albatross...

friends, i'm going to share with you something that causes me great anxiety. i am terribly afraid of the ski lift!

i'm not afraid of being up high or anything. i don't worry that it's gonna break or that i'm going to get stuck on it high atop a snowy mountain. my fear is about getting off the damn thing. i almost always fall. and it makes me very sad.

i think the major contributor to my less-than-graceful dismounts is my own panic. i get stressed about having to get off, i panic about being in the way of the people on the lift behind me, i overthink what i'm supposed to do (board facing forward, right foot on the stomp pad, knees bent), and kaboom, emily does a faceplant in the snow.

it's really quite ridiculous. i hate the ski lift! but the alternative is to walk with my board up the freaking mountain every time, and that's just foolish. and i know that i CAN get off the lift without falling, because i've done it twice. perhaps i just need more practice?

anyway, carson and i went snowboarding yesterday for the first time since he broke his arm. this was the best time yet for both of us. we're falling down a lot less, i'm getting much better at riding with the nose of the board facing forward (as opposed to the easy, slow, back and forth of the falling leaf*), and i can now stop on my heel edge and my toe edge! snowboarding is getting more fun, and this pleases me.

an added bonus to our excursion to seven springs yesterday was that we got to snowboard for a while with my friend candace and her boyfriend chris, who are most fantastic and very fun to be around.

here's a fun story -- at one point in the evening, carson and i were passed by a group of young kids on skis. i'm gonna guess that they were probably 9 or 10 years old? one of the girls yelled out to her friends, "i've got a wiener in my butthole!" carson then turned to me and said, "she must go to a school with 'abstinence only' education."

good times on the slopes!




*the falling leaf is when you zig zag back and forth on your heel edge with your board perpendicular to the hill