Snowboarding at Gautefall

Last night me, Lars, Vegard and some other guys went to check out this ski hill in Gautefall because it is free there on Tuesday nights from 4-9.  Since I had gotten all my stuff, and I was using a more or less extra board of Lars's, I was more than ready.  We got going a little later than we wanted, leaving just after 3:30, and got there around 5.  Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, because it usually dies in the cold weather, and it was dark once we got there anyways.  But, it was a beautiful drive over there.  The landscape really is totally different from what I'm used to.  I've been to mountains before, but it is usually in the summer, so mountains and mountain driving in winter is completely new.  Where there are mountains there are also valleys, and it seems like half of the roads and place names have 'dal' (valley, dale) in them.  There were a few key factors which caused the drive (about 80 km, just under 50 miles) to take well over an hour: salting of roads is limited to main roads between main towns; the same roads that aren't salted are quite narrow; the roads are windy!; oh yeah, and we stopped for like 15 minutes for gas and munchies.  

There was only one run that was open (i.e. lighted) when we got there.  It was 1 km long, and pretty much just a run.  There was little 'terrain' and no man made obstacles (except for a jump a few kids made).  That was fine however, since I was getting used to entirely new equipment.  Better yet the equipment didn't cause me many problems at all.  I did have a humbling fall within the first 15 seconds, but I blame that on adjusting to the board!  The rest of the night I had fun carving down the hill goofy and switch.  There was one sort of bump along the side of the hill that I tried a couple of backside 180s off, but never rode away, unfortunately.  On the final run as I was pressing my tail down in some powder to get a good hard carve and spray some snow I somehow caught my nose (how I caught my nose by leaning back I don't know) and did the classic caught-the-nose-in-deep-powder front flip in which I lost my hat before my head hit the snow, and I got an earful of snow, which was cold.  I just cruised down the hill after that, since it was the last run.  We did have some problems with the heis ('lift') as it kept shutting down.  Thankfully it was not a chair lift, and nobody got stranded.  Afterwards we watched some handball in the Chalet (lodge, warming house, whatever you call it) as Norway has been doing well and is in some sort of final and apparently important round(s).  

All this time, I had not really eaten anything since noon but a banana and an apple and a few waffle cookie things, and we were starving.  It was just me and Lars on the drive home, and it seemed to go a little quicker.  The saving food and alliteratory delight of the night, was the one dollar weiner when we got back to Bø.  It was 10 kroner, so over 1 dollar but under two, and definitely cheap.  But it had ketchup and honey-mustard sauce on it, and after that long of not eating and also exhausting myself, it was WONDERFUL!.  Due to the exhaustion I of course slept extremely well, except for when the fire alarm went off sometime between 3 and 4.

It's now about 3:00 in the afternoon, I just finished my lunch of baked salmon, boiled potatoes (quickly becoming an easy-to-do favorite) and some green beans that I had left.  Time to do some studying and go to class at 4:30.  

p.s. sorry for the lack of pictures