On Saturday, it was such a nice day that I decided to go snowboarding on my own while Sammy had to work...... Little did I know, he was going to have a CRAP DAY!
I dropped Sam off at work and headed over to Sunshine. The road was Icy but it's always Icy, so anyway I've got Winter tires so it's no worries. Or so I thought.....
So I've turned off the highway and I'm on my way to Sunshine Gondola doing about 60 - 40 km's. A bit of a sharp corner comes up and I should have adjusted my speed to around 20 km's per hour.
Suddenly the car starts drifting sideways and I panicked and over corrected which sent the car into a 360 spin across both lanes and slamming into the snow mound wall of the road.
( re-enactment )
( re-enactment )
After a second or two of sitting in the car thinking "what the hell just happened" I realise I'm facing the wrong way on a blind corner and my door is jammed by the wall of snow and I knew a car was coming around the corner in a few seconds as I saw it behind me earlier.
Luckily she was doing a safe speed and saw me and pulled over. She was very nice about it and jumped in the drivers seat and spun the wheels whilst I pushed the back of the car. After a minute or two of nudging the car inch by inch and pushing to the point of exhaustion another guy pulled over and gave me the help I needed to finally push the car out. We all shook hands and said hope the day gets better.
This experience reminds me of a story Justin and Sarah told me about of when they were living in Banff. Only they didn't have winter tires and I did. I thought these tires were like SUPER tires that never slip.... :)
So I park the car at the very end because it's a Saturday and every man and his dog is here, walk a mile to the gondola in -11 and in my snowboard boots. The gondola up to Sunshine Village is actually quite long and it's only moments before I realise snowboarding on your own is boring and I left the camera in the car, so I couldn't even take advantage of the beautiful day on the mountain top....
When I arrived I went straight to the highest peak I could find to offset the boredom, I knew every chairlift had a GREEN run so I didn't bother to research any runs. Of coarse once up the top I couldn't see anything as it was a whiteout with galling winds of 80 km's per hour. So much for the nice weather....
So with my luck I ended up accidentally doing 'Black Diamonds' all the way down, some of it on my knees . The worst part was watching a group of fricken snowboarding pro's doing massive air grabs right over me, literally....
So after a few BLUE runs which I was way more comfortable with, I decided to head home. I thought I might as well go to the very top of the mountain and snow board all the way back to the car park and skipping the gondola. About an hour later and I'm probably 200 metres away from the end, I'm tired, a little cocky and suddenly I'm air born, I have no idea how but I'm upside down in mid air at top speed and come crashing down on rock hard ice. I heard some thing crack which at first I thought was my spine but turns out was probably my board hitting something.
( re-enactment )
My helmet saved my life for sure as I smacked the ground hard hip first and then my head and slid about 30 metres or so like a penguin. I just laid there for about 1 minute foggy and in agony. Two guys stopped and were talking to me but I couldn't move or respond to them. They were saying
"Did you brake something, are you OK?"
I just mutted
"NO! aahhghghgh!!!!"
They then went to get a stretcher and a medic but for some reason I quickly felt alright. I got up and said
"I'm fine, seriously, I'm all good."
I assured them I wasn't dying anymore, I must of just got winded and crawled to the side and laid in the snow trying to think of how this day could be any worse.
I hobbled off to the car with a very bruised ego, drove home and told Sandrine of my disastrous day and collapsed on the couch. She was not impressed and suggested never snowboarding alone again. I agreed....
We did end up having a lazy day on Sunday and played with our macro lens and some matches ....
Trying to catch something that lasts a milli second is harder than you think.
I hope you enjoyed my little rant about my shitty day boarding and our macro pics.
Off to Calgary for a convention in a few days so we'll have some city pics for ya soon.
Marc
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