Sunday, January 13, 2008

Happy New Year!

Nothing beats spending the holidays in Vermont snowboarding your way down the slopes of Stowe.

We were a groups of 14 people. We stayed in a beautiful cabin. Lots of snow, fire in the chimney, and plenty of wine to sip... it was definitely a White Holiday just like those they show in movies.

The first day we all went up the slopes. It was perfect. Not too cold, and just enough real snow to help cushion the falls. Those who endured went up the second day. The others stayed in the cabin and build a sled trail and played tag football - in the snow?!

The third day - my scariest day.
I've always been superstitious about saying, let's do a last run... because all the people that have said that, got hurt on that last run. So, it was the third day snowboarding, putting my legs into fire... I was tired. It was also 2pm. Way pass my lunch time. I was starving. The 4 of us - the masochist who despite the pain forced our bodies to snowboard one more day - decided to do a run - in my mind the "last run"- which i was JUST doing to have a yummy waffle that only Vermont makes. Obviously, i dared not to say the cursed sentence out loud. (Talk about gluttony).

The four of us decided to take the singles lane for the gondola ride. My girlfriend and I went up first. The other 2 guys were right behind us waiting to get on the next one.
It was a long ride up. The wind was getting stronger. So strong that as soon as the doors opened and i went out, the wind pushed me 2 feet back.
As luck would have it, the Waffle house closed!!! and the guys did not make it up. They had closed the gondola and our cart was the second to last. We were caught in a windtunnel!!!

It was so cold and windy that my gear had frozen. By the time i finished putting on my gear, 10 min after, everybody had disappeared. It was only my girlfriend and I up there.
My gloves were hard as a rock, my eyelashes were starting to freeze. The wind was blowing in every direction, mostly upwards so you could not see past 2 feet. The snow would stick to our goggles and the only way to have some sort of vision was to scrape it every minute. Sometimes the wind direction would shift and would push you away to whatever direction the wind was going. It was scary.
Needless to say, we were on a cliff. I had to concentrate really hard just to keep my tired legs and my inexperienced boarding body to keep myself in the middle just so that i would not fall down into the woods.

45 minutes later, we made it! We took a deep breath and then I Thanked God for letting me live 2008.

So cheers to that and Happy New Year!

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