Aspen and snowboarding

I just got back from a week in Aspen. Believe it or not, there is a physics center there and a few conferences are held each winter. As I said in the last post, the days are long from 8am to 7:30 pm with a break in the middle of the day for skiing or boarding. I decided to try snowboarding. It was a lot of fun and I am now good enough to take on moderately interesting runs.

On the first day I took a lesson and was doing well. Just before heading in for lunch I was tired but wanted to do "one more run". Of course those are famous last words, and I fell and hit my head on an icy part. Normally this sort of fall would be a little painful and somewhat disconcerting, but nothing to write home about, but the weather had been very warm and melting and packing of the snow had left the bottom of the mountain fairly hard. I hit the back of my head and suffered a mild concussion. Pretty harrowing actually, since I was out for ~10 seconds and when I came to I couldn't see for another few seconds. My instructor knew it was a bad day so he had made me put on a helmet even for the bunny slope. He said if I hadn't been wearing it they would have taken me out of there in a helicopter.

Anyway, I was dizzy for about a half hour but after lunch I was ready to go back out and I had a decent afternoon. I also went back a couple of days later after some new powder had fallen and had a great day. I'm defiinitely hooked.

It is a beautiful place, Aspen. The resort where we stayed (at an affordable reduced group rate) was very nice. Here is a view from my room.