fear is the mindkiller

i’m on a snowboarding frenzy recently, as i went out both last thursday and then again today! thursday was good, although we were ridiculously tired. hmc had just gotten off working on that indie shorts on tuesday, and was severely sleep deprived from her days-nights-days schedule. and given that i end up helping her get out of the door, i was running a little low myself. however it had rained all week and it looked like it was going to rain this weekend as well, with thursday being the only clear day, so we pushed through and went up to northstar for a fine sunny day, with some fresh snow. hmc got in a lot of good runs to practice her turns, and i got a few good blues towards the end of the day.

today i went up with someone from oracle, and we headed to kirkwood where i haven’t been in a couple of years. we spent the day over on the left side, which has my favorite long blue runs all the way down the peak. whereas i didn’t fall once on thursday, i biffed today. repeatedly. i fell more today than i have in the last two years. once i fell so hard that my goggles were covered with snow. on the inside. and inside my glasses. did anyone get the number of that mountain? sure, it’s covered in soft fluffy snow, but it kicked the shit out of me.

i was having a lot of trouble navigating the layer of fresh powder, and i thought maybe i just need more practice in the rough instead of being so comfortable on groomed runs. however, the more i think about it, what i really need to do is to overcome my fear of going so fast. where i ended up getting in trouble was not turning in powder, which i could do, but as you need to go fast enough to not get stuck, i would get scared and try to slow down, which is significantly harder in deep powder, and that’s where i’d catch and biff.

fear is the mindkiller. i must not fear. fear of speed is the boardkiller. i must not fear speed.

Posted at April 1, 2006 7:38 PM