Saturday proved to be one fun day, besides getting up at 7am on a weekend day (which is actually against the law), a short trip up north and a snowboard wax later, we were hitting the slopes at the quaint 'resort' of Kungsberget.
Although not the Rockies, this charming place has some 10 lifts and may be 16 trails, ranging from lätt to svår, with some jumps and boxes, a psycho sledging area and a restaurant etc.
We cranked it up straight away by getting dragged up the ‘mountain’ by our nads......oh the memories from Sälen: The first few turns were a bit rusty as per, but we got there in the end.
Whenever I go snowboarding, with or without other people, the goal for me obviously is to have FUN, but if you can learn at least one thing, whether it be a change from the normal riding or a new trick/technique, anything really, that is always a bonus.
What did I learn then? Well after a couple a seasons teaching and riding, the thought could be that I ‘can’t improve’..... but for me this is just bollocks!! Although (without sounding up my own arse) I feel like I’m a good standard I still have so much to learn. People don’t realize how technical this ‘cool’ sport is.... people that think they can ride the whole mountain, 99% of the time, can’t....that’s one thing I learnt from teaching.... people always lie!!
Ok, back to the point.... what did I learn? Well two things, firstly that when making up your mind about doing a 1 or a 3 off a small mound of snow....make sure you have an idea of which you want to pull off.... I did like a 270 to compensate, caught a lovely heel edge and down I went.... oh edge catching is not the way forward!!
Secondly, I learnt that I have really weird elbows.... I have very weird protruding bones like next to my elbow joint. Ok, this may seem very strange that I ‘learnt’ this but it’s the truth.... I attempted (and successfully nailed!) a backside 3 only to spank my elbow against my knee on the rotation..... I landed in pain, laughing that I’d actually cracked my knee and my elbow at the same time. Not only was I wearing a knee support, thick pants, a down jacket and normal coat, I ended up with a nice red mark on my elbow, with a little inflammation so quite impressive that it went through so many layers.... I definitely didn’t think I was capable of that.... hehe.
So, we’ll be back up there soon, we stopped off at Ikea for our daily dose of meatballs on the way home; I just need to recover from my injuries and aching muscles, just give me a few weeks.......
Ps. Johanna is getting some switch skills: Probably learning a lot more than me at the moment!!
