of the Golf Blogger. I'm a much worse golfer than I am a snowboarder, but I enjoy writing about both. I'm working on another post that covers similar ground to this one. See also this tag of golf-related posts.

Snowboarders Can Learn from the Ski Diva

The skier-snowboarder feud? It's in large measure old hat, kept alive by the media template that "confrontation makes news."

While it's true that snowboarding and skiing have some fundamental differences, they have some similarities as well, which means that a snowboarder can gain insight from a skier and vice-versa.

The Ski Diva is a blog published by Wendy Clinch. As the name suggests, the Ski Diva is written by a woman skier, for women skiers. (There's also a discussion forum associated with it, but it's a "no boys allowed" club.) Yet the Ski Diva blog also has some things to say that men snowboarders, and indeed all snowboarders can profit from. Here are some of my favorite entries:

Skiing steep, which points to two resources that give you a better understanding of your favorite mountain;

O Say Can You See, or what to do when you can’t see well on the slopes;

Have you ever shared a pass?, about theft of service and child care, and a few resorts' family-friendly ticketing practices;

Ski diva goes legit, about Wendy's entry to an association of snowsports journalists (you go, girl!);

Getting back into skiing … after the kids arrive;

The Zen of Skiing, or reflections on skiing (or snowboarding) as a metaphor for life;

Skinny on Reviews, or how to read reviews about skis (or snowboards);

Core of your being, about core strength training, an overlooked part of snow sliding;

A conversation about fear, and its place on the mountain; and

Things I don’t get about skiing, a list of habits that imperil human health and well-being.

Impulsive Shopping at Steep and Cheap

If you look at shopping as the thrill of the chase, you might take a look at the web site SteepAndCheap.com.

SAC, as it's often abbreviated in Internet discussion forums, sells a lot of gear for the outdoors: clothing, helmets, altimeters, tents, sunglasses, camp stoves and the like.

It has a somewhat unusual business model. SAC doesn't, like a traditional merchant, have a lot of "shelves" of stuff that you can look at. Instead, it sells one item at a time--and only one item at a time--until it's gone. Then another item comes up on the auction block. Actually, there's no auction and there's no block, but that gives you an idea of how the goods are rolled out.

If you don't want that Big Agnes sleeping bag that's up for sale at the moment, a quick look at a sidebar widget gives you an idea of how long it will be before something else is for sale.

I have one beef with the site, but it's a significant one: So fare, it doesn't have anything I would like to buy. On the other hand, it often offers "Big Agnes" sleeping bags, something I don't have much interest in.

So far, snowboarding gear has been rare, though some people report having purchased Flow bindings on the site. Me, I'm still waiting for a ski mask that I can squirrel away for those coldest days of next season.

From Little Hills, Medals and Memories Begin

Are small ski areas inconsequential? By no means.

Here's what the Three Rivers Park District (Minneapolis, not Pittsburgh!) has to say about its Hyland Ski and Snowboard Area:

"Start at Hyland and you can truly go anywhere. Whether it's becoming a 2006 Olympian in alpine [slalom] skiing like Edina's Kaylin Richardson, a Winter X Golf [halfpipe] medalist like St. Louis Park snowboarder Steve Fisher or simply starting a lifetime of fun that takes you to larger hills and thrills, thousands of people have learned to slide on snow at Hyland."

Granted, this is a self-serving statement from a marketing brochure. But it's true. Lots of good things, whether it's careers as "action sports" heroes or a life of enjoyment on the slopes, start on the smallest of hills.

Dip Those Triceps

I came across a new (to this season) blog called Snowboard Women. I'm not sure how old Erica (riding since 1999) and the rest of her Southern California-based gang are, so I'm not sure if they'd be comfortable identifying with the Grays on Trays demographic, but they do get "age points" for remembering vinyl records.

Also, I liked the post "Snowboarders Getting Older." At least I plan to be snowboarding while getting older, as are the folks on the Grays on Trays discussion board.

The blog has a post on pre-season conditioning that comes with this twist: strengthen those triceps.

Say what?

"You heard me. Unless you have step-ins, you’re gonna spend a fair amount of time sitting at the top of the run strapping in. Once your gear’s all set, you gotta push yourself up off your seated position… over and over! Getting your arms prepped will prevent you from being too sore the next day."

Not a bad idea to tone those arms, of course. But you could also get some Flow bindings and avoid that sitting on your bum.

Salomon Maori Boots

At the start of this season I bought some new boots. They're Salomon Maori.

Truth be told, I didn't quite need to replace my old boots, a pair from Ride. But four things convinced me to make the plunge and buy some new boots. One, the old ones were showing some wear, externally. That's inevitable, I suppose, but it struck me as a sign of things to come. After all, I had those boots for four seasons.

