Being from Britain and growing up in Stoke, I did'nt really have many options for skiing on real snow. However, the local constabulary operating a "keep the local kids out of trouble by doing stuff with them" scheme called S.P.A.C.E. I can't remember what the acronym stands for now, but essentially it introduced me to Skiing, which I had for a long time seen solely in the realms of the rich, famous and Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards (the Eddie the Eagle film's out later this year for anyone that doesn't know who I'm talking about).
Anyway, I spent every summer at the local dry ski centre learning how to ski, but ever since I hadn't managed to actually make it onto a proper, snow covered slope. Luckily, that all changed recently as I had the opportunity to head into the mountains of Northern Nevada, around Lake Tahoe just south of Reno on a trip to see my girlfriend who lives in the region. Despite this, I am still yet to ski on snow.
The long and short of it is that my girlfirend hurt her knee in a skiing accident a few years ago and can no longer ski, so she had been snowboarding in the Northern Nevada Mountains instead. As such, I ended up going snowboarding too, so I didn't get to ski afterall.
The resort I went to was called Suger Bowl and it has some great packeges to teach you snowboarding. The instructors are a lot of fun and they got me up on the board really quickly. While I fell over a lot, it was great fun. However, probably the best bit of the day was seeing how slow my girlfriend is at snowboarding. I've never seen anyone perform a toe turn at such a snails pace. It was pretty cute though.
