Head over heels for Snowboarding!

I am writing from Røldal... in the mountains of the west coast of Norway where I am enjoying a much-deserved snowboarding vacation! :-)
Today was a phenomenal day! The sun was shinning, the conditions were very pleasant and the mountain was not very busy. Now, I knew long before I came that I was in bad shape (or shapely as some might put it :-) and that this would be a challenge... today my shape was confirmed as an indisputable fact. It is good to have challenges, however - and I find myself basking in the joy of being here. I feel alive and I feel free when I fly down the slopes at very high speeds. And yes, sometimes those high speeds result in flying head over heels and crashing into piles of soft snow.
It has been two years since I have been snowboarding, mostly due to the fact that I travel to some other country every winter. So, my snowboard has been sitting in the basement of Heimen waiting to be used and loved again.

My biggest challenge of the day was not the weariness in my untrained legs, or the wipe out I had where I wondered if I had broke my neck or had gotten a concussion. The biggest challenge for me was that horrible T-bar! I have learned that things are different here than in Canada. I have learned that the ski resorts are smaller, and not to expect the gigantic North American sized resorts. I was not, however, prepared for the T-bar problem. Almost all of the lifts here are T-bars... there is only one chair lift and I have learned that it is quite new. The thing with the T-bars is that they were never created with snowboarders in mind, so you are pulled up the hill by half of an anchor dragging you by the inner thigh. This is not natural - my thighs were never made to be dragged around by! The other thing is that I have almost never used a T-bar with a board, so I looked like someone who had just learned to board... I fell the first times that I tried to get onto it. That is humbling... of course, I just tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that they had no idea that I came from the wonderful land of no T-bars, just chairlifts (which are of course of much higher class than cheap t-bars!!)
I spent the later part of the day avoiding the T-bar since it just made my out-of-shape legs even more tired, and I wanted all of my strength for riding.

Right now my legs hurt in that wonderful way of knowing that I have pushed my body to the limits today and my mind feels at peace. Thanks, God... you sure know how to treat you kids! :-)