No pain, no gain

--Worst injury I've had and how it happened.
Really the only serious injury I've had was dislocating my knee. I was stepping off the bus from school and my foot stayed planted while my body and leg turned. It hurt really bad and still gives me problems sometimes. Real interesting post right?

Well I thought instead that I would write about the most painful injury I've ever had.
J Grizl and I share the same birthday. We're actually only minutes apart in age which is pretty cool. A few years ago for our 18th birthday we came on a trip to Idaho. I had never really been in the mountains and was blown away by the beauty. He lived here with his oldest sister for a year when he was 15 and picked up snowboarding. There's a little ski resort about 20 minutes from where we now live and we visited there on our initial trip.

I have to say that I secretly hate some people with natural athletic ability. The reason being that they aren't usually very good at teaching others. I'll now confess the humiliating details of my first and only foray into the world of snowboarding.

I have a fear of heights. I know--two fear posts in a row, this should be good. When we first arrived at Kelly Canyon it took me a good half hour to even get used to the idea of hopping on the lift. We grabbed a bite to eat and watched some of other people coming down the mountain. After renting my gear my hubby immediately heads for the lift so I blindly follow. Before I even know what's happening, we're at the top of the mountain and hubby has to push me off the lift before getting himself down. Then comes my snowboarding lesson from somebody I consider pretty good at it. "Lean forward and use your weight to control the speed." Then he sped off down the mountain.

I guess for someone who naturally does something athletic on their first try with more grace than I could with years of training, it's probably as simple as that in his brain. I tried desperately to make it work out for me but there was just no way it was going to happen with no practice and no one on one. Now I have the problem of being stuck on the top of a mountain, scared of heights, with no way to get down but a giant board strapped to my feet. Great. My hubby had stopped a ways down and waited for me. It took me forever to get to him and I hurt myself many times on the way. (Remember the dislocated knee I mentioned previously?) Anyway, I finally get to him and after a bit of arguing that more instruction is necessary before being put into a situation like that we figure out a way to try to help me get the feel of it.

Picture this with me:: My hubby has his board parallel to the ground and facing up towards the top of the mountain. My board is also parallel to the ground and I am facing down towards the bottom of the mountain. We have our arms straight in front of each other and he's bracing mine as I try to figure out this weight distribution trick. We actually did pretty great for a while until our balance just barely shifted. This caused my hubby to fall backwards and my snowboard to ram right into his. I fell over him and my legs swung up into the air. Then the weight of the snowboard and boots caused my legs to slam back to the ground with both of my shins catching the side edge of his snowboard. The pain was immediate and the swelling wasted no time starting either. We each unhooked our boots from our boards and sat on them like sleds to ride down the rest of the mountain.

I was in so much pain and just sobbing at the whole situation. It didn't help that there were children as young as 5 whizzing past me laughing at the 18 year old obviously failing and crying. My poor hubby was most likely just as humiliated to be stuck "sledding" down with me. In the short time it took to reach the ski resort again, I had softball sized knots right on the front of each shin. I had bruises for a month. Then I felt horrible because that was the one fun thing we had planned to do on our trip and on the first run I had hurt myself.

Blah. I've lived here for 2 1/2 years now and still haven't attempted snowboarding yet.

Read all my #BlogChallenge posts HERE.

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