SNOWBOARDING

I have skied most of my life. From the first time Bill Felsted took us to Brundage when I was 14, to skiing 5 different resorts on our honeymoon, to last Monday, I have many fond memories of the slopes, and I have skied at almost every resort from Bellingham to Salt Lake.

I have been pretty lucky about avoiding injuries, too. The only exception was one time when we drove up to Mount Spokane with our friends, Dave and Ken. I volunteered to take a big jump and landed in very sticky spring snow. When I woke up a few minutes later I noticed the snow covered with blood and Julia and two other people standing over me. As my eyes began to focus I exclaimed “Hey look, Julia! Dave and Ken are here too!” Ski patrol imprisoned me until noon for that comment.

My favorite place to ski is Alta – both because it has the most spectacular terrain and because it does not allow snowboarders. I have always considered them to be part of the coarser lot – just above dentists, telemarketers and real estate agents.

So it was with a conflicted sense of bemusement that I found myself snowboarding at Mount Baker last week. My logic was as follows: All kids want to snowboard these days. If I don’t learn how now before I get too old and brittle, I won’t be able to, like, get massive air with my shredder sons.

I completed my first run with no problems other than getting separated from Tim. After waiting at the bottom for a while I began to get worried and decided to head up and look for him. I came partly down the slope and was looking around and behind me when … WHAM!!

I hit a small piece of ice which caught my edge and slammed me to the ground where I landed with my full weight on my right shoulder. Thanks to my New Year’s resolution that I will not shave until I have turned my two liter bottle into a six pack (I have lost 7 pounds so far) you might think that my full weight could not do much damage. You would be wrong. I felt a hard crunch and two thoughts popped into my mind in the following order: (1) dang! A beautiful day of snowboarding wasted! and (2) I just broke my collar bone.

I sat there wondering whether I should get up and try to make it down to the lodge, but I realized that I was going into serious shock.

A skier who was also a nurse recognized that I was not well, and soon I was riding on a snowmobile down the mountain while struggling to maintain consciousness.

My main concern was this: It was a beautiful blue sky day and I had six kids with me. I had just shelled out over $120 for lift tickets and I did not want to ruin the day for them.

The doctor assured me that it would not matter whether I got an x-ray now or in a few hours, so I rested in the first aid shack, took some ibuprofen and relaxed until I was out of shock. I was joined by another snowboarder with a deep bruise to his gluteus maximus and another snowboarder with a head injury. No skiers reported to the first aid shack.

My only other concern was getting down the mountain at the end of the day. I was not sure I could handle the windy and snowy access road with only my left hand. I figured that if I walked around the lodge enough I might run into someone I knew. So wrapped in my new sling I wandered the lodge, getting many concerned looks (most from parents of snowboarders). I eventually did find someone I knew who had a friend who drove us home at the end of the day.

As we were driving home I overheard one of Alex’s friends call his mom on his cell phone:

“Oh, it was really fun! – except Brother Mumford broke his collar bone.” He was right. Except that technically I just have a separated AC joint. There is not much difference however, between the two injuries: both heal in about 3 weeks – which means I still might be able to get some more snowboarding in this season.

On second thought, maybe I’ll just ski.

A few Timisms:

While praying: “…and please bless my friends – and also all my foes…”

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Dad: “Tim, maybe you could invent a special pill that would take away the desire to do wrong. And it could be given to bad guys so that they would not commit crimes anymore?”

Tim: “Dad, I think that would be against Heavenly Father’s plan of free agency. So I’m not going to invent it.”