Mar. 8 – Too Many Possible Titles and I Can’t Choose One
I am so sore!!! I’m warning you all right now; this is going to be a long entry, but it’s filled with lots of good stuff. I just got back from a 2-day snowboarding trip by myself. I’ve hardly ever been anywhere by myself besides the rare errand or the one time I went downtown before I left Toronto, but yes, I went on a trip by myself.
Monday – Day one of snowboarding at Flumserberg (www.flumserberg.ch). It was cloudy and I couldn’t see much. You wouldn’t think this is a big deal since we have cloudy days all the time in Toronto, but when the clouds cleared in an hour or so, I discovered that I was surrounded by huge mountains that I didn’t even know were there. At this point, I’m asking you to look at the pictures. I swore a lot because I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the view was at times. Seriously though, when I look at the pictures it doesn’t give me the same feeling as when I was there. I wish someone would make a 360-degree camera!
First surprise of the day: On a huge mountain, in Switzerland, snowboarding, and I was BORED on my first run. I couldn’t believe it. No confidence issues or nothing, which I usually have. My first run I went top to bottom without stopping and without any problems. Of all things, I did not expect to be bored. Ok, so now I’m giving warning that the rest of this paragraph has a lot of snowboarding jargon and such, so skip it if you want. In Canada, runs are ranked from easiest to most difficult: green circle, blue square, black diamond, double-black diamond. In Europe, they are ranked: blue, red, black. Europeans say that our black diamonds are more like their reds. I went down half a huge mountain on a red run and the rest on a blue run and I was bored?! I wasn’t yet ready to go over to the other mountain which was all reds and blacks, so I decided to work on my form for a while. One of the reasons why I love snowboarding is that it’s never perfect. You’ll always have something to work on and fine-tune, especially since you have those months in between winter where you forget some of what you learned over the last season. Ever since I started volunteering to teach snowboarding and the training instructor (Jessie) made everyone start over from scratch, I’ve had problems evening out my toeside and heelside turns. My toeside turn is always more aggressive and more tight, and my heelside just takes longer to come around. This totally screwed up my rhythm and I couldn’t progress properly. Finally, I figured it out, while meandering down the slopes: I never led my heelside turn with my upper body, but I relied completely on my legs to do it. Ta-da! Biggest snowboarding accomplishment of many seasons (besides re-learning it from scratch)! I kept working on leading with my upper body, leaning into the turns, weight on front foot, keeping a wide stance, flexion and shifting my weight over my line. My form has never been so close to perfect before!
So, I’m sure most of you skipped that part, but I just have to put in because it’s a really big accomplishment for myself and I’m still really happy about it. It’s one of the reasons why this was a good day. One reason why it was a bad day: I don’t care if no one else in the whole resort locks up their board, I will still lock mine up. So, I lock up my board before going to the washroom. I come back out, put in the combination, and it won’t work. Stand there like an idiot, because no one else locks up their board and because I can’t get my own lock to work and because now this means that my board is stuck to the rack and so I can’t go snowboarding. Need cable cutters. Try to explain to person working the gondola. Person does not speak English. Use hand motions, etc. Does not work. Ask next person who steps off of gondola. This person speaks English, but no German. He tries hand motions, which I have already tried. Useless. Person working gondola gives me a screwdriver. Um, no, can’t do much with that. Finally, find someone to translate and get lock cut. Throw out stupid lock in garbage! Oh, and it’s all very funny to person working gondola and person he got to help me cut it.
Other reasons why it was a bad day: 1) Not feeling well because I woke up at 6am and my body physically rejects waking up early. 2) See a sign for the hotel AT THE RESORT advertising 32 CHF per night including breakfast. I already have a non-refundable reservation for 63 CHF at the hotel that is as far from the lift as possible without going into the next town. 3) Walked halfway downhill to my hotel before I realize that I forgot to return the locker key and they have my rail card hostage. Walked back uphill, dying because it’s steep and I’m carrying so much crap. 4) Went into wrong hotel. This is not my fault. They advertise the hotels as one, when they’re really two different hotels.
