Big Adventures, Little World

We had our first day of snowboarding down and it was back up the mountain again, this time with a bit more confidence. We didn’t have to get up quite so early which gave us a bit of a sleep in to rest our tired and sore bodies. It wasn’t much though before we were back in front of the snowboard school at 10AM and making our way back up the beginner slope to put into practise everything we had learnt the day before.

The snow had fallen a lot the previous day and made the conditions near perfect. The snow was soft and powdery, which meant it didn’t hurt so much to fall on, but it also made it a bit slower and easier to board through. The lesson for today was 3 hours straight through, no break in between. So we spent it getting up, and falling down, getting up, and falling down again and occasionally even boarding down the mountain at some points! We were definitely improving since the previous day’s efforts, but still weren’t close to being able to do it as well as we wanted. It was a struggle to get all the turning right, and for me, my speed was a problem as I would always end up going too fast and instead of turning, just start spinning and doing 360’s. On the plus side though, I was quite good at keeping on my feet when I definitely should have been falling in my ass. The instructors agreed and were often impressed how I managed to stay upright a number of times.

The 3 hours flew by, and after going down the mountain a number of times and falling down countless times, it was time to end the lesson. We weren’t really disheartened by the amount of falls we were having as Sam had told us we would need to fall over at least 300-400 times before we started to pick it up and get the hang of it. So the lesson was over, but we stayed out on the mountain for an extra hour or so to keep practising so we could hopefully stay on our feet longer in between all the falls which were bound to happen again and again. By the time we made our way down the mountain again, there was a definite improvement, although not much, but an improvement nonetheless.

That night, tired and sore as we were again, we headed down into the village to Fat Albert’s Bistro for all-you-can-eat rib night! All you can eat we did as well. For €14 each we got as many salads and breads as we could eat, all the ribs we wanted, and a round of beers. Not a bad deal at all. It was a small little place but quite full and they started by covering a few tables with food and sending each table up one by one to help themselves. We got our turn and came back with plates piled high and started digging into the ribby goodness. There was a few different types of ribs and all delicious. I think by the end I had eaten about 15 ribs and was struggling to get through it all. I was well shy of the record of 30-something though. I doubt many people could even get close to that!