They were also rather stinky--literally. Athletic gear can get a certain odor about it, and my old boots qualified. And they stunk not just right after a snowboarding session, but the next day, and even some days afterward.

The old boots were also the lace variety, requiring exposing my bare fingers to the cold to tie them up. If I didn't tie them up, I would drag them through the parking lot, through the mud, and so forth. They also had an unfortunate tendency to come loose.

Finally, I thought it was time to have a fresh start with a whole new kit: snowboard, bindings, boots.

I spent quite a while talking with a shop manager about the board, and went with a Salomon Special. There was a certain logic, then, in choosing a Salomon boot. On their web page for the boot, the company says "If we had to keep one single boot model to sell to all riders, it would be this one."

Upon the recommendation of the manager, and after walking around in various sizes for a while, I went a full sizer smaller in this boot than I had in my ride. It took a while to get used to, and was rather painful for the first day or two. In fact, the pressure so great that it caused some bruising on my big toes. So I don't recommend the one-size-smaller route!

The boot is a step up from the long, round floppy laces of my old Ride boots. There are two lacing systems, both of which use a line thin and some sort of hardware to keep them in place.

There is first a line for an inner layer, a sort of tongue that rests closest to your boot. The outer layer is secured by a separate line.

But after a not-too-frequent season of riding, some weaknesses have appeared. To start with, the heel cup is starting to flake away.



A shop employee blames my Flow bindings, and suggested that Salomon would do the same. I'm not sure what to make of that claim. The Ride boots never had that problem, and I was using Flows with them the whole time.

Then there's the matter of the clip. The excess line from the inside lacing system tucks nicely inside the boot. The excess line from the outside system has to go somewhere. To tighten this line, you pull on a rather thick handle. The handle works well enough, but it is too bulky to fit inside the boot. Instead, it has a clip that attaches to the top of the boot.



During my trip to Aspen, the clip on one of the boots broke off, leaving me a relatively large handle that, absent the clip, had to be put somewhere. I ended up tying it to my leg with a spare lanyard from a discount card. That's the bailing-wire-and-duct-tape approach to snowboarding gear.

Unfortunately, the shop did me wrong when I called about the problem. The person I spoke to said "Oh yes, we have those" when I explained the problem. But after I made the 30-minute drive, I found out that no, they don't have those handles with the clip; they need to be ordered from Salomon. So it's back to improvising for a while.

There's another problem with the boots: they feel much too lose around my leg, especially towards the top of the boots. The slop in that part of the boot may be suitable for freestyle tricks, but it is looser than it should be for riding at fast or even moderate speeds.

The search for the perfect not-yet-stinky boot continues.

Macho, Macho Man and Safety Gear

Here's something from the world of hockey that might relate to snowboarding: Macho culture vs. bodily safety (Edmundton Journal, 2/15/08).

Richard Zednik, a player for the the National Hockey League's Florida Panthers, was severely cut during a recent game. A teammate's skate blade came very close to severing his carotid artery, causing severe bleeding. The chinstrap of Zednik's helmet may have made the difference between life and death.

Author John MacKinnon wonders whether neck guards will become part a player's equipment list. His conclusion: not any time soon: "inexpensive, well-designed, easy-to-wear gear to protect the brain, the eyes and the throat have been and, in some cases, still are regarded as outrageous assaults on manhood and viewed with collective suspicion and disdain."

Masks (for goalies) and helmets (for all players) took a long time to catch on, says MacKinnon. Only after a few hardy souls will willing to endure scorn for their supposed lack of courage did protective gear start to make inroads.

"Goalie masks were once thought an affectation fit only for out-and-out cowards. But Hall of Famer Jacques Plante, who famously insisted on wearing one after he suffered a facial injury, was no coward for donning a mask.

On the contrary, he showed extraordinary strength of character to ignore the attempts of his coach, Toe Blake, to bully him out of wearing a mask, not to mention taunts and abuse from players and fans alike. Often, it's no picnic to ignore groupthink and act rationally. Particularly in a tough, team sport like hockey.

It will take a similarly self-possessed player to be the first to wear a neck guard. But, one by one, it is entirely possible NHLers will come around.

In my lifetime, the NHL has evolved from a league in which one man -- Charlie Burns -- wore a helmet, to one in which helmets are compulsory."

So what does this have to do with snowboarding? Both riding and hockey occur in cold places, but other than that, what are the similarities?

