Hey guys I have had the best weekend in the snow.

Last weekend Donna, Cameron and I went to Lake Tahoe to do some snow boarding and skiing. The day we got there we went snowboarding. Now the first thing you need to know about snow boarding is how to stop. There are several ways, but the easiest is to fall over and let your body be dragged down the slope until you stop. At the end of the day you know that you were doing well if you hurt in your head, face, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, legs and feet.

After snow boarding we went and took a ride in a horse drawn sleigh for an hour. It was a lot of fun. That is until Cameron decided to hit a branch full of snow so that it all fell right on top of me. I got my revenge, I gathered all the snow that was on me and dumped it down his back. Believe me when I say it is not a pleasant thing to have done to you. It is very cold.

After all that we met up with Dennis and Ray (one of their friends) and saw a movie premier of Playground it is all about skiing and snowboarding. There are some crazy people out there. We saw people going down 100-foot drops and skiing off of cliffs. It was insane.

We spent the night in this awesome cabin by the lake. We had to keep getting new key cards for the door because we kept on locking ourselves out of the cabin but we still had fun.

The next day I tried out skiing. Dennis, Ray and Cameron went to the bigger slopes while Donna and I learnt how to ski. This is what I learnt.

First the best way to stop is by angling in your skis. This is known as a snow plow method of stopping. You turn by putting all your weight onto to the opposite ski of the direction you want to go. Got all that? Well I thought I did but when I tried going down the bigger slope it was soon evident I did not get the concept of turning. You see when you get on a steeper slope you can not use the snow plow stopping method. You can not create enough friction to overcome gravity so you need to turn to control your speed. I could not seem to turn on the bigger slope, so I would pickup speed and around the 50 KPH marker I would fall over hard. Donna says when I fell it was spectacular. I would cartwheel and land face first in the snow.  But I still had fun. On the last run down the slope I didn’t fall once. All in all it was a perfect ending to my first snow trip.

Hope you guys are having as much fun as I am.

James