Slacker

Yeah yeah. It's been a while since I wrote. I know.
I've been busy, damn you. Snowboarding nearly every weekend til the major ones closed. Still one open, and it's looking like I'll be hitting the last open one this weekend too.

Always makes me so nervous, knowing I'll be snowboarding. I get that tingly, fearful, anticipating feeling in my stomach. That turns to near nausea when I'm actually driving up there, but nausea with the benefit of near-euphoria, that light-headed feeling you get when you're really excited.

The lift scares me to death. I'm getting better at not falling off it at least, but the skating up to it part just blows absolute ass. Cause um, I suck at it. I feel like I look like some cartoon, shoving my awkward way through the line, reaching out for the rail that really is never a rail nor any kind of support, praying to the mountain gods that i don't fall while in line cause damn, then I'd feel like a total loser.

And speaking of mountain gods. I realized, while sitting on my ass in the snow on the mountain LAST time, unable to walk or make it down, that I didn't ask permission to be up there.
Whenever I've hiked up a mountain, I kinda ask permission to be there, to be allowed to climb the rocks, cross the rivers kinda thing. Then when I'm leaving, I thank the mountain for not tossing me off it and breaking my neck on the way down.
I haven't done that while snowboarding.
Not once.
This is relatively big for me. These are the biggest mountains I've ever been on. And here I am, hurling myself down them on a small board that I barely know how to control....without asking.
I could easily break every bone I have on these mountains.
I could easily die up there. People do it all the time.
And I'd been forgetting, in all the nervousness and excitement and fear, to ask permission from the mountain.

I can tell, the days it hasn't been ok for me to be up there. The days I get hauled off the mountain by a friend or ski patrol. Days when I get hurt enough that I can't really walk.
So this weekend, I have to remember to stop for a moment, and talk to the mountain before I try and ride her curves down. If for no other reason, than to give me peace of mind going down, that I somehow belong there. That I'm allowed to be there, that the mountain and I have come to an agreement.
None of that sounds right. None of it is how it feels, when I connect with the land beneath my feet and I'm not really separate from it anymore. I've done it when I'm walking around on the mountains...now I really want it while sliding down them. Maybe if I remember to do this, the fear will abate. The nervousness will slip away, and it'll just be me and that mountain, playing in the snow.
That would be heaven.

Skateboarding season is on too. The weather here has SUCKED so I've been off it for a few weeks. Save the times I've been in my apartment, practicing ollie-ing. Which, for the record, I suck at still. But I keep practicing. Cause one day, I won't suck as hard. I'll get the timing right. I'll make that jump. And then, ooh then life will be sweet. Then I'll feel like I can say I'm a skateboarder.

It's harder to have a relationship with the pavement, than with say a mountain. So when I skateboard, it's not so much I ask the ground not to rush up and meet me with brutal force, as I ask the board not to throw me off. Actually done that with the snowboard I have too...a snowboard which I love dearly, by the way...in that moment before I tip her over the edge of the hill, I kinda ask her to work with me and take me down the mountain. So far, sometimes she listens, sometimes she thinks flipping me over backwards is great fun, sometimes she heads off towards the trees, dragging me with her. The boys say "just go where the board wants to go, ride it out." The board wants to hit the black runs and jumps for the most part. When I was in Vail, she kept trying to slide off the catwalk down into the serious bowls. The ones that scream up at me "give me your soul". I think i need her excercised.

Odd too, that I ride switch on the snowboard, but normal on a skateboard. Maybe I'll have to try riding goofy on the skateboard, see if I can learn riding both ways. I think it has to do with which foot is controlling the board. On a snowboard, it's the front foot that steers; on a skateboard, at least so far, I've found it's the back that has more control. Maybe that's why - my right leg is stronger, the better knee, I feel more comfortable putting my weight on it. I can still turn around, ride normal, turn again, ride switch. Really wanna be able to ride both ways from the get go, so I'm not struggling with it later. And I have really good teachers helpin me.