Every winter since 2006, my whole family has gone to Vermont to stay at a resort called Smuggler's Notch. There you can either go snowboarding or skiing. We usually go around the weekof my birthday which is pretty cool. I get to spend it up on the mountain, with some of my friends that I met there. The first time we had gone, most of my family was on skis because it was our first time ever going. My dad and older brother were the only ones that had gone snowboarding because they had a couple years of experience.
For those of us that were skiing, we picked it up pretty quickly, and had began going on more difficult runs every time. Usually my dad and brother would snowboard together, and everybody else would ski together. At lunch our whole family would meet up at either the top of the mountain, or down at the bottom. I thought it was cooler to eat at the top because we were able to look at the view of part of the mountain as we ate. After we were done eating, we would all go snowboarding and skiing all together as a group. We would keep going until we were either tired, cold, sore, or until the lift closed.
Some days it would get really cold, especially at the top of the mountain. The first couple years were
probably the worst because we didn't buy the face masks to protect our faces from the coldness, or even
frostbite. Although none of us got frostbite, somedays, it sure did seem like we did. In 2008, this was my lastyear skiing. One day it reached about -20 degrees at the top of the highest mountain there. That was the day we decided to buy face masks, so we could avoid getting frostbite.
After we were done skiing, we would go home and get changed. Luckily, our home was about two steps away from the lifts. After we were changed, we would go to eat dinner. When we were all done eating, we would either go to the Fun Zone or the indoor pool. This was always a win-win situation for me because I loved doing both things. As a kid, I used to love playing in the arcade, sliding down the big blowup slides, and doing obstacle courses, and that was just exactly what the Fun Zone had! I also liked swimming because ever since I was little, I've been a swimmer. I've been swimming on a team for about 9 years now and it hasbecome one of my favorite sports.
The next year, in 2009, was my first year snowboarding! My parents signed my younger sisters, brother,
and I up for lessons. I still remember the first day I ever tried it, I probably wiped out about a billion times. The first time I went up to the top with the instructor, I fell in the woods. The instructor had to walk all the way up to the hill and pull me out. It wasn't the woods with an actual path either, which made it that much more difficult to get out. After falling in the woods, it made me actually want to go into the woods, but where there was a designated path. The instructor did not take us into the woods until he knew we were ready. The day he took us was the last day of our vacation, when we got to choose the path.
Going in the woods is probably my favorite part about snowboarding, to this day. My sister doesn't
typically like it because she always gets stuck, but my brother and I love it. As of this year, it was our first year without lessons! We had been doing lessons for about 2 years and we got to level 7 out of 10. That was when my dad decided that it was time we ride by ourselves now. I liked riding with my brother and sister because we were all around the same speed and we were able to teach each other our specialties. I also likedriding together because we were able to choose which paths we wanted to go on, and we didn't have an instructor saying we couldn't go on them.
As we got better, we went into the park which was full of ramps and jumps. I didn't really like the jumps
because I didn't like the feeling of being in the air. My brother loved the jumps, and when he didn't land it was funny to watch him wipeout. My favorite part about the park were the rails, some were straight, curved, and others dropped. The only bad thing about the ramps is that if you fell it hurt really bad, and you probably had a nice, big bruise about to pop up within an instant, but it was worth it! I would recommend this trip if you're intoskiing or snowboarding because there are three big mountains with tons of trails.
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Ah, I want to go skiing! How did you go skiing during -20 weather; that seems wicked cold. Really well written, and only a few space mistakes.
ReplyDeleteThat's a very solid post! You write well, and you mix concrete details and commentary effortlessly. With a little more shaping and formalization, this piece could become a real essay in no time.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to ignore all the formatting for two reasons: it doesn't take away from the writing, and we already discussed the nature of the computer issue. If you can do the next post on a different computer and avoid the formatting problems, that would be better, but it's not a huge deal to me.
You clearly have all the basic grammatical techniques down cold. That will serve you well in the future, and you use or organized paragraphs helps too.
One suggestion: try to integrate some storytelling techniques, such as the use of dialogue, into the story. It will give it a more realistic and urgent sense if we hear your brother cry out when he crashes!