The First and Only Time I went Snowboarding

When I was either in middle school or early high school, my youth group went on a snowboarding trip to Mount Hood.  I had never been snowboarding before.  We rented our gear and rode the ski lift.  At the top, I surprisingly managed to get off the ski lift without falling flat on my face.  I followed my brother to the top of a very very very steep slope.  To me it seemed to be about an 85 degree angle, but it was probably more like 60 degrees which is still very steep.  My brother told me that all of the slopes are that steep so I started going down it.  (For the record, he had never been to Mount Hood before and he actually did think that they were all that steep.)  He was going to go after me.  I was doing great and going increasingly super fast when I realized that no idea how to stop or even slow down.  And then I fell while going really really way too ridiculously fast.  My glasses flew off and I couldn't find them so I sat there and waited for my brother and hoped he wouldn't run over my glasses.  I sat there for what seemed like 20 minutes, but was probably only 1 or 2.  It was enough time for two teenage boys to ride by and laugh at me.  Jerks.  My brother rode down and stopped and I asked him to find my glasses, which he did, and then told me how to slow down and stop before I took off again.  I rode down the remaining half of the slope without falling down again, by turning my board almost sidewise to slow down and then I stopped at the bottom.  I rode the ski lift back up with my best friend and we discovered the bunny slope, where we stayed for the rest of the day.  She was way worse at snowboarding than me and spent most of the day sliding down on her butt while I kind of got the hang of it and only fell occasionally.  At the end of the day, we all went back home and, wihtout the numbing effect of the freezing weather that had been present on the mountain, I realized that my neck hurt terribly.  I went to the doctor the next day and found out I had whiplash and got a super-stylish (sarcasm) neck brace that I had to wear for a week.  It turns out that I got whiplash on the first run when I crashed, then kept going the rest of the day with whiplash, because it was so cold that I didn't realize my neck hurt.  I was lucky that I didn't injure my neck worse.  And I have not gone snowboarding since.  I'll stick to sledding or making snowmen (and snow owls), snow angels, and having snowball fights.

There are no pictures from that trip, but here is a snow owl I made in January of this year.