Runaway Board

Yesterday afternoon, in perfect spring skiing conditions, my 7yo son and I went snowboarding for the first time this season.  I'm okay but not good enough to give him a lesson.  So I had his older half-sister come with us to instruct him.  And help me too in case I forgot anything.  What a blast.  Every step is a process.  Just getting to the lift took awhile.  He wanted to push with his foot in front and kept falling.  We asked to slow down the lift to get on, just in case.  He was pretty confident on the ride up.  We warned him that getting off the lift is the hardest part of snowboarding.  When the time came, he almost made it but fell just past the ramp.  That was okay.  We moved him over and got him ready.

I wasn't much help in his first few turns since I could barely make mine.  It was a long trip down the South Slope of Cranmore but the snow was soft and the sun was hot and I didn't mind a few rests in a snowbank.  It's hard to watch anyone, let alone your son, do a face plant but he made it up each time and kept trying.  I didn't hear any complaints from him and his sister was still smiling when we got to the bottom of the trail, so we dragged him back up again. 

This time he made it off the lift in style.  I didn't bother to wait for them and went on ahead.  I was about halfway down and stopped to see how they were doing.  Lo and behold he was right behind me.  Amazing progress!  We had time for one more run so we did it again but this time decided to shuffle over 2 trails to our destination.  Well, traversing on a flat surface on a board isn't easy.  I gave up and took my board off and walked over.  When I saw my son struggling I told him to do the same. 

And this is why you don't take your board off on a trail:  It got away from him and shot down through the Terrain Park.  That's not good. He was a little panicked but his sister was on it and reunited him with his board about halfway down the trail.  It's never good to lose your board but the terrain park is the worst place for it.  Some guys were filming jumps and were camped out where the board landed.  They were a bit authoritative about safety, as if we didn't know, but no one was hurt.

I should not have been boarding in the Terrain Park myself but as a mother of course I went after my son.  At the top I had to ask two guys to move because I didn't have enough room to navigate a turn.  When I got to the guys filming I told them my plight and they directed me out of harm's way.  How embarrassing.  I don't think I looked too goofy going down.  And how many moms snowboard with their kids anyway?  That's got to count for some little bit of coolness.

We called it a day but of course my son was loving it and wanted to take another run.   That's a good sign.  My little boy is a knuckle dragger!  Hopefully next weekend I'll get my husband out there with us.