Just Know That You’re Going to “eat it”…a lot.

Crash pads…don’t know what they are? They are pads to protect your buttocks for when you decide to pick up snowboarding. So, I did make my first snowboarding trip this weekend with some friends. We rented a nice little house right across from Wisp Mountain in Maryland; we could walk to the slopes in just a few minutes. We rented a four wheel drive for the trip, turned out to be a great investment. My loving mother picked up snowboarding apparel for me (gotta love a loving mother when you’re preparing for such a pivotal, non-mid-life-crisis related, adventure). I even picked up wrist guards, as this was strongly suggested, as apparently many snowboarding beginners seem to injure their wrists. Guess what else was strongly suggested?? That’s right, Crash Pads… They did preach it (by “they”, I mean my loving friends, Hou and Te who lead me right into the belly of the beast by talking me into snowboarding in the first place…), “get crash pants, Jerry…you’re really gonna want crash pants, Jerry…”, and so on. Well, I do believe I’ve said more than once that there is always a better way to say something when you want the person(s) on the receiving end of whatever you’ve been preaching, to understand to the fullest extent what you’re trying to get across. What they should have been saying was, “Jerry, seriously…you’re going to fall directly on your ass repeatedly throughout the course of just over an hour that it will take you to get down your first pass on a green trail. Every time you lose control of which direction your body is moving, and which opposite direction your ass is moving, you’re going to eat it. Oh yeah, and guess what? It just started freezing raining on the mountain, so your rear end is gonna be connecting with ice covered snow each and every occasion of sudden ass-to-ground impact. Eventually, sometime during your second day ever of learning to snowboard, you’re going to have landed on your butt that you’re going to be afraid of landing on your butt. This will lull you into a state of uncontrollable stupidity where you’ll decide it’s a better idea to take a page from “The Matrix” the next time you take a spill and spin your body while still in mid air, trying to land on your front side. WRONG! You will never make a full rotation in the air, and instead you will twist your ankle in your snowboard binding and slam the side of your head into the ice covered snow. It will hurt. Once you’ve determined that this tactic of “eating it” likely would end in broken limbs and possibly a concussion, you will continue falling towards your ass, but will now attempt using your elbows to brace your falls and protect your ass. WRONG AGAIN! After trying this a few times, you will have such a sharp pain in your elbow that you’ll think you may have shattered it. Get the crash pads, Jerry.” This would have spawned a strong sense of urgency and importance toward procuring crash pads. So, from me to all of you tossing around the idea of learning to snowboard please do learn. Once you start to pick it up it is awesome. It’s exhilarating, good exercise, and it gets you to experience the great outdoors in a way you never have before. But first please get some wrist guards and some crash pads, because the great outdoors in the dead of winter on a mountain is not very forgiving on your ass.