February is officially coming to an end which means two things.
Spring riding is nigh and ski-school sessions are over. This means
no more group lessons at my local hill, but it also means more random
people riding. This week in snowboarding has been a rather eventful
one for me, I busted my snowboard twice. Most recently I pulled the
heel side screws right out of their inserts
effectively stripping them (I'm e-mailing my snowboard's manufacturer
to complain about that, my board is only three months old). This sent
me on a quest to find some hardware since I lost a screw; the quest
continues but that's not pursuant to the
current blog post.
Having moved my rear binding back by half an inch to use new
inserts, I went to Cascades to test out my new wider stance (if 3cm
makes a difference in snowboard length, 3cm might make a difference
in stance too). After a couple runs, I was casually carving turns
near the bottom of the main blue run when a skier collides with me
from behind. He just clipped me so I managed to sustain verticality
but he went down so I decided to slide down to make sure he was
alright. This is when he started hollering at me for being
irresponsible and that I should be more careful... what? I promptly
recited the alpine responsibility code to him and was strongly
tempted to tell him that if he can't ski in control that he might
want to consider golf; but I held my tongue. He didn't however, and
became rather confrontational with me; I think he actually wanted to
fight me. Now I'm not a big dude but this guy was starting to piss
me off and I was very tempted to put this geezer on his ass; but
again I held fast.
Once he gathered up his gear from his recent “yard sale”, he
made his way back to the lift line with his two kids in tow (Wow!
What a fantastic role model). I was getting on the chair behind him
with my buddy Dana and his friend Perkins. As his chair started up
the hill, he turned around to me and uttered some threats, shaking
his fist at me and everything (See above comments about role models).
I was expecting him to be waiting for me at the top of the lift
(Sigh! beating up a middle aged man was not what I had in mind when I
decided to go snowboarding tonight). Not surprisingly though, once
we got to the top, he and his kids cheesed it pretty quickly and were
not to be seen for the rest of the night, not even by the lifties who
at this point were quite curious about what all the ruckus was about.
Morals of this story:
-
Forget about respecting your elders, RESPECT ME! I'm
probably in better shape than they are.
-
If you're going to act like a tough guy, don't yell threats
from the chairlift then cheese it right after; it will just make you
look like a fool.
-
If you're going to behave like this guy did, be careful to
not confront resort staff; we can clip your pass.
Well I'm off to wait by the flag pole; I've got more crotchety
middle aged men to beat up. Until next time...
Keep Shreddin' the GNAR!
J.
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