Day 2

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I started on the green piste and after the first 2 slides I switched for the blue one. I still couldn't manage it without falling once in the middle, but it was much better, I felt much more confident. I remembered the wise words of my good Italian wrestler master, Massimo: the mind works during the night too, it puts together what we learned the day. And probably he was right, the snowboarding went much better in the morning then the previous night.

The Red Piste

At 2pm I decided to try out the red piste. It was pretty steep, I was braking all the way down. At the half my legs were so tire because of braking - yes it's always hard to work against the mother nature (against gravity). But this braking made me not only tired but very confident. By the time I got down, I really learned to control the snowboard, I could stopped whenever I wanted and I could by-passed anything I wanted. I took the red piste 2 more times and then I went back to to the blue one to practice. Sliding down on the red piste made me confident in stopping and by-passing, so I've become more confident since I didn't have to worry about hitting somebody in front of me. So at this time, I was able to let the snowboard to slide, I went faster and faster. My new goal was for Day to is to slide down without falling and to make once a 360 degree turn during sliding. And I made it this time - just a few minutes before the piste was closed.

Just to make the day more memorable, I slipped with the school bus a little bit into the ditch next to the road, when a truck was coming down on the hill and I tried to pull over. I pulled over too much.

No Comment...

Sauna-thoughts in the evening:

isn't learning control in snowboard similar with the children raising? It takes time & energy to teach, control, "brake" them, but if you do a good job in teaching, if you learn how to control them, you can just "let it slide", you can let them go out, you can give them more freedom without worrying about them. Isn't it like that? Of course the learning period in the snowboard was hard and many times painful - the same with our children: we have lots of difficulties, quarrels and fights by the time they grow up...

When I make a mistake I always try to learn from it - and try to find out what I should have done better. I played the situation again with the school bus - but I couldn't find out what mistake I made, why it happened. Well, I know, I pulled over too much, but when I saw that truck coming down by 60-70 km/h on the snowy road, I felt it was the right decision. I still feel the same, I would pull over again the same way, so probably it's better if I just stop blaming myself.