The story of the raises some interesting questions about risk, safety gear, and attitudes--all of which are involved in any sport, including snowboarding. A coach quoted in the story says, in effect, "Hey, what do you expect us to do, skate with mattresses attached to our bodies?" The point is well made: risk is inherent in life. You risk injury getting out of bed, stepping into and out of the shower, and driving to the ski area. And yet no sane person suggests staying in bed, not showering, and never driving as means of avoiding injury.

The key to risk is to manage it and take reasonable precautions. For snowboarders, that means, above all, knowing your limits. To learn, you'll have to go beyond your limits, but do so at a sensible pace. If you've spent all your time on the green slopes, you'll be taking a risk by going on a blue slopes for the first time. But that's an entirely different matter from leaving the green slope and heading straight for the double diamond slopes with bumps and trees. As they say in the freestyle world, "easy does it." Don't attempt to master everything in one afternoon.



Besides using their heads, snowboarders should protect them. Helmets are great for offering protection from low-speed incidents, though they are not so useful in high-speed collisions. In addition to helmets, you might add, as I do, wrist guards, knee pads, and padded shorts.

Each item provides a level of safety and comfort. But the most important piece of safety equipment is your brain. Use it well.

Being a "Progressive" Snowboarder

Do a Google search for the words "progressive" and "snowboarding," and you'll find over 250,000 hits.

You may be wondering "What in the world does this mean?"

I've recently created a new page at GraysonTrays.com to answer answer that question.

Be sure to check out the related topic of riding levels, which is more related to taking lessons than anything else.

Welcome, Shayboarder

Today I'm adding a new feature to the sidebar, a list of some worthy destinations related to snowboarding. (It's called "Other destinations.")

The first one to go up, today, is "The World of Snowboarding Through Fembot Eyes," or more simply, Shayboarder.

Shayboarder, or more formally, Shannon, is a young (in her 20s) Internet professional with a passion for riding and an ability for writing that surpasses that of many snowboarding enthusiasts. Rather than simply dreaming of trips to the mountains, Shay can easily reach the slopes; she lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Not a bad place to start a career, wouldn't you say? I've known of her from other online forums, and eventually stumbled across her blog. We have exchanged a few pleasant and informative e-mails.

Currently, Shay's blog has lots of photos from SIA 2008, a big tradeshow of the folks who bring us snowboards, skis, and the like. If you ever wondered what a "splitboard" looks like, you'll find a photo of one on her blog.

Shay's blog deserves some recognition here because it has some great photos, insightful comments, and well, she links to this blog. Her blog has an RSS feed, of course, so you don't have to actively go out and find new content; it will come to you. In the coming days, I'll comment about something she said that could, not to be too dramatic about it, could save your life.




Welcome, Shay!

Grays on Trays "One of the Best Introductions to Snowboarding"

Mind if I celebrate a bit?

In her book Outdoors Online: An Internet Guide to Everything Wild & Green (Mountaineer Books, 2007), Erika Dillmam had some favorable things to say about Grays on Trays:

"You don't have to miss out on the fun just because you don't like loud, jargon-filled snowboarding sites produced by twenty-year-olds. Leave the logos and beer bongs behind, and pull up a seat at the adult table. Grays on Trays is one of the best introductions to snowboarding on the web--regardless of your age. Created by "a middle-aged guy from the Midwest," it's humorous, well-written, and inspiring (not in a corny way, but in a "get off your bum and try something new" sort of way). You'll need to learn a few basic terms so you can communicate with other boarders, but many, such as "face plant," "butt plant," and "boot" are fairly self-explanatory."



Thanks!

I started this site a few years ago precisely because there didn't seem to be any place for a grown-up discussion of snowboarding. It's not that snowboarding is serious stuff (like the complexities of family life, death, the mysteries of faith, or whatnot). Still, adult readers deserve an introduction to snowboarding that doesn't require them to feel like they're sitting in their kid's high school classroom. It's gratifying to know that my work has been recognized as useful, not only by participants on the discussion board, but in a guide to online resources.

By the way, Grays on Trays has three components: This blog, the discussion board, and the main site itself.

FlightAware for the Snowboarding Traveler

You're in an airport, waiting a connecting flight to your final destination, which is an airport near a major ski and snowboard destination. It could be Aspen. It could be Jackson Hole. It could be Reno. Wherever it is, you'd like to know if flights are getting into and out of that last airport. What do you do?



If you've got a web-enabled device such as a laptop computer with you, head to the flight-tracking web site FlightAware. This site has several features, including one that lets you see recent traffic into and out of any airport.

For example, check out the most recent record for Aspen or Reno.

If you're a private pilot (or just an aviation geek), you can also get other information such as a Google Earth image, information about FBOs, and a weather history for the last several hours.

