Snowboarder in Training

When you buy your own cigarettes instead of bumming them off friends, you’re a smoker. So, if I bought my own goggles instead of renting them, does that make me a snowboarder? Not if you ask my badly bruised tailbone and whiplashed neck. (And probably not if you ask my snowboarding teacher either; her most convincing compliment in three days of lessons was, “Aww, after that tumble, all the snow in your hair looks so sparkly and pretty.”)

But from the stadium seating of the Mont Bleu casino theater in South Lake Tahoe during the premier of Dynasty by legendary ski and snowboarding filmmaker Warren Miller, I wasn’t so sure. Jeff wore a plaid flannel shirt. I sipped a Rockstar energy drink. And no one seemed to notice our debatable authenticity. Even though my actual snowboarding bragging rights only extend as far as dragging my heels down a blue trail on my second day riding (essentially braking the whole way), I cheered as loud as anyone when narrator Jonny Mosely introduced Lake Tahoe’s slopes among his top picks. I felt like a part of something: a card-carrying community member.

Maybe there will be more snowboarding in my future after all.

(As soon as I heal, anyway.)