Semi-Charmed Life

Snowboarding Camp: Day 2

Where there's a will, there's a way . . .

My friends decided to skip out on the second day today because rain was in the forecast. They were my ride to the mountain, since my car is pretty much a junker and all thanks to an uncooperative transmission. As luck would have it, there is a way to get to Mountain Creek via public transportation. I decided that if it was not raining when I woke up, I would trek it to the mountain via bus from Port Authority.

It was still dark when I woke up so I couldn't really tell how the weather was going to be. All I knew was that it wasn't wet out, so that was my green light to go. I woke up really early at 5:30am because I had to hop on the subway from my house in Brooklyn and trek it to the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan to catch the bus at 7:30am.

The instructor I got today was mad chill. The group consisted of the instructor, Scott, and three of us. A nice small group, which I thought was great because that allowed Scott to pay more individual attention to us as we hit different features.

The first instructor I had yesterday, Matt, was a college student who was studying in Rome and planned to transfer to Montreal so he could teach and study at the same time. We also found out he was sponsored by Nike when one of the guys in my group asked him where he got his boots. He had Nike everything . . . board (not sure if it was just Nike decals or an actual Nike board, boots, pants and jacket. He showed us how to take basic things like rails, boxes and jumps.

At noon, we switched instructors and had this guy named Jan (pronounced YON). Dude was INTENSE. He was really into the pep talks. Imagine Tony Robbins as a snowboarding drill sergeant, loaded up on half a case of Red Bull and that's pretty much Jan. We didn't really work on anything specifically . . . his style was more of just pushing us to try things. He also kept on drilling into our heads that we have to ollie properly, and even pulled us to the side and had us ollie in place until he was satisfied.

While both Matt and Jan were very patient and encouraging, I liked today's lesson the best so far. Scott asked us if there was anything in particular we wanted to work on, and we all told him that we did not. So the first thing he suggested then was that we work on ollie'ing off of a jump and hike it up over and over to practice. He had us hike it back up while he stood at the top of the jump to analyze our movement. It was extremely tiring and somewhat frustrating because after making lots of attempts, Scott was telling me that while I was taking the jump at good speed, I was still just bringing my legs up as opposed to ollie'ing by popping off the tail end.

After what seemed like half an hour of hiking, we were all sweaty and tired but I was finally starting to get it. The other guys in the group were tired of hiking though and wanted to finish the rest of the run so we went and did that. Later on in the day, Scott has us do a lot of work on the box. We hiked up this one box for what seemed like 45 minutes, working on boardsliding it. Again, he stood right by the box and analyzed our movements and told us what we were doing wrong and what we were doing right each time.

By the end of that practice session on the box, I was able to boardslide on the box and finish it riding switch. This was purely accidental, but I also somehow managed to nail it frontside (misnomer in my opinion because your back is actually turned so that you're facing the mountain) and land in switch.

By the end of the day, I was getting a hang of ollie'ing off the jumps and at times I'd get some pretty huge air. The first time I timed everything right and caught some "big" air I was scared because I had never been that high before. I knew though that I was started to get a hang of it because my landings were okay and even if I didn't nail the landing, I was usually able to save myself and move on. Jumping was also becoming less of a blur. In the past, whenever I took a jump it just felt like everything was a huge blur . . . hell I don't even know how to describe it. All I know was that it felt like I was never in control. Now I'm slowly starting to feel more comfortable with the idea of being airborne.

As a bonus, I also finally nailed the battleship. It looks something like this:

I was so happy I nailed it. It always seemed so impossible to me. But I guess nailing a new trick or feature is like losing your virginity . . . you think it's never going to happen but once you do it, you wonder what the hell was the big deal anyway?

It was a great day overall. The weather held up pretty nicely up until around 2:30pm, which was only half an hour short of the original end time so everything worked out great today. My only gripe was the long commute from Brooklyn to Mountain Creek . . . but hey, you can't always have it everything.

All in all I'm very happy with my progression so far. My friends have been asking me what they've been teaching me and what kind of tricks I've been learning. To be honest, the real difference these coaches make is not in the instruction, but in the encouragement they give you. It feels like when they're around, I'm more confident in taking features I've never had the courage to take in the past. I'm sure a lot of people say that you don't need lessons to learn this stuff and that you can practice all this stuff on your own, and that's true. But I'm living proof of going from someone who would not dare go on terrain park features and busted his ass when he tried, to someone who can now confidently take on a lot of the medium sized features at the terrain park.

The results are real, and if you're anything like I was then taking lessons will definitely up your game.

Anyway, enough talking about snowboarding. I can't wait for day 3!