Snowboarding and the Contemplation of Death

I keep waiting to find that one skill/ ability/ sport that I am innately good at.

In my twenty-six years of life, I have been snowboarding twice.  The first time was last December, and the second time was yesterday.  I came away from last year's experience realizing I wasn't instantly good at snowboarding.  Over the course of this past year, I attributed my lack of instant snowboarding ability to several influential factors: 1) not having any previous experience with any downhill snow sports, 2) not having my own cool snowboarding jacket, 3) never having been on a ski lift before, and 4) not having any previous instruction or experience with snowboarding in any form.

How I Spent Last Year

I arrived in Colorado two days ago and was presented with an early Christmas present:  a turquoise snowboarding jacket of my very own.  I now had a cool snowboarding jacket, previous experience with ski lifts and downhill snow sports, and even had some of my very own hands-on experience with snowboarding.

All in all, this year was going to be different.  

Me and my new snowboarding jacket, ready to go

I had a series of immediate successes.  I put on my own snowboarding boots without help.  I sat on the ski lift correctly the very first time.  I didn't wipe out getting off the ski lift at the top of the mountain.  I didn't fall down as soon as I stood up.  Did I have innate talent this year?  It sure seemed like it!

Me, doing well

Unfortunately, that trend did not continue.  While I was able to do pretty well when there were long straight sections with no people, trees, slopes, or bumps, those areas were few and far between.  

I began to start falling, and falling, and then falling some more.  The more I fell, the more tired I became.  The more tired I became, the more I fell.  I soon was spending more time on my butt than up on the snowboard.

Me, not doing well

But, the low moment was yet to come.  The low moment came after a particularly nasty spill in which I ended up laying with my head on the ground facing the top of the mountain (the opposite direction I should have fallen) with my snowboard above me (Luckily, there is no picture of me at this moment.  It was neither graceful nor pretty).  I decided it would take more energy than I had to get back upright and down the stupid mountain.

I heroically told my husband, "Sean, just leave me here.  I'll die in this spot.  It's fine.  Save yourself."  

Much to his credit, he did not leave me, despite my heartfelt insistence that I was done for and that death was preferable to continuing snowboarding.

Through a series of rolling, butt-sliding, hopping, a few glorious moments of snowboarding, more hopping, pushing, walking with the snowboard in my arms, and then (in the last final, undignified moments) riding the ski lift down the mountain, I finally made it to the bottom.    

It was pretty clear to my husband, the guy who let us ride down the ski lift, the nice older man who gave me helpful (yet ultimately useless) advice, and the numerous people who passed me on the slopes that snowboarding was not something I was naturally good at.

But, after a couple of cups of hot chocolate, a sandwich, and a warm car ride home, I was not so sure. I'm pretty sure that there were some factors that brought about my downfall (not being acclimated to the altitude, not having gloves that kept out water, not being able to get off the ski lift without falling)...

In conclusion, I don't think we can rule snowboarding out quite yet.  I pretty sure next year is going to be my year.  

Magic Heat

Somebody once told me that Texans are worse at enduring heat than the rest of the country, and I would believe it. It is true that southern Texas in the summer has been described as brutal, unbearable, and the next closest thing to sharing underpants with the devil (I might have made that last one up). Texans put up with the aforementioned heat eight months of the year (The Seasons in Texas: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Hunting Season), shouldn’t that make them better at tolerating the extreme temperatures? No. Enter Air Conditioning.

Thanks to air conditioning the most a person in Texas (and rest of the country, I suppose) has to spend in that heat is the amount of time it takes to walk from their air conditioned house to their air conditioned car to the air conditioned work/restaurant/movie theatre/school/church back to their air conditioned car and back to their air conditioned house again. On any given day that is maybe 20 minutes in the full heat (some people can even start their car by remote and let it cool off before they leave the office). This was the day to day life that Sarah and I were accustomed to before we moved to San Diego.

When we moved into our apartment, it was the hottest day of the hottest week of the whole summer: 85 degrees – which in Texas would have been a cold snap. As we soon learned, air conditioning is not essential when you live this close to the coast. Instead of sealing off every possible heat leak in a house and pumping in cool, dry air, people just open the window when it is hot inside. We do have a small AC unit in the main room that we have used maybe a half dozen times since we moved in, but otherwise there is no ducting or air distribution devices in our apartment at all. Which raises the question, if there is no central air and no furnace, why are there two wall-mounted thermostats?

Placebo Thermostat and Butterfly

It is now one week until it is officially winter in San Diego. The typical over-night low is 48 degrees, which is nowhere near as cold as Minneapolis, MN where the typical over-night low is six degrees, but as Sarah and I found out 48 degrees does make it hard to get out from under the covers in the morning. To counter act the cooler weather, Sarah has taken to adjusting the thermostats, which I might remind you are not connected to anything (it is like herbal remedies, if you believe hard enough, they might just work).

The other day I got up for class and it was 42 degrees outside the apartment, but inside the apartment it was damn near 80 and very uncomfortable. I checked the thermostat and sure enough the needle was set to the upper extreme of what is labeled the “Comfort Zone.”

The "Comfort Zone"

I like to think I know more than the average person about heating and air conditioning, since I worked in HVAC for almost two years, but I still don’t know how these heaters work. Sarah say that they are magic, and I am inclined to believe her.

Superheros

Sean was helping me study.  The correct answer was: Antarctic Type B has a distinct dorsal cape.  He was trying to correlate cape with a B-named superhero.


"I'm trying to think of a superhero whose name starts with B....The Brinbedible Bulk..." 


[After a pause]


"Oh, Batman!"


[Laughter]

An Embarrassing Moment

I have a bone to pick with George W. Bush, Jr., and I have a highly specific reason why.


A guest lecturer came to our Evolutionary Biology class today.  He is a big name in the science community, a great bird biologist and a hilarious guy.  At the end of his presentation, there was a Q&A session at the end of class, and being one of the few people in my very silent class who is willing to speak, I decided to ask a question.  


Here was the question I was going to ask:  "Are you working with the same researchers on your nuclear DNA study that you did on your mtDNA study of gnatcatchers?"


Unfortunately, instead of of saying nuclear (pronounced "nuke-lear"), I said the word "nuke-ular".


That is why I am angry with George W. Bush, Jr.