Ten Bucks

Went snowboarding at Buck Hill last night, mostly because it was only $10 but also because I needed the fix. Though it was a gorgeous evening, 30 degrees and hardly even cloudy, conditions were borderline suicidal. It was what you’d expect from a ski resort located within the confines of a major metropolitan area; icy, unforgiving, and crawling with grommets who need to be assigned more homework.

I made a fairly wretched show of it, spending much of my time marveling at the novelty of riding a chairlift to the top of a “mountain” and finding myself in the middle of someone’s suburban neighborhood. I also enjoyed that the run-out from one of their terrain parks went smack through the middle of the bunny hill. Such is a recipe for disaster.

That being said, some of the kids out there were so good in the terrain park it was disgusting. I watched one kid, who must have been ten years old, throw a 540 off a kicker. I watched another guy do a front flip, and then gap the rainbow box approach to the landing of a completely different jump. The guy who followed him through the park nailed the same gap, but threw a 360 in the process. Then there was the kid on skis who threw a corked backflip with full twist.

All I managed to pull was a tendon in my thumb, which I had previously tweaked crazy-dancing at the matt pond PA concert last week. It was starting to get better and all, so obviously I needed to fall on it. Hard.