However, it ended up being a good day overall because of my snowboarding achievements and one other very important accomplishment. I passed the ultimate test of independence: I ate dinner at a restaurant by myself. No reading material, just me and dinner. I didn’t think I would ever be able to do this and it was hard. I was contemplating starving in my room instead of eating alone, but then I eventually psyched myself up enough to do it and it wasn’t so bad. I even did it again at breakfast! Ha-ha! I am fabulous. Still, I’d prefer to eat with someone else because I just think it’s more enjoyable that way. Also, my room ended up being SO adorably cute and Swiss that I was able to forgive the extra cost – just look at the key that they use (picture)!
Tuesday – Day two of snowboarding. This day was fairly uneventful, save for some weird coincidences. It was snowing, which is always good until skiers turn it into a mountain of moguls. I managed to get in a few powder turns in the morning! It was so foggy that sometimes I couldn’t even see 20m ahead of me and there was zero contrast, so I decided to stick to the familiar instead of venturing to the more challenging slopes as I had planned. On one ride in the gondola, I had a conversation with a guy from London and a guy from Zurich, which was cool. One coincidence was that, in my first 4 gondola rides, I ended up taking the exact same 2 cabins twice each. There are well over 100 cabins on this gondola. The second coincidence was that, on my last train to get home, I sat across from the exact same person as I did on my first train on the way there. Let me put some perspective into this. To get from Flumserberg resort back to my place at St. Gallen, I have to take 2 cable cars and 3 trains, so it’s not like this guy was at the resort too. There are tons and tons of trains in Switzerland. Most lines run every hour or half hour. I almost laughed when he sat down across from me.
Tuesday night – Aftermath. Before I left, my flatmate insisted that I take and wear her sunscreen. Good thing, because I am deathly afraid of getting goggle tan. I think that if I had a goggle tan, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house for months until it faded. Thanks to the sunscreen, no goggle tan, but I did get wind burn as I discovered when I used my minty-fresh face cleanser in the shower. Gotta love that burning sensation.
***gift alert!!!*** I have discovered that the hot chocolate here is SUBLIME. If you want powdered hot chocolate as your gift from Switzerland, let me know or else you’ll get something crappy and useless like a cow-shaped salt shaker. Or, you can ask for solid chocolate bars or something else instead. Seriously, if you don’t tell me, I will buy you a salt shaker.
Monday – Day one of snowboarding at Flumserberg (www.flumserberg.ch). It was cloudy and I couldn’t see much. You wouldn’t think this is a big deal since we have cloudy days all the time in Toronto, but when the clouds cleared in an hour or so, I discovered that I was surrounded by huge mountains that I didn’t even know were there. At this point, I’m asking you to look at the pictures. I swore a lot because I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the view was at times. Seriously though, when I look at the pictures it doesn’t give me the same feeling as when I was there. I wish someone would make a 360-degree camera!
First surprise of the day: On a huge mountain, in Switzerland, snowboarding, and I was BORED on my first run. I couldn’t believe it. No confidence issues or nothing, which I usually have. My first run I went top to bottom without stopping and without any problems. Of all things, I did not expect to be bored. Ok, so now I’m giving warning that the rest of this paragraph has a lot of snowboarding jargon and such, so skip it if you want. In Canada, runs are ranked from easiest to most difficult: green circle, blue square, black diamond, double-black diamond. In Europe, they are ranked: blue, red, black. Europeans say that our black diamonds are more like their reds. I went down half a huge mountain on a red run and the rest on a blue run and I was bored?! I wasn’t yet ready to go over to the other mountain which was all reds and blacks, so I decided to work on my form for a while. One of the reasons why I love snowboarding is that it’s never perfect. You’ll always have something to work on and fine-tune, especially since you have those months in between winter where you forget some of what you learned over the last season. Ever since I started volunteering to teach snowboarding and the training instructor (Jessie) made everyone start over from scratch, I’ve had problems evening out my toeside and heelside turns. My toeside turn is always more aggressive and more tight, and my heelside just takes longer to come around. This totally screwed up my rhythm and I couldn’t progress properly. Finally, I figured it out, while meandering down the slopes: I never led my heelside turn with my upper body, but I relied completely on my legs to do it. Ta-da! Biggest snowboarding accomplishment of many seasons (besides re-learning it from scratch)! I kept working on leading with my upper body, leaning into the turns, weight on front foot, keeping a wide stance, flexion and shifting my weight over my line. My form has never been so close to perfect before!
