Learning to snowboard

So, despite what I told Adrian when we first met, I am not actually the world’s most amazing snowboarder… Jeff L and Bas witnessed my efforts last year which saw my knees swell up to football size as a result of coming into far too much contact with the sheet ice at Turoa! So I got me a snowboard here in Megève and took it out after about a week here to see how much work I needed to do before I could learn how to turn etc. Actually putting on the bloody thing was the first mission because it had completely different bindings (what holds the board to your feet) than what I was used to back in NZ! But once that small milestone had been achieved I was raring to go. And go I did…right towards the ground! I won’t go into the (embarrassing and painful) detail, but after several days of “I hate this, I’m never going to like it!” and other minor tantrums directed at the ever patient Adrian, I finally managed to learn how to turn. It was a big day! In the interim I was forced to wear a helmet because I was coming close to concussion with the amount of times I was falling over…


But once that had passed and I was (more or less) whizzing down the green runs (I was allowed to say that I was a snowboarder once I completed a run without falling), I became a bit more adventurous. Bring on the blue runs! (In France they go from green, to blue, to red, to black). We had a big day out on the mountain (Adrian, Lauren and I) and I was heading down Les Mandarines run which is a big green run (green number 30 on this map where it says Mt d'Arbois) and I had nearly got to the end when I took a big tumble and banged up my knee. The gory results are below…

Needless to say that now I wear kneepads as well! But after about a week’s rest I was back up there full of enthusiasm (and only succumbing to very seldom tantrums – like when Adrian takes me down the world’s steepest red run…but that’s another story!)