Day #2

Monday morning, and it was Day #2 of our trip, but really day #1 of our Spring Break!  (Have I confused you yet?)  We all met downstairs in the lobby around 7ish to head out to Winter Park Resort, were we were going to ski and snowboard!  The hotel provided breakfast in the morning, so we all woke up a little earlier and went down to grab a bite to eat before meeting in the lobby.  When we all got down there, there was 16 of us and a 4 car caravan.  Here's me and Beth all ready for our first day on the slopes!

Here's Don and John ready to go in the morning

We started our caravan towards Empire Rentals, where Don and I still had to pick up our snowboarding equipment, since we got in too late last night to pick up our stuff with the rest of the group.  The ski rental building was next to the snowboarding building, and when we walked to the snowboarding building, we got our first taste of people from the "mile high city".  We soon concluded (after meeting several more characters throughout that day) that when they were talking about "high", did they were not talking about elevation.

To make up for the worker, the snowboarding shop had lots of cool stuff.  Beth got a new beannie, and John was looking for a neckwarmer.

Anyways, without much help from the guy, we got our gear and headed up the mountain towards Winter Park Resort.  (By the way, my gear wasn't fitted correctly for me, which I figured out about the 2nd day and confirmed it after getting home.  I still was able to use it, but it was quite disappointing, but not surprising from this guy).  The parking lots were lower on the mountain and we had to take a shuttle to the village area.  We all put our ski/snowboots on at the parking lot and all you could hear was grunts, moans and people mutterting under their breath cause the boots are hard to get into!  It was pretty funny to hear everyone.

I tried to stay in the truck cause Beth showed me that it was sooo cold outside!

John getting all the equipment out of the car

One last quick picture before we jumped on the next shuttle to get to the village area.

When we got to the village area, it was super crowded!!  There were thousands of people and the whole day, we kept hearing how normally there aren't that many people at the resort.  In fact, the resort ran out of equipment to rent!

Don and I had to wait in a really long line to pick up our lift pass and class tickets, which didn't really make sence to me because we had ordered our tickets online.  When we got up to the front of the line, the lady at the window couldn't find our reservations.  Don and I had both left our phones in the car, and we didn't have our confirmation number with us.  Bri lent us her phone, but between Don, me and Beth, we were having technical difficulties.  lol.  Thankfully, the lady behind the window finally found our reservations and gave us our tickets.  Unforutnately, by the time we got our tickets and headed over to the class area, we had missed our class.  (We found out later that the kids - Jet, Jaide, Gunner and Skout also missed their classes).  The rest of the group had hit the slopes to go skiing, so Don and I wandered around the area and hung out at the bar waiting to get into the afternoon class.  I was a little bummed that we weren't able to make our class, but I wasn't too sad, because I was still jet lagged and tired, so it just gave me more time to relax and get used to the elevation.  (That elevation was kicking my butt!! I couldn't walk far before getting tired and needing a break!)

We watched the slopes while we waited to meet up with everyone else for lunch.

We meet up with the group for lunch and split up again so Don and I could take our first snowboarding lesson ever!  Don and I got to the area super early, so we wouldn't miss the class this time.  While we were waiting, we took our first pictures with our snowboards!

Unfortunately, our instructor wasn't the greatest on the slopes, but at least we managed to learn the basics of snowboarding.  And I found out quickly, that unlike surfing, i needed to keep my weight on my front foot.  Unfortunately, getting up on that snowboard and going down the hill, I would get into my surfing stance and fall.  Our instructor didn't give us too much instruction about the lift, other than how to get on it.  So when I got on the lift, we didn't know to pull down the bar, and I was so scared at how much the lift chair was rocking and moving around.  Don just laughed and took pictures of my misery.

The view from the lift was nice, though.

Needless to say, we didn't do too well getting off the lift ... we both fell!!!  Don said that they didn't stop the lift and he got hit in the head after we fell.  So good thing he was wearing his helmet!  The 2nd lift we went on wasn't as bad, since I knew what to expect and I didn't fall getting off! Here I am at the top of the hill that the first lift we took deposited us.

I got the heel-side edge and wasn't as great with the toe-side edge, but I managed to snowboard/fall/tumble down the hill.  Don was doing better than me, linking turns and everything.  But I still caught him falling a bit! Hahahaha

But really, he was doing better than I was, and looked pretty good going down the hill.

And the reason why there's pictures of him snowboarding and not me, is because at that point, I had taken a really bad spill ... I just layed there in the snow for a while ... and decided that I'd walk the rest of the way down.  Here we are at the last curve before the bottom.

When we got to the bottom, we waited for the rest of the group to finish up and rested up in the lounge.  Here I am making a sad face because I was tired and sore.  Hahaha

For dinner, we headed to a pizza place called Beau Jo's ... it was recommended to me by a friend at work as having having awesome pizza.  I wasn't feeling too great by the time dinner rolled around - I think it was a combination of being tired and being dehydrated (I wasn't good about drinking water during the whole time we had class).  But the food there was definately awesome!!  The poepl working there ... well, remember what I said earlier about the "mile high city?"  Yeah.  The manager, the balloon lady, the waiter ... who to choose from to win the prize?  Lol.  We did get some amusement from the balloon lady when Jet asked her to make him a motorcycle!  We had told him to ask her to make him a bicycle (ala Wedding Crashers), but he came back with he was going to ask her to make a motorcycle.  It was an interesting balloon bike ... it actually looked more like a bike than her balloon dinosaur looked like a dinosaur ...