Snowboarding A group of us went snowboarding at Mammoth mountain this past weekend to celebrate Judy’s (Dan’s wife) birthday. I won’t be so uncouth to tell you how old she turned. We stayed in a nice little condo with the 7 of us.

On the slopes for the first day, the weather was brilliant! It was very bright, sunny and hot, probably around 65 degrees or so. Hot enough for girls in bikini tops to snowboard around, while I was stupid enough to be wearing a long sleeve shirt and my jacket, completely burning up.

This was a good trip for me as I improved alot. After tackling a few blue-black diamond (advanced-intermediate) slopes, I was cocky enough to tell my wife that I’ll soon be as good as she is. So she promptly took me up to the summit so we could try the Cornice Bowl, a black diamond.

At the top, a friendly sign forewarned “Black Diamond runs are for EXPERTS only”. At the lip of the bowl, I looked down, and I mean STRAIGHT DOWN, and felt a rising wave of unadulterated, first time watching Nightmare on Elm Street, fear. Needless to say, my wife smoothly made her turns down the slope while I can’t really do justice to what I did. I started off toe-side, trying to plow my way down a bit. Perfecting my deer-in-headlights impression, I was paralyzed for a moment. Standing nearly straight up on my toe-side, yet able to reach straight out and touch the slope (I ride goofy foot), I realized this was steep.

I was not willing to point my board down the slope in order to make a turn. After snowplowing down a bit, I gained some courage and tried a turn, only to be rewarded with a mouth full of snow and a Pete Rose slide for 30 yards. I think I have a long ways before I can mouth off to my wife about how I’m approaching her ability. :)