The short answer would be with a lot of ambition and downfalls, but because we’re telling things in depth here, I’ll tell the story from the beginning.
Everything starts from where you think, from a frustration, nothing surprising. From kindergarten to grade school I didn’t get a chance to learn any winter sports, at that time I had other things to deal with and the sled was more than enough. Then came the period when I practiced performance handball where winter sports were considered sports with a high risk of injury, therefore prohibited. It’s like I was stubborn to injure myself on the handball court like a pro, not on some slope enjoying the mountain, serious little man. Then, at the end of my handball career, I suffered a broken ligament in my left knee, which rightly prevented me from thinking about any winter sports. And since then, for about 10 years, I kept going to the mountain, exploring the bars on the slope, looking up and thinking how would feel to descend from the top of the mountain on the slope on a snowboard, after which I would serve another glass of mulled wine and start to think about something else.
As the years passed, the frustration grew and eventually led me to the surgery room to have my injured knee revised after only 10 years. After surgery, after 7 months of recovery I was finally ready to get to the top of the mountain for that descent.
The planning started in October when I had reserved for January 3 weeks in an apartment in Brașov, from where I was going to learn snowboarding but also work. The problem was that on January 1st in Poiana Brașov, the temperature was around 14 degrees Celsius and there was no sign of snow. Global warming doesn’t put me off the game so I rescheduled the stay after February 1st. Here I think God took pity on me and gave Brașov enough snow to last for 3 weeks after February 1st. I bought a pair of boots, a snowboard with bindings and after the planets aligned I posted myself on Bradul slope in Poiana Brașov, together with a very patient monitor, Horațiu, may God give him health.
The first day was fantastic, I learned to put my board on my feet and slide at 5 km/h sitting tight like an iceberg. I didn’t fall much on the first day, which gave me courage. The next day we started to climb higher and higher on the slope, on foot of course. This is where the fun began. It’s so strange when you understand what you need to do, but your body just refuses to follow instructions. And actually, here came the interesting part, for which I am very glad that I learned to ride a snowboard. What I’m actually referring to here is the process I went through from simply being parallel with the sport to somewhat controlling the snowboard.
You read it right, it’s not the result that makes me happy but the process I went through and the difference between how I was and how I ended up. It’s like it’s quite counter-intuitive what I’m saying here, usually we’re not very happy when we suck in a certain field. Here the main opponent of this learning process is none other than fear, one of the most important opponents we will ever have. In this case, after I understood what I had to do to control the snowboard, I would start to pick up speed, panic and fall. Or I kept riding, I saw someone in front of me, fear attacked me again and I fell again. It was nice that at one point I had to explain to the monitor why I fell. Furthermore, in order to overcome fear, I needed to form an alliance between ambition and knowledge. Ambition because when I want something I have no other options but to succeed, even if I have to fail a few tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of times. Then knowledge because technique is about 80% of this sport.
Another funny episode in this learning process takes place thanks to the following principle: on a snowboard, at first you tend to stand on your back foot to protect yourself from what you’re about to hit, and this movement helps you almost completely lose control while to have full control you have to throw yourself on the front foot, downhill, gaining speed, during acceleration you have more control. In short, to get around the tree, you must first want to go towards it.
All in all, I haven’t been able to overcome a fear like the one I had at the beginning of this process in a long time. I was simply like 360 camera on the slope looking at everything moving around me and only then thinking about what I was doing and where I was going. But by persevering I managed to start enjoying this sport.
On the 3rd day on the snowboard, I was encouraged by my monitor and I took the gondola with him to the top of Postăvarul Massif from where we were about to descend on the Blue Slope called Drumul Roșu. And I went down, in 90 minutes. In my defense, my first descent from there was in fog and on a crowded slope. On the 4th day I returned to the Bradul Slope where I was going to practice the technique, and here everything went wonderfully again. Day 5 was the big day, the last day with Horațiu and the first serious sliding. The problem was that it wasn’t as I imagined, and here the frustration reached its highest levels being verbalized repeatedly, until I ended up scaring Horațiu a little. After day 5, I continued to go alone to Vârful Postăvarul and to go down on the blue slope. On day 8 on the snowboard, I managed to go down, for the first time without falling, in less than 20 minutes, a noticeable improvement from the 90 minutes initially endured. On day 11, I was visited by Ovidiu and Vlad and I went down with them for the first time on a red slope, on Sulinar, and that one without falling, at least the first time. By day 13 on the snowboard, I was able to drastically reduce the number of falls and limit the effects of fear. Now we still have speed to work with, but here I have a vague feeling that progress might be faster.
In conclusion, I would just like to recommend everyone to learn to snowboard, it’s a fantastic feeling of freedom, you get a good dose of adrenaline, the scenery is fantastic, ok, all of this after you pass the stage described above. But if in 13 days I learned to sit more on the board than on the ground, it’s probably not that difficult. Yes, maybe you will hear me say that I fell in 3 weeks as others fall in 3 years, but after all I am ok, I have not broken anything. And the feeling you get after conquering such an intense fear is worth all the effort in the world.