So, I’m sure most of you skipped that part, but I just have to put in because it’s a really big accomplishment for myself and I’m still really happy about it. It’s one of the reasons why this was a good day. One reason why it was a bad day: I don’t care if no one else in the whole resort locks up their board, I will still lock mine up. So, I lock up my board before going to the washroom. I come back out, put in the combination, and it won’t work. Stand there like an idiot, because no one else locks up their board and because I can’t get my own lock to work and because now this means that my board is stuck to the rack and so I can’t go snowboarding. Need cable cutters. Try to explain to person working the gondola. Person does not speak English. Use hand motions, etc. Does not work. Ask next person who steps off of gondola. This person speaks English, but no German. He tries hand motions, which I have already tried. Useless. Person working gondola gives me a screwdriver. Um, no, can’t do much with that. Finally, find someone to translate and get lock cut. Throw out stupid lock in garbage! Oh, and it’s all very funny to person working gondola and person he got to help me cut it.
Other reasons why it was a bad day: 1) Not feeling well because I woke up at 6am and my body physically rejects waking up early. 2) See a sign for the hotel AT THE RESORT advertising 32 CHF per night including breakfast. I already have a non-refundable reservation for 63 CHF at the hotel that is as far from the lift as possible without going into the next town. 3) Walked halfway downhill to my hotel before I realize that I forgot to return the locker key and they have my rail card hostage. Walked back uphill, dying because it’s steep and I’m carrying so much crap. 4) Went into wrong hotel. This is not my fault. They advertise the hotels as one, when they’re really two different hotels.
However, it ended up being a good day overall because of my snowboarding achievements and one other very important accomplishment. I passed the ultimate test of independence: I ate dinner at a restaurant by myself. No reading material, just me and dinner. I didn’t think I would ever be able to do this and it was hard. I was contemplating starving in my room instead of eating alone, but then I eventually psyched myself up enough to do it and it wasn’t so bad. I even did it again at breakfast! Ha-ha! I am fabulous. Still, I’d prefer to eat with someone else because I just think it’s more enjoyable that way. Also, my room ended up being SO adorably cute and Swiss that I was able to forgive the extra cost – just look at the key that they use (picture)!
Tuesday – Day two of snowboarding. This day was fairly uneventful, save for some weird coincidences. It was snowing, which is always good until skiers turn it into a mountain of moguls. I managed to get in a few powder turns in the morning! It was so foggy that sometimes I couldn’t even see 20m ahead of me and there was zero contrast, so I decided to stick to the familiar instead of venturing to the more challenging slopes as I had planned. On one ride in the gondola, I had a conversation with a guy from London and a guy from Zurich, which was cool. One coincidence was that, in my first 4 gondola rides, I ended up taking the exact same 2 cabins twice each. There are well over 100 cabins on this gondola. The second coincidence was that, on my last train to get home, I sat across from the exact same person as I did on my first train on the way there. Let me put some perspective into this. To get from Flumserberg resort back to my place at St. Gallen, I have to take 2 cable cars and 3 trains, so it’s not like this guy was at the resort too. There are tons and tons of trains in Switzerland. Most lines run every hour or half hour. I almost laughed when he sat down across from me.
Tuesday night – Aftermath. Before I left, my flatmate insisted that I take and wear her sunscreen. Good thing, because I am deathly afraid of getting goggle tan. I think that if I had a goggle tan, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house for months until it faded. Thanks to the sunscreen, no goggle tan, but I did get wind burn as I discovered when I used my minty-fresh face cleanser in the shower. Gotta love that burning sensation.
***gift alert!!!*** I have discovered that the hot chocolate here is SUBLIME. If you want powdered hot chocolate as your gift from Switzerland, let me know or else you’ll get something crappy and useless like a cow-shaped salt shaker. Or, you can ask for solid chocolate bars or something else instead. Seriously, if you don’t tell me, I will buy you a salt shaker.
posted by lilswtamy at 10:51 p.m.
1 Comments:
where are the pictures of the hills...i want to see some SWISS MISSES!!! =P
-stephen
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