Snowboarding

I went snowboarding last night. I’ve never really written about my snowboarding experiences. There isn’t much to write about really. They're pretty much the same as any average Joe (pun definitely intended).

I went for the first time when I was about 15. My first experience was pretty much just like everybody else. I crashed A LOT, all the way down the hill in fact. It took me over an hour to get down the mountain. I was so sore the next day that my friends and I were smacking each other just revel in the others pain.

After about 2-4 more times, I got the hang of it. Then in college, they offered a sweet price on a season pass for students so I decided to get it my junior and senior year at school.

My junior year, I was going down some awesome treacherous slopes that we had to hike to (I improved greatly that season). While going down, I was boarding by a ravine, and all of a sudden it curved right in front of me. I crashed in the small ditch, but my board hit the other side and my knee smacked me in the mouth.

I rose from the crash and my knee was hurting. I felt around and in my mouth and noticed that my teeth were all jacked up. My front tooth was broken in half, and the tooth next to it was pushed into the canine tooth next to it! So in all, three teeth were jacked. I looked like Sloth from “The Goonies.”

The worst part about the ordeal was that my band had a “important” gig that night I missed which disappointed my fellow band members because I went to the hospital (because all the dentists were closed). They called in an oral surgeon and he yanked my broken front tooth and braced the crooked tooth to the canine so it would go back into place.

So I had to wear a flipper tooth that I could pull in and out for over a year to cover up the gap from my missing front tooth. Needless to say, I didn’t kiss any girls that year.

Cool story: I opted to do an implant instead of a bridge, but because my dental insurance didn’t cover implants, I got the first part of the implant (the post) done in Brazil. I was studying abroad during the summer in Brazil and was walking in a neighborhood, saw a dentist sign, and went it. It sounds shady, but it was a nicer neighborhood and the dentist ended up being great.

The post is when they open your gums, drill into your skull, and put a metal screw in, and close the gums. Then you wait six months to let the bone grow around the screw, re-open the gums and attached a tooth to it. I did the second part in Provo from one of the best implant dentists in the country, Dr. Christiansen. He said that my Brazilian dentist did a fine job, but when he opened my gums, the “American” screw he put in my mouth was a screw he wasn’t familiar with, so he had to jimmy rig a tooth on the screw that would fit.

But my teeth look great now, and every dentist I’ve been to since says that the implant looks great (even on the X-rays)! So the Brazilian and Provo dentist fixed up my snowboarding accident quite nice. In fact, I would have to say that I like my teeth even better now.

So, that’s my only interesting snowboarding story to share.