On the Mountain

OK, well "mountain" is an exaggeration. Yesterday, I went to Blue Knob with new TBT convert Martin (a.k.a. "The crazy German"). While he was skiing the double-diamonds, I was snowboarding pretty much everywhere. The conditions were not perfect, but they were about as good as it gets in Pennsylvania. They had been making snow, so in some places there was powder, and chunky powder, and packed powder, and of course the occasional patch of ice (or "Eastern Hardpack" as Martin calls it).
I did a few initial runs on the intermediate hills, and then when those started to get crowded I went over the the black diamond trails. It was one of the few times that those runs weren't totally icy, so I really enjoyed the challenge of carving out the turns at high speeds. Then when start started to get crowded, I went to the terrain park.
I am far from an extreme boarder, so just hitting a jump is a challenge for me. There's a bit of ego and fear to overcome. I tried this one jump a few times, and I just could not seem to land it. I also tried a rail, and I fell the first time, but eventually got it. The jump I just couldn't seem to do.
It was getting late, so I went back to the black diamonds for a few more runs. I had a big wreck there; not on the black diamond hill itself, but on the trail that leads to it. This trail is about 3/4 of a mile long, and very flat in places. Since I'm on a snowboard I don't have polls to push myself over these flat sections, so I need to have a lot of speed over this trail or I'll stall out before the hill. But the trail was getting very cut up, and it was starting to freeze, and I hit a hole and went flying. I got up, brushed myself off, and hobbled to the start of the hill. One of my bindings had worked loose in the crash, but from where I was, I had no other option than to go down the hill. I actually made it through that with little difficulty.
When I reached the bottom, Martin and I decided to do one last run. He went to hit the moguls, and I went to one of my favorites, High Hopes. High Hopes is a very narrow, somewhat steep run that goes under one of the lifts. So you have to dodge the lift towers as well as the sides. It's fun. I got off the lift, tightened the bindings as best I could, and started. Somehow, in the other runs I had done on this trail, I failed to see this 2-foot or so shelf. This time my course was a little different, and suddenly I was right on top of this jump that I didn't even know was there. I had no way to bail out of it, so I just went for it. I did it perfectly. I don't even remember the rest of the run, I was so ecstatic.
I think the secret was just to relax, and not think about it so much. I let the jump come to me, and my body knew what to do. I just need to remember not to interfere.