Snowboarding...a New [Mexico] Adventure!

So Saturday Jack and I decided to take advantage of Ski Santa Fe, the ski area 18 miles from our condo. We had a blast! As we were headed up the mountain we passed this lady on the side of the road kind of swaying with her right arm stuck out to the side. As we passed by I turned to Jack and said, "I think she was trying to hitch-hike." "Really?! It sure didn't look it to me!" said Jack. After a few seconds of discussion we turned around and asked where she was headed. "To the ski hill!"" Right on, hop in we're headed there, too." As she hopped into the Flex she replied something to the effect of, "sweet ride, this is nice."

For those of you wondering what the heck a Flex is...here's ours!

We found out that she was a snowboard instructor so on the ride up the mountain we talked about how she got into boarding, what brought her to Santa Fe, etc. She was nice and was thankful for the ride. She also gave us tips on where to go, park and what to take with us up to the lodge. Jack and I had decided a few days ago that it would probably be very beneficial to take a snowboarding lesson because Jack has gone boarding once (back in April in Idaho while on a job interview trip) but really had no experience at all. I had boarded once back in college in Boone with my sister and some friends but felt like I could honestly say, no, I have never snowboarded in my life when asked about it. So we got signed up for our lessons and went over to the waiting area. We were both nervous (well maybe Jack wasn't, but I sure was!) and very excited. As we were waiting we met a girl, Jillian, who had come up to take a lesson all on her own! I was impressed. Anyways, the three of us plus 2 others were in the same lesson together. We met our instructor, Tim, who was quite entertaining and fun to be around. He hiked us up the hill a ways and taught us how to skate (maneuver the board with one foot in the binding and one out), how to get both feet in our bindings while on the hill, how to stop (very useful!) and how to do a falling leaf (going down the hill side to side without turning at all). Thankfully Jack and I picked things up pretty quickly and he taught the two of us how to do "c" turns and then connect them into "s" turns within the first two hours of our lessons. (Side note: the lessons went from 10-12 and then 2-4 that afternoon. Also, found this really great blog post about someone's first day boarding lessons and it sounded almost identical to Jack's and my experience!) Tim told us he was impressed with how quickly we picked up the "s" turn within our first day every really trying to snowboard and mentioned that was unusual for beginner boarders. YAY! Very exciting news. Now, before you start thinking that Jack and I are expert snowboarders by any means...we ate it...quite a few times! I was thankful for my padded gloves on my hands because they hit the snow quite often, if only I had padding on my tail end! So after a 2 hour lesson with Tim we headed to grab some lunch at the lodge (note to self, bring a packed lunch next time, that junk was expensive!) and hung out with Jillian getting to know her a bit better. Poor girl is only 20 and she's had a pretty rough life but she was a lot of fun hanging out with and we enjoyed going back out on the slopes with her after lunch to try out all the new skills we had just learned.

Jack and I had never attempted to get on or off the ski lift (we didn't take the lift in our first lesson we simply hiked to almost the top of the hill to practice, long hike) but Tim had given us verbal instructions before the end of our morning lesson. So off we went managing to get on to the lift just fine. As we rode to the top we discussed the instructions given on how to get off the lift. HA! We managed to crash and burn on our first attempt :) I think Jack even said he accidentally landed on top of the back of my board therefore we both went down but I wouldn't have made it off the lift without falling anyways, so it definitely was no fault of his! We made 3 successful trips down the hill, Jack managed to not fall on his last 2 trips, and I managed to only fall twice on my last 2 trips, woohoo, save the rear-end a bit!!

After our 3 trips we headed back over to meet up with our afternoon instructor. Jillian hadn't quite gotten the hang of the s-curve so she went in a different group while Jack and I ended up with a new instructor, Isaac. He was fun. He took us up to the top of the hill and was surprised to learn that Jack and I already gotten the hang of the s-curve so our goals with him were to make it down the hill with no falls. That worked for Jack, but not for me! My first run down that afternoon ended up with my huge fall of the day. I caught the edge of the board and flew like superman a ways down the hill, then landed and managed a belly flop, hit my face on the snow (yay, didn't break my sunglasses!) and then tumbled for a ways down the hill! Hilarious. I got up laughing and a bit dazed with a nice big strawberry on my hip and wrist and a lot of snow down my pants! After that Isaac rode behind me calling out instructions and telling me to be patient (bc when I wasn't patient was when I would fall) and would ride over to check on me after each fall and give me more pointers. It was so helpful! Then his focus for us was to learn how to successfully get off the lift with no falls! I think we made it twice each without falling, shew! On our last run down the hill Jack and I were feeling quite tired. Jack managed to take a horrible tumble and ended up popping out of his bindings! He landed underneath the lift and had numerous calls from people on the lift letting him know it looked like his fall hurt and wondering if he was alive. He laid there and waited for me to make it down to where he landed. I didn't even realize it was him at first! He managed to get back into his bindings but was pretty sore so we rode to the bottom of the hill and called it a day. Isaac told us he was really impressed with our progress that day and said, even though he shouldn't be saying it, he didn't feel like we needed more lessons, we just needed to come out and practice more. GOOD NEWS! Lessons could get expensive! We met up with Jillian to exchange contact info and then we headed home. We had a blast and we are looking forward to heading back out there next weekend. I may even try going on my own one day this week. We'll see if I get up the guts for it. Anyways, through all the stuff we were doing we only managed to snap 2 pictures but here they are. It was a gorgeous day and it wasn't crowded at all. So thankful!