Try Something New!

Two years ago Bret and I took the kids skiiing for the first time. It was wonderful. Brock, at the time 7 picked it up immediately. Cierra, then 4, just wasn't that into it. I had flashbacks of my parents teaching me and my sister and brother to ski like 30 years ago. It's wierd when you hear things coming out of your mouth that were placed there by your parents. Words that as they come out of your mouth you can't help but slap your hands over your mouth and shriek, "HELP! I am becoming my parents!"

The only negative part of that ski trip was the realization that skiing was no longer cool. I'm not sure when it happened. I'm not sure how it happened, but apprently someone forgot to send me the memo. The last time I had been skiing before our trip two years ago, I had recalled enjoying this kind of snobbish superiorism over snowboarders. I thought we had ALL agreed that skiing was cool and that those snowboarders were a nuisance, a fad that would surely die out! Hadn't we decided that they were skate boarding punks? Goofy kids? Well, apparently when you let a decade slip by, things change. My first tip should have been watching the winter Olypmics this year. Dang it. There I was in the chairlift line with my tight ski pants, short cropped ski jacket and, of course, my skis from 1995 and it was painfully clear that I was, "gulp" .......no longer.....no longer... cool. How did this happen? I pride myself on knowing what's "hot" and what's "not".

So this year I was not going to let that happen again. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So with baggy pants, huge jacket and Volcom cap in place, I signed up for a lesson in "cool". In less than an hour, my 19 year old punk rock/boarding school instructor had me up on the bunny hill strapped into a Burton Snow Board and Cool! Cool! Cool! Cool again! I'm back! And MAN was it fun! Just as "Shawn" my mohawk wearing instructor promised, I'm not sure if I'll ever go back. What seemed so scary, what had me fearful of failure, that which had me worried I might crack my skull open, was so much more fun than I could have ever imagined.


Granted, in two days, I only left the bunny hill for about 30 minutes, but this 37 year old Mom got her groove back on that slowly sloped mini mountain, as I prefer to refer to it. Oh, sure, I might originally have been motivated purly by the snowboading fashion and my fear of being identified as having enjoyed my hay-day in the 80's, and I'm not afraid to admit it. And sure, I might not be ready for the fast moving chairs yet. And perhaps you might argue I should act my age, but life is too short not to take a few risks! The fact of the matter is I tried something different, something scary, something that took me completely out of my comfort zone and it felt great! Snowboarding Rocks!
(I'm sure you can tell how furiously fast I'm moving! All three year old snow plowers have been carefully cropped out of this photo)

So try something new. Try something that people wouldn't expect of you! Aside from feeling like I've been run over by a frieght train, I feel like a million bucks!