Snowboarding

Well, here goes my first blog post. Usually I leave this type of thing up to Joanne. But with all the stuff that has been going on, I figured I try and help out with keeping everyone up to date on what has been happening. I will make no attempt at being as good as Joanne is. It's most likely going to be some phots and some small captions. But hopefully you all will enjoy seeing a few things that we have been up to.

As many of you know, Dylan just turned 11 and has left the world of Cub Scouts and entered the world of Boy Scouts. I am really excited about this since that is the age of boys I have been working with for a couple of years. It just so happened that the first merit badge Dylan got to work on was the Snow Sports badge. Lucky! We recently took a group of 18 boys up to the Big Bear Mountains to have some fun. It was a great southern california day with plenty of sunshine, and well, I guess just enough snow. After the boys got all suited up, we headed to the slopes.

Dylan was very excited to get going. He didn't have too much patience for the "Safety" meeting before his lesson. He just wanted to get out there.

Even though this was his first time snowboarding, I'd say his outift said he'd been doing this for years.

Straping in...

The lesson lasted about 90 minutes which according to all the boys, was about 85 minutes too long. Every time I would come by, they would all ask if they could ditch the class and go down the hill. I guess there was a lot of explaining and not a ton of practical experience.

After lunch, we rode up the lift to the more advanced runs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpzhIR_FGQk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Gkgxxop7I

Dylan really did a great job and showed no fear. I kept trying to get him to turn but he really liked going straight until he absolutely had to. (notice the quick 180 right as he's heading for the tree)

Here are a few more videos that I took of some of the young men. Hope you enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0YD0SbR3y4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yH4UtV9dqc

Everyone really had a great time. And the fact that we only broke one arm out of the entire group, I'd say that was a more than successful trip.

Hopefully you have enjoyed my first post. If not, please let me know and I will hound Joanne to get on it. I do have new respect for those who are avid bloggers as this took way longer than I wanted. Either that, or I am doing something wrong, cause these videos took forever to download. :)

Never actually got the videos downloaded but hopefully you can see them on YouTube.