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memory 4

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 5 months ago

Canada, eh?

 

My mother and I would travel up to Banff, Canada every year during Spring Break and go skiing for a week back during the high school days. My mother used to be an avid skier when she was young and lived up in the mountains. Going to Banff with me (my father could not join us, he has serious knee problems) was my mother's way of bringing back old memories and also served as a convenient excuse to get away from said father. For the first few years I would ski along with my mom, but as I hit puberty and accordingly grew more rebellious, I decided snowboarding was the sport for me. Snowboarding was great. It was incredibly fun slicing across the slopes, racing to the end of the course. Learning wasn't so fun, though; you fall a lot. The important thing, though, is you pick yourself up and continue. Soon enough I was able to ride green and blue slopes without a sweat. Black diamonds are simply not fun on a snowboard, I don't care who you are.

 

Banff (pictured right) is a lovely town outside of Calgary in the province of Alberta. It sits inside of a national park where thousands of wild animals take refuge. Wildlife is so abundant and well-protected that it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to find caribou walking through downtown Banff any given day. Banff also has one very lovely ski resort up the road and not very far from town. It was in this resort that we always returned to year after year to cut up the fresh snow on the mountain side.

 

The last year we traveled up to Canada was the year I broke my wrist snowboarding on the mountain. If you couldn't tell already, I broke a lot of bones as a kid. It was on the first run of the first day. Yeah, I know. I could not believe I had just blown my entire trip on the first run. I must have been a little too arrogant on my warm up lap and pushed a little too hard, causing me to take a nasty fall claiming my left wrist as the only casualty. The hospital was really nice, though. They have a nice little enterprise set up there in Canada. Sure, health care is free for its citizens, but American's had better bring their check books. That bill was a doozy.

 

My mom could have easily shrugged my injury off and hit the slopes. In fact, thats what I wanted her to do. I didn't want to be the guy to ruin the trip. Nobody likes being that guy. Instead, my moms tried to make the best out of the situation, taking back her rented skis and setting up a load of activities I could partake in even with my injury. We went site-seeing, shopping in the local stores and rode in a dog-sled for an afternoon on an adventure through the woods of the park. She helped make what would have been a miserable trip of watching Iron Chef and hockey in my bed, a really fun week of spending quality time alone with my mom.

 

My mother has always been really busy in her work, traveling to far off cities to conduct business. For a while there, she was gone 15 weeks out of the year on business trips. She made sure to find time for our Banff trips, though. Those trips were very important to her. It was one of the few opportunities she had to spend time with me and not be concerned with her job. I will always appreciate what my mother did for me during that vacation by helping me make the best of a really crappy situation.

image couresty of westcanon.com

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