MCBA Newsletters

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NEXT MEMBERSHIP MEETING:  MONDAY JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 12:00 P.M.
REDLANDS COMMUNITY CENTER Cost: $15.00 (CLE & Lunch)
 RSVP to Leslie NOW! at lcastro@acsol.net
Or by 10:00 a.m. Monday, January 23, 2012

Silence seems to echo on the wintertide, though I can hear and see my breath floating on the fresh, icy air.  The sunlight that survived to arrive among the thick forest glades sparkles on the snow-covered ground as if a thousand tiny diamonds wait to be mined.  I stop to rest among the gilded giants of aspen and pine, their branches glistening with globs of white treasure. 

I am not so much a snowboarder but a hunter of powder.  In powder, the true potential of the snowboard is realized because turns are less about carving the mountain with edges, but using the board's entire surface to balance atop the waves of a snowy sea.  To float on fluff, you ride as you would in melted snow: weight on your back foot, tip in the air to navigate the board above the surf and safe from the snowy undertow.  And all snow-sliding involves a tenuous partnership with Gravity, sometimes fighting her, other times, summoning her.  But she seems more nimble, more forgiving in powder.  Both the buoyancy and the gravity-dance seduces the soul with pure elation.  My quest for this magical combination has brought me deep into the trees.  

The sun dips.  The wind shifts.  I study the trail before me as I ready myself to move anew.  I have stopped several feet before a steep plunge into an icy abyss, at least thirty feet of the trail ahead not even visible from where I stand now.  Much of the trail before me is dotted with twigs standing at attention in the white earth.  Closer observation reveals the sticks are clearly the tops of trees, their remainders engulfed in frozen flood.  There is no way to descend without traveling through them, though their depth and proportions beneath the unseen surface remain a mystery.  And from my position in the powder terrain, I will have to ride out fakie (backward) because there is no room to turn and too much speed will be lost if I try to get into the more comfortable forward position.  Riding switch is not my strong suit.

There might be rocks underneath, too.  This place is just One Big Giant Boulder Field, if you think about it.
I am all alone, off trail.  My heart races though I have not moved for some minutes.  I shift my mind to the days that I first started snow riding.  I'm in college and every winter weekend I drive over 100 miles to meet my brother, Jeff, near our hometown so we can snow-surf together; I’m on one stick, he’s on two.  Jeff is a natural athlete and skiing is no exception.  I see him perform his favorite trick, the iron cross: he launches off a jump, ski tips crossing one another as the trick's namesake, but he adds his own signature by crossing his arms and poles while in the air.  Sometimes he actually lands it.  We ride hard and talk excitedly about the day, the snow, and our separate lives while on the lift.  Though we were infants and toddlers, middle-schoolers and awkward teenagers together, we grew to be friends sliding on those snow-packed plateau hills.  He is never far away any time I winter in the mountains. 

These happy memories replace the fierce debate within and ultimately conclude it with the futility of panic.  After all, there is only one way and that is Down.  So I close my eyes and "see" the path out.  In my mind, I go fakie around one treetop from my current position on toeside, then turn heelside fakie around another, avoiding the boulder I can see from here and the pit in front of it, then ride down the steep drop trusting the inevitable acceleration, the wind pushing me back as I sail down the hill.  Now I am back toeside veering right avoiding all obstacle and then heelside, out of my current conundrum.  Once I have this picture firmly in my mind, without further hesitation and before negative thoughts creep back in, I go for it. 

I make it.  In precisely the way I pictured it. 

I have no doubt that had I pictured a fall, I would have realized that vision instead.  Or hitting a tree.  Or faceplanting.  Alternatively, with heart racing and adrenaline surging, I fly nearly all the way down to the lift and wonder why I ever doubted myself.  The satisfaction of taking a tight line and emerging from fear and fall is intoxicating.  And it occurs to me that snowboarding involves much more than control of the board and the turns, but also mastery of the mind.  So, too, with life.  If you can picture a vision in your mind so well that you believe it and, most importantly, feel it as if it were true, perhaps it's possible to accomplish anything you imagine!  After all, isn't what we are just a combination of what we think of ourselves?  Maybe this is what Albert Einstein meant when he said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.  It is certainly what sets us apart from mediocrity.  What do you “see” in your mind and how do you feel about it?  If it does not make you feel good, why not change the vision?  If you can imagine it, it can happen.

SPRING FLING, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2012

Please join the MCBA in honoring Ed Nugent at our annual Spring Fling event!

There will be dinner, drinks and dancing!!  The cost of tickets is $50/person.|
Please RSVP NOW to Sandra Forsgren at sforsgren@hfak.com or 986-3400.

IF you RSVP, go to http://www.zentco.djintelligence.com/request/mcba to request dance songs! 
(Please only make requests if you have RSVP’d!)

People who R.S.V.P. are Dazzling and Delightful!

WANNA LEARN WATER LAW?

The Water Center at Colorado Mesa University presents: Water Law on 2/9/12, Mark Hermundstad presenting; Water Supply on 2/16/12; and Water Quality on 2/23/12.  Submitted for CLE credit.  For full details go to: http://coloradomesa.edu/watercenter/2012WaterCourse.html

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
– Mark Twain