№13 — Snowboarding
After twenty-five years skiing it was finally time to see why snowboarders only sit around all day. So I rented a snowboard, convinced my sister Therese to join me and managed to annoy Silia enough to teach me a bit.
We chose the hill right outside of the ski rental in St. Johann in Tirol and that was the first mistakes of many that were made that day. That area was way too steep for beginners like us and there was no lift, so we had to walk up everytime we managed to get down. Nevertheless, we quickly hiked up forty meters and put the board on — all ready to go! Or so we thought. There only was the small issue of actually getting up, which turned out to be initially challenging. After trying a bit, Silia had pity and helped us up and gave us some tips how to get down alive.
Therese and I both figured out how to slide down on the edges of our board without Silia holding us all the time. We did that for a few times before going on to the next level — turns. That’s where the fun (or pain) started. Obviously, we weren’t as talented as we thought initially and so we fell. A lot. We got up, tried to turn and fell down again. It became a bit easier where the hill wasn’t as steep but we still struggled. We hike up again and snowboarded / fell down again. This continued for about 1.5 hours until we were completely soaked both from sweat and snow, exhausted and bruises on our back, behind and legs. That was the end of it for that day.
After this experience, I think Therese and I will stick with skiing for now as our wintersport of choice. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun and I do want to try it again sometime. However, next time I will definitely choose a more gentle slope, better fitting boots and a hill, which has a lift so I don’t have to walk up all the time.
Click here to see my list of past experiences and ideas what to do next. If you have a suggestion for future new experiences, feel free to comment or drop me a message.
