What is my story? Well I could write about many stories from my life, I could even write my testimony, however I thought I would write about a story most of you hear about. This story started like most, however unlike some this story is existing now and will keep on existing until I die. In a way this story is a my testimony, it definitely has many parts in my life's testimony.
What story? The story of me and snowboarding. Probably some of you would have seen this coming, but either way its is a story of many trials, errors, and excitement. Hardly anyone knows that even though snowboarding isn't my career right now and I haven't been doing it most of my life, it is a big part of me and has changed me not only in the ways that you around me see, but also spiritually. Yes, snowboarding has actually been one of the biggest things that has affected my life spiritually. So is snowboarding a religion to me? No thats not what I mean, its through experiences snowboarding or non-snowboarding experiences that have made me look at life differently and notice things in me that need to change.
Of course my story started back when I was younger. I used to be the little skier who liked to fly down the slopes at ski sawmill. I loved skiing very much then, I always wanted to go more times than I did in a year, but even as hard I tried to get my parents to take me more times I only ended up going once a year.
As any kid I have always looked up to a lot of people and I have always been one to hang out with older people. I had a few friends my age, but I almost liked my older brother's friends better. I don't know if its because I had a fascination with wisdom and found that in older people, if I wanted to be doing what the cool older people were doing, or if I was old for my age in my mind. The people I looked up to when I was a skier was the snowboarders. I remember looking at the snowboarders and thinking man, they are so cool, I want to be like them and snowboard.
So in 2007 I tried snowboarding for the first time. I wanted to be cool like a snowboarder should be, I didn't want the ugly orange helmet I was given at first and asked for a black or blue one instead. If your a snowboarder you can't be not cool it just isn't right.
I always liked to go skiing with a friend so Brooks Gleckner and I decided to learn to snowboard together. Neither of us knew what we were doing and we had no one to teach us so we looked ridiculous falling down all the time.
A hard thing to explain about snowboarding is that snowboarding has a feeling of i guess a freedom, coolness, and sweetness. I can't just tell you what snowboarding is like, how fun it is, and you will understand what I'm saying. Snowboarding is unexplainable you have to go out and try it. An analogy of this is a sermon, you can hear how great whatever the pastor is telling about is, but until you try it will you know the power and greatness of it.
I would like to point out that even as great a feeling snowboarding is, this is where snowboarding stops and God keeps on going. What I mean is snowboarding is all about the feeling, God goes way beyond just feeling.
Those totally cool feelings from snowboarding are I guess what kept me going every time I fell flat on my face. You can fall down every couple of feet, but each time you get a little bit farther and better your feeling of accomplishment goes way up. Every time I would fall down flat on my face I would get up with possibly snow on my face, down my neck, in my gloves that were soaked, and up my sleeves. Each time you fall you learn, the more you fall, the more you learn. I have this saying, "snowboarding teaches you to fall." So maybe thats what pushed me on, the knowledge that every time I got up I had more knowledge to feed to my knowledge hungry brain. learning how to fall is essential to keep from getting hurt and being able to learn from the fall. Some times you need to let yourself fall, because you know if you don't the results would be much worse.
After that first day I knew I would never go back to the skier I was, the future of snowboarding was much more exciting. Even as humiliating those days of learning were, they were the necessary experiences for my snowboarding story to become what it is.
The next year was I think when I started snowboarding in my backyard. At first I was very unsophisticated, I only used an old terrible plastic snowboard and a few metal pipes on the ground as a grinding bar. This was just the beginning of my crazy dedication to snowboarding.
In 2009 I had problems with forgetting what I had learned the year before. As a result I fixed that problem by going snowboarding more often the next year.
The next year was the year when my snowboarding life really changed and grew. This was the year I designed a more sophisticated grinding bar for better snowboarding in my backyard that got made. This was also the year my tricks got bigger, better, and increased in quantity. This was the first year I made a video of my snowboarding tricks from the season too.
Last year, 2011, was the craziest year of all. I went to New Hampshire to a place called Canon and another resort called Loon Mountain. Up north where the mountains and resorts are bigger it sorta feels like a dream. You can't believe just how amazing everything from the chairlifts, to the mountain, to the trails are.
Then something weird happened after I got home from New Hampshire. Anybody would think that a resort that is five times bigger and better than the one your used to, would be your favorite resort. However, I had developed a strong liking to ski sawmill, it is like a home to me now. Even as much I liked and how insane New Hampshire was, when I got back home I really missed my snowboarding home, ski sawmill.
The first day back at ski sawmill, was the biggest change that happened in my snowboard story. It was a great day, but then disaster struck. It was a good day still, but not even close to how I thought it would be a good day. On my third or fourth run of the day I went to do a trick, but when I came back down I caught my back edge. I fell about three feet with most of my body weight landing on my wrist. I felt a lot of pain, but figured my wrist was fine. However, after another run I knew I had done something to my wrist. I ended up going to the ER thinking I might have a broken wrist. I had been given good news though, I had only broken my wrist growth plate. I was still off of snowboarding for three weeks as a result though. Even after that God had given me an ability to stay happy even with how that day ended up being. The reason it was still a good day as a whole though was because of what I learned from the whole experience.
For a while after the incident I was faced with the question of asking myself what the reason for this experience was. I was sure there was a reason and that it was for me to learn something.
Eventually God hit me with the realization that I had pride. Not only a little though, I had a lot of pride in myself. I needed to be humbled and what I needed was to fall down snowboarding at my favorite resort when I was feeling all high and mighty and break my wrist growth plate.
The first thing this realization changed was how I was going to look at myself. No longer was I the best at the things I do well and couldn't mess up. I also now knew in my mind that I needed humbleness.
Then one night after that event when I was feeling scholarly I sat down at the computer and started writing a song. My mind was fresh with my problem and what happened in my earlier distorted mind. I was able to lay rhymes down really fast. Line after line it got better and better and it became a story in and of itself. It told the story of how I had too much pride, fell, and then was picked up by God and told I needed humbleness.
This past summer a lot of things were going though my mind. I don't know how to explain it all, but I guess I wasn't sure if God wanted for me to snowboard for a career. I was thinking I would get my driving licence this fall before the snowboard season so I could go more often. Then one day when I was driving to Wellsboro, I came upon a school bus coming to a stop to let kids off. I didn't think I had time to stop and the bus's red lights weren't on so I kept on going. A guy on the side of the road picking up his kids jumped in his truck and followed me to my destination, where the police came and wrote up a report. The first thing I thought about when I thought about the consequences of my mistake was; "I won't have my licence for snowboarding". However, in the end I thankfully wasn't penalized. When I talked to God about this experience and what it was for I was given the thought and feeling that God had given me this experience so that I would know that He wanted me to go on with my pursuit of snowboarding. I felt like I had crossed a huge bridge over the Atlantic Ocean into Europe."Europe" was a new perspective, new area to explore, and now snowboarding would be something completely different and profound for me.
From my whole snowboarding story I guess a summarisation would be that my snowboarding life was about learning to listen to God and to always be open to new ideas. God is very profound.