Welcome to the Ski Patrol

Have you ever been in a ski patrol room?

There are many people who make a ski area work: snowcat drivers, snowmakers, maintenance experts, lifties, instructors, front office staff, back office staff, food service workers, and members of the ski patrol. The ski patrol is part cop (watching for out-of-control skiers and riders), part ambassador ("How do you get from A to B?") and part medic.

I'm an occasional snowboard instructor, which has its own joys and challenges. Sometime last season I attended an open house for the ski patrol at that ski area, and I came away impressed with the kind of work they are prepared to do. (Responding to broken bones is not my thing.) Even more, I was impressed with the training they undergo. There's a lengthy classroom component for what is known as OEC, or Ourdoor Emergency Care. (You can read more about OEC on the web site of the National Ski Patrol.)

There's also a physical requirement. The patrol has pre-season training, which includes walking up the hill. Granted, we're in the Midwest so it's not mountain climbing. Still, it's a task, especially since most patrollers are wearing ski boots.

They also participate in drills to evacuate people from the chair lift, a subject worthy of a separate column.

Recently, I made use of the ski patrol at a local area (not the one where I teach.) I had stopped at a chalet to use the restroom. Upon coming out of the chalet, I was approached by two skiers who wanted help finding a particular slope. Knowing that maps were back inside, I said "Just a minute," and turned around and started walking back toward the door.

Bad move.

I knew very quickly that something was wrong. I also knew that I could do nothing about it except perhaps utter a curse. I had stepped badly on a patch of ice, and soon I would be on my back. And on my back I was, with a jarring impact that immediately hurt.

I didn't get a concussion or knock my head on the ice. But I did land on my back, with the most impressive force focused about my belt, near my right hip. Ow!

A member of the ski patrol just happened to be nearby, and witnessed my imitation of slipping on a banana peel. He invited me to take a snowmobile ride back to the base to get iced up. After thinking about it, I accepted the offer.

I could have made my way back to a lodge on my own, though it would take a two runs to do so. I decided "Here's an offer, why not take it?" After all, I might have be afflicted with some unusually sharp pain on the mountain while snowboarding down, and then what would I do?

In a few minutes the snowmobile arrived. The driver seemed a bit disappointed that I didn't need to recline in the tobaggon, but I was quite happy to take a seat on the back of the snowmobile. It was the first time I've been on a sled since junior high. It didn't take us long to arrive at the ski patrol building. The idea was to rest a bit and use some ice--though this time to relieve pain, not inflict it.

The patrol room was not much different from others I had seen as a casual visitor (not for my own treatment), and it had the typical cement floors, tables, and basic first-aid stuff.



There were two large rooms, plus a restroom. The room I spent my time in had several padded beds (like the one shown above) and several more beds without padding. There was also quite an assortment of bandages, compresses, and the like.

The original patroller left. Someone else gave me some ice, asked some questions and determined that there was nothing more to do. He did welcome me to rest for a while, which I did. Also, he filled out the requisite form with name, address, skill level, and all that.

After all those questions, he asked "Was there anything you could have done to avoid this?"

"Not use that door?," I suggested.

Perhaps this was a response to the litigious society we live in. Perhaps too was that fact that the patrol has a rule: nobody can give skiers or riders drugs. Not even common, over-the-counter pain medication such as Advil.

After placing an ice pack on my back for a while, I walked the short distance to the main shop (not far away), bought a small packet of two tablets, and drove home. I could have gone back out, but this was God's way of saying "Chill out. Go home." And I did.

By the way, I feel just fine now.

Saving Money on the Slopes: The Pita Lunch

Face it, snowboarding can be expensive, especially if you travel to a destination resort.

So what can you do to save a few bucks? One thing you could do is make your own lunch.

Peanut butter is a good standby.



You could pack a small jar in your luggage, or buy one at your destination. Slather some on crackers (such as Triskets or Wheat Thins) and put them in a sandwich bag, and you've got bite-sized energy sources that you can eat while on the lift. (In this case, use creamy; it's hard to get two crackers to stick together if you use crunch.)

If you make a sandwich and put it in a pocket of your jacket, it can be smashed pretty quickly. A better alternative is the pita pocket, which is a stiffer form of bread.

If peanut butter isn't your idea of a great lunch, use dinner leftovers. Most restaurant meals are supercalorific, even for snowboarders. Save some of your meal and stuff it in the pita when you get back to the hotel or lodge. Take the pita out with you the next day.

Even if the pita approach doesn't entirely replace your on-mountain lunch, it should reduce the amount of food you'll need to buy at inflated prices.