Mid-Winter Break

Early January has come and gone and, as promised, it has been much, much slower than the late December holiday rush. Some old-timers claim that snowboard instructors make nearly 50% of their income during the holiday break, an idea that I originally found humorous, but I'm now afraid might be true.

Fortunately, Park City Mountain offers all sorts of clinics for us to take to keep ourselves busy. This week I've taken a couple of freestyle classes and a very in-depth look at snowboard maintainence. All I can say is ignorance is bliss. In the (not too distance) past, snowboarding was as simple as throwing the board on and pointing it downhill. I've got enough knowledge about bases, edges, and such that I could easily spend an hour a night preparing for the next day.

However, too much of a good thing can be bad. We spent three hours yesterday tweaking our edges (I'm now the proud owner of a "power-bevel!") and applying various substances to the base of our board. I headed up to the slopes today, prepared to leave powder burns in the snow. I stood up near the bunny slope, aimed down hill, and ... my board didn't budge. Not even an inch. It felt like I was trying to snowboard through bubble gum. It made the day interesting (it's always fun trying to do demos for kids when your board doesn't move). I'll be spending a little extra time tonight attempting to get everything back in order.

Other thoughts I had while trying to keep up with my students today:

Storm watch, 2007: After a few weeks of very warm weather (and a steady drop in our snow-pack), we finally had a strong storm blow through last night. Nearly 8" of snow later things were looking good for today -- until I stepped outside. Wow, was it cold. Today's high at the base of the mountain was 10 degrees, with a slight breeze. My routine with the students today was: two runs (about 40 minutes total); head inside to warm up (for about 10 minutes); repeat. And even that was pushing it. Taking the chair lift up was an exercise in mental strength. And the wind was blowing up the mountain, so you'd get even colder snowboarding back down. The weekend promises to bring more cold weather, but hopefully we'll crack into the teens at least.

Fleeting connections: Last week I had a Mexican student in my class. Part of my morning chit-chat with him sounded something like:

Me: Hey, Sebastian! Where are you from?
Sebastian: Mexico.
Me: Oh cool! Where in Mexico?
(Here he pauses for a second and stares at me with a strange look.)
Sebastian: Um, Mexico. It's a country below the United States.

It took a minute for me to convince him that I knew where Mexico was and I wanted to know where in Mexico he lived. He finally figured it out and started describing some place that I had never heard of, all I could do was nod and try to look like I knew what he was talking about. I felt like he kind of lost confidence with me for a while. Fortunately another student was a "magician" and was doing some card tricks. I showed off my only trick and Sebastian was totally mesmerized. At lunch he immediately pointed to the deck and said "again." Sadly I screwed it up (for the first time in a few years!) and he looked crestfallen again. Oh well, at least he thought I was cool for part of the day.

Real Salt Lake: And one thing I'm looking forward to later in the season is watching a Real Salt Lake soccer game. Freddy Adu was just traded to the team so I've been excited that I'd get to see a soccer superstar. And just yesterday David Beckham decided to join the LA Galaxy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Galaxy will be visiting Salt Lake before I leave.

Time to get bundled up and ready for the weekend. Oh, and Go Seahawks!