The Snowboarding Fiasco

Bare with me while I try to get caught up here. We're going to go back 3 weeks...

I've just been reading Fancy Nancy to Elle, and Fiasco is her fancy word for disaster.

Monday, December 5th, I dropped George off with a friend from the ward, and Pete and I headed up to Brighton! Yay! It hadn't snowed (and it still hasn't, all month!), but we had a pass for that day and we want to make use of as many of our passes as we can.

I was so excited, but Pete started to get second thoughts as we watched the temperature driving up. When we got up there, it was -1. Brrr, it was so cold, and Pete had forgotten a jacket to wear under his coat so we went to the store and bought a few warm things. I got this awesome hat/balaclava:

(Add some goggles and gloves) And we were set to go.

Our first run, I just felt really nervous for some reason. I'm wondering if it's because my right binding was a little loose, and we couldn't get it any tighter. Whatever the reason, I was going super slow, and I got stuck and had to hike over flat spots a couple times. I was pretty frustrated.

On the next run, I got more brave went faster. Then I had a really hard crash where I landed flat on my face. It hurt my head and my stomach and my arms. I laid there for a minute assessing the damage, but I could tell it was all superficial and that I was fine so I tried to shake it off. My eyes didn't get the message, though, because they still got teary, and I still got pumped full of adrenalin! I really need to get a helmet.

We kept making our way down the mountain, and I fell hard again! This time I just fell on my butt and that really hurt. But again, I was ok, and tried not to be a baby. I was feeling super emotional, though. I was frustrated and scared and kept wanting to cry so when we got to the bottom, we went and sat in the lodge for a while.

I took my boots off and rubbed my feet for a while because my toes were totally numb, and just tried to get myself to calm down. My heart was still pumping pretty hard from that first crash so I just tried to breath.

Finally, we decided to go to the bunny hill so I could just take in nice and easy and practice switching edges. We went down once, and I was kind of getting it so we hopped back on the lift to do it again. This time, I felt really good and was so happy to be making some nice s-curves, riding my front edge almost like I knew what I was doing!

Then, at the very bottom, just when I'm feeling good, I just fell down. It was such a dumb little fall, and I wasn't even going fast, but I immediately screamed, "Ouch!" and had my glove off, holding my wrist. "Dang it, I just broke my wrist!" was kind of my first thought. It really hurt. I just laid there and Pete was like, "Ok, we're done." He just unclipped my bindings and picked up my board. We just walked down to the car. I was so mad and wanted to get back on the lift when we walked past, but I knew there was no way.

When we got to the car, I looked at my phone and my friend had texted that George was really sad. It takes about half an hour to get home, and when we got there, he was still crying really hard. Poor little guy! So Pete had to pretty much load everything up and we went home. After a couple hours, and almost dropping George when I put his weight on my wrist to lay him down for his nap, I decided to go to the doctor while Pete was home.

After spending 2 hours waiting around at the doctor's office, and getting a brace for my wrist, the doctor told me there was no fracture. That was pretty much all I got from him, I didn't really know how long I was supposed to expect to have to wear the brace or anything, but I was glad I wasn't broken!

That was 3 weeks ago, and I thought I was ready to take the brace off today, but then I bumped it on the high chair and realized, ouch, I am not ready. Dang it! BUT, I went swimming twice last week (using fins and a kick-board for most of it), and I just did a pull-up so it's not like I can't do anything with it.

So, it wasn't really a disaster, it could have been much worse. Like they say, "a bad day snowboarding is better than a good day at work," or whatever. :)