Just got back from Mammoth, where I tried snowboarding for the first time. It was actually my first time on the slopes. The friends I went with couldn't believe I had never tried skiing before. I guess the timing was never right. Since I've moved out to L.A., I've turned into a board sport girl (surfing's still the best, but remind me to tell you about my wakeboarding adventure soon).
Okay, you know about my fear of heights. Remember the time my heart started racing when we went to the top of the Empire State Building and I had to sit down? Well, I expected the chair lift to be a bit of a challenge. But I didn't really expect to miss the chair entirely. No, I'm not kidding. (Please give me some props for actually admitting to this.) I told my instructor, a sweet young twentysomething from the midwest who aspired to go pro, that I was a little nervous as we were waiting in line for the lift. He told me to relax, that he would stand by me and we'd go up on the same chair. He assured me that getting on the chair would be the easy part.
So there we stood side by side, waiting for the chair to come around. Then, plop. The chair came up behind me and I sat down but I landed right on the snowy ground. I went down and the chair went over my head. The guy running the lift stopped it and the people in line behind us rushed up to make sure I was okay. I was able to get up without assistance—I wasn't hurt, just a little humiliated. But I started to laugh pretty immediately and this put my instructor at ease. Seeing that I was laughing gave him permission to let loose. I gotta say, it really was pretty hilarious.
"I've never seen that before!" he said. He repeated this several times. "Wow." Pause. "Wow!"
When I tipped him at the end of the lesson, I told him to buy a round of beers for his friends for when he told
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