The Adventure Is Great So Far
I woke up at 7am and ran down the stairs to call about my lost bag of
snowboarding gear. When I got through to a human I was informed that
my bag hadn’t gotten off the aircraft in Auckland and instead went on
to Brisbane. They found it later the afternoon before while I was
flying to Queenstown and put it on a plane for Christchurch.
Unfortunately the last flight from Christchurch would be leaving
before the flight from Brisbane would arrive and my bag would be on
the first flight in the morning, arriving in Queenstown at about
8:30am.
I called and tried to get through to a human at the airport, but the
line was busy. Alain and I decided to just drive down there and see
if the bag came in. Thankfully it had arrived but no one was even
going to process it until 9am. I showed some I.D. and took my bag,
relieved that I had finally had my snowboard kit and I was ready to
rock on the first day of riding.
For our first snow in New Zealand we went to a resort called The
Remarkables
outside of Queenstown. The snow was pretty good, but not
super fresh and thin in some spots to where rocks were showing
through. At first we all rode up together, did some stretches and
then rode as a group so that Alain and Mani (the other instructor)
could gauge our skill and see where to split us up.
After splitting up I was in a group with Alain and we did some work on
basic skills. We ended up learning how to do boardslide 360s
(spinning left or right on the board in a 360 degree rotation while
moving downhill) and ollies (a little hop on the snowboard similar to
an ollie on a skateboard). I got some great pointers about my riding
stance and things I needed to focus on, mostly that I didn’t bend my
knees enough and I keep my arms at my sides too much.
I was good and tired and we all went out for some dinner and retired
to a good nights sleep.
