Goofs on Rental Boards

So those of you who have followed this blog for a while (your cheques are in the mail!), will know that Poodle and I tried snowboarding a year or so ago and failed dismally at it. We fell (a lot), swore (a lot), crashed (a lot) and thus gave up and went to the pub to drink (a lot).

 

So you can imagine our trepidation when we headed out to Blue Mountain Resort with the sole purpose of learning to ski. Well actually, our real sole purpose was to watch our friends learn how to ski, and to point and laugh at them (a lot) as they had a lot of nasty spills while learning. And to take pictures while pointing and laughing because humiliation is nothing if it can't be shared on social media.

 

Alas, the sneaky buggers went for lessons in South Africa before arriving in Canada (which they forgot to mention to us) and so they arrived, suited up and went shooping off into the sunset looking very professional and experienced. Bugger!

 

So since pointing and laughing was off the agenda for the week, we had to find something else to do. Besides drinking. You guessed it - we decided to learn how to ski. We rented the equipment, signed up for lessons and started with learning 'slope terminology' which we will share with you here.

 

1. GORBs - GORBs are "goofs on rental boards" who come to resorts, don't know how to ski, hire equipment and then hit the slopes. You're probably thinking that makes us GORBs but you'd be wrong. Ha! GORBs are people who don't sign up for any lessons at all, and think they can learn to ski by watching other people's lessons. Madness! We could barely learn how to ski watching our own lessons.

 

GORBS are all over the place. You'll see them dressed in jeans or long flowing winter coats that reach their toes on the slopes, yelling meaningless instructions ("Use the steering wheel" and "Falling is the best way of stopping!") to one another as they go barrelling into trees. It would be incredibly entertaining if they weren't also crashing into you every other second or falling on the ground, laying immobile while being covered in falling snow and thus creating ramps to launch you into orbit.

 

2. Bomber - a bomber is someone who has no skill or control and who goes racing down a hill at idiotic speeds.

 

3. Starfish - this is worse than a bomber, because a bomber comes down on two skis. The starfish comes down the hill looking like they're doing a series of cartwheels while still attached to their skis and poles.

 

During your first lesson, you get told that you don't want to be these 3. And I can tell you categorically that we weren't these 3. We were only 2 of the 3 which is not too shabby at all.

 

To be continued....