This past weekend Gavin, Sierra, Rachel and I took an 11 hour train ride East toward the Alps and the most amazing (and only) former Olympic competition site/Bavarian ski bum town I have ever seen: Garmisch-Partenkirchen. We spent two full days snowboarding (Sierra skied, but we don’t hold that against her), one of which was spent on a glacier at the highest point in Germany, the Zugspitze, which is also the Austrian border, an invisible line I crossed on my snowboard. Sweet. I am pretty sure I pulled something in my shoulder being that I can’t lift my left arm above chest height without crying like a baby, but that, and more stories to come later. For now, I am exhausted and have to be at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) at 8:45 am to go the The Netherlands for four days. Haha, sometimes life is just hard. To pacify you, enjoy pictures:

The Crew.

A common thread of the weekend.

‘…are we seriously about to do this?’

The glacier we boarded. Yes, those tiny things are lifts, and the big thing is the gondola down.

Looking into Austria from the Zugspizte.

‘It’s go time.’

The three boarders after a long day 2.

I said I would add stories, and I am no liar, so here we go:

Commence Story #1: Dinner

At the end of our first day, we decided to have a hardcore Bavarian dinner. We went to some crazy German restaurant where I ordered a Currywurst and Pommes. For desert I ordered the ‘Hot Love’ which was a phantasm of ice cream with raspberry goodness on top. The food was great, but the entertainment was better. The whole time there was a man and woman playing traditional music on an accordion and guitar, respectively. They were wearing lederhosen, and drinking beer from huge steins. Good times. After we got our food, a well-fed looking, older woman (who I assume was the owner) came by our table and said something in German to the effect of ‘how is it?’ We just smiled and said ‘güt.’ She laughed at us, and went on with her rounds laughing and rubbing elbows with the locals. Germans rock.

Commence Story #2: Pain

On day two, we chose to board the glacier on top of the mountain (see pictures). This was great fun, but I was already pretty beat up from falling… A LOT. About halfway through the day I was minding my own business, and was boarding across a run on my ‘toe-side’ meaning i was facing the mountain. Some schmuck on Snow blades ran over the end of my board, made me do a back flip, and end up on my back 20-ish feet downhill. Thanks for nothing. I landed hard on my left shoulder, which in turn has hurt for 10 days now. It’s almost healed up, and only bothers me if I sleep on it. Note to self *don’t sleep on bum shoulder*. Some people are jerks, but a little pain is part of the deal when snowboarding. It is just your body telling you that you are stupid for having so much fun in single digit temperatures.

All in all, Alpine boarding = success. That is all.