Fixate

Every time I walk into my room I am taunted by my snowboard leaning against my wall that is being un-used. There’s nothing I would rather do than take a trip to the mountains and spend an entire day with my headphones in playing me uplifting melodies while I ride down the mountain carving on fresh powder.

Every year brings a progression of skills and the most insane moments shared with friends whether we board in the mountains or around town on jumps, rails, or whatever we can find to jib. Last year was a good year of progression but my confidence caused me to take a spill that still haunts me when I think about it.

I made it to a small hill outside of Edmonton called Rabbit hill. It sounds pretty lame but it’s known for its terrain park which was well put together. I was riding with a friend who is allot more skilled then I am, so of course I decided I was going to try and keep up. We were hitting jumps and I was landing grabs and 180 spins no problem so I started getting confident and hitting anything he would attempt. It was going good until I tried a front side spin onto a box.

For anyone who has never tried to hit a box at a snowboard park, it’s extremely slippery. I turned with my back facing towards where I was going and not judging my balance properly, slipped out. My feet came out from under me and I fell, hitting face first onto the box, and my head bounced off of it. After sitting down a couple seconds trying to understand what happened, I realised that my mouth felt extremely weird. I tried feeling my teeth with my tongue, but all that was left was jagged edges of my front teeth. I spit into the snow beside creating a pool pool of blood.

All I could think to myself was “fuck! My teeth! What have I done?!” I didn’t want to believe what had actually happened and I sat there still in shock. My friend came up to me laughing, thinking that my spill wasn’t that bad but when he looked at my face I could tell by his expression that it was bad.

I snowboarded down the hill after taking a few deep breaths and every inhale sent a shock of pain through the exposed nerves in my teeth. Once making it down the hill, my girlfriend was waiting for me eager to snowboard. When I made it to her, the first thing I said was, “We have to go.”

She looked at me with a questionable gaze and when I smiled to reveal my bloody mouth full of broken teeth she understood why. With a new season about to start and a painful nightmare still taunting me I need to find the courage to let myself ride without worry or fear and let my skills progress to yet another level.