The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

It was another gorgeous day on the mountain. The snow is getting a bit slushy and heavy, but you can't beat the clear skies and sunshine! As our friend said, the sky was a mile high.

We have royalty in the house again. Abbie earned the badge of blue princess, Brendan became a blue king, and C.J. is now a red prince. We're a bit irked by Abbie's lack of progress, but she seems content. Brendan is exactly where we expected; he moved up one level from last year. C.J. jumped two levels, but he is protesting that he really should have been a red king. He feels the instructor turned away and missed seeing him complete one of the requirements. We tried to explain that the stamp in his Swiss snowboard booklet makes absolutely no difference to his future boarding career, but he wasn't buying it.

I learned that injuries don't happen by flying down the hill. I think more injuries happen around the chairlifts than on any part of the mountain. The Swiss have a very efficient chair boarding system involving gates and conveyor belts. We actually love the precision of the system. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well when the timing gets messed up. The lift had been stopped before it was our turn, so it wasn't going full speed. As a result, when the starting gates opened and we were shoved onto the conveyor belt -- it wasn't good. I ran into the chair as it was turning. Unfortunately, I couldn't get out the way and got dragged/tossed to the ground -- into the group of people waiting to get on the chair. The good news? I was dragged by my braced leg! No ligament or tendon damage -- yeah! -- but I am sporting a huge bruise and egg on the leg.

Lesson learned is to check the speed of the chair and hang on to the starting gate for dear life if it doesn't look like everything is lining up.