I ache all over. Snowboarding has the abil­ity to make mus­cles I’ve never even known about stiff with sore plea­sure. I’ve always liked the feel­ing of not being able to move with­out hurt­ing in some way, as if I fought an exhaust­ing bat­tle with some mon­ster the night before. Even my trapezii are sore from get­ting my face out of the snow every 15 metres. At one point, I actu­ally unerr­ingly veered off the 50 foot wide trail, into a beau­ti­ful pow­der tree­line ditch, land­ing me waist deep in snow, upside down. I found that it was actu­ally pretty easy to ride both nor­mal and fakie with no expe­ri­ence what­so­ever, just carv­ing with the heel­side. The only prob­lem became turn­ing on the doglegs. At one point a school of lit­tle eight-year-old chil­dren weav­ing across the hill on skis were beat­ing Nick and I on our boards, try­ing to race straight down.

All in all, it felt good to learn some­thing new again, to try to carve up a slope on my heel­side, to hear noth­ing but silence from the muf­fling snow of the moun­tain. I real­ized that day-to-day, there is always noise. There’s the con­stant sound of traf­fic out­side my win­dow, or even the wind; silence has become another urban encroach­ment vic­tim. At one point, Aaron and I just stood on the slope and looked at the snow cov­ered lake, moun­tains, and peren­ni­als. The moun­tain is so big, we had to take a gon­dola to a gon­dola at the base. I was sur­prized that it was so chill­ingly cold; my eyes were water­ing just from the gon­dola ride up, and my face hurt the moment I stepped out of the van.

We all orga­nized some kind of food co-operation, so that we never needed to eat out. Unfortunately, my roast ended up a bit too dry, and the scal­loped potatos too moist, but they were still good as left­overs. The lodge was great, com­ing com­plete with two bath­rooms (show­ers included), four twin beds (one of which I had to myself), and cute recep­tion­ists. They even had a wine bot­tle opener in their col­lec­tion of uten­sils and an elec­tric oven, although a bro­ken metal grill acces­sory that came with the microwave pre­vented us from using it due to a flurry of sparks every time we tried.

I only did a half day of board­ing, and spent the rest of the time at the lodge that we rented. It was pretty damn good to just get away, to play some cards and drink with­out a com­puter around or school to worry about. I even got some read­ing done. We watched some TV, played some Mao and 9–5-2. The lodge had a pool and jacuzzi, which I was lucky enough to spend some time in. Some cig­ars were bought, but they ended up being pretty dis­ap­point­ing. There was much dou­ble fist­ing of the drinks, although the more mirth­ful dual hand action was when Aaron attempted to inhale from two cig­ars through his nose.

I missed Dolly a lot.

Going there made me real­ize that I still have a lot to expe­ri­ence that I haven’t done already. I’ve taken a lot of my child­hood for granted, vis­it­ing other con­ti­nents with­out ven­tur­ing enough out­side of my estab­lished norms and pref­er­ences. I wish I could have absorbed more of the scenery when I vis­ited the World Trade Center, or paid atten­tion to the tour guide at the Sydney Opera House. Even some reflec­tion on the way there would have helped me appre­ci­ate what I was about to expe­ri­ence, whether it was the rich musi­cal cog­ni­tion of Hungary’s gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, or even the fresh seafood of Hong Kong.

I can only hope that I am able to appre­ci­ate where I am now, what I’m able to do, and the free­dom I can enjoy, as much as I would appre­ci­ate the expe­ri­ence of another cul­ture or lifestyle. I think that every­day life should be as sig­nif­i­cant as the excep­tional expe­ri­ences, that there can be much mean­ing found in both, and I try to live my life as such.

Perhaps I can already die.