Embracing the Penguin by Richard O. '28
Snowboarding Trip ft. Jayden
Living in the northeast sadly comes with two caveats: 1. A winter season that’s on par with the winter they were stressing about in Game of Thrones and 2. somehow managing to traverse what feels like a tundra of a campus with 5000mph winds stripping away every last ounce of warmth your forehead has known since you were a child in addition to the freezing weather. So what better way to embrace both of these downsides than to go snowboarding down a mountain where I can experience them at maximum effect!
So, like the meme that’s been going around about the penguin that left its colony to chase the mountains, I decided to embrace my own inner penguin and head towards Wachusett today.
But why?
I originally took this trip with my big in Chocolate City, Ugo, last year, so I decided to keep the tradition going and brought my CC little, Jayden, this time around (he also has a YouTube channel you can check out here!).
The day started with us taking the Red Line at the Kendall/MIT stop at 6:40AM to Park Street in Boston. Once we got to Park Street, we were supposed to take the Green Line eastbound to North Station, but got on the wrong train and went the opposite direction to Boylston… Eventually realized and hopped on a train back so we could switch to Amtrak (Map below explains better). Arrived at North Station at 7:00 AM with 45 minutes to spare before our train took off, so we grabbed some breakfast and yapped about school for a little while.
Started at Kendall/MIT (Red) took red line. Got on the wrong green line direction at Park St. and went to Boylston (Blue) Switched to eastbound at Boylston and went back to Park St. and continued to Amtrak (Green)
Wachusett happens to be the last stop on the Amtrak line we were on so we were in the train car for a solid hour and a half before arriving at 9:30ish (we both got like 4 hours of sleep combined before leaving so we crashed like 5min into the ride and slept for the whole trip).
Once we got to Wachusett, they had yellow school buses waiting at the station to take us to the actual mountain, and that was lowkey the first time I had been in a school bus since I was in high school, so it did bring back some memories.
First time back on a school bus
Once we got our ski lift tickets, boards, boots, and lockers, we were ready to hit the mountains…after practicing steering, stopping, and falling on our butt on a flat patch of snow first. Since I hadn’t been on a board in almost exactly a year, it took me some time to get comfortable riding down again, but Jayden learned pretty fast, so after like 30 minutes, we were on the escalator for our first ride of the day.
Now I think for me, the scariest part about snowboarding isn’t actually the falling part… It’s the part where you start going too fast to the point where you don’t have control and end up crashing into someone. And since most people start their day on one of the shorter paths, we basically had an obstacle course of people that we had to learn to maneuver around…which we didn’t practice on the flat patch. Luckily, we didn’t end up crashing into anyone, and that’s all that matters (instead, we fell on our butts like 30 times every time we got close to crashing).
After about 2 hours of this, we finally got the hang of the shorter side and decided to take one of the ski lifts higher up the mountain. At the top, there’s a fork in the path, and though Jayden and I tried going down the same one, fate had different ideas for us, and we parted ways halfway through.
Met again at the bottom and spent the rest of the day going back up the lift, trying to get videos of each other while not crashing, looking as nonchalant as possible, and not flipping over. And there were many…many takes. But we did get a few good ones!
Now, to make sure we didn’t miss the last bus back, we ended our expedition with Jayden requesting a final race from the top of the ski lift. Now mind you, for most of the day I was lowkenuinely cooking Jayden (somewhat) since I had a previous trip under my belt, so I decided I was just gonna match his pace down and then speed up at the end to win — did not happen. After we stood up and said “go,” he just took off like he’d been snowboarding for decades and caught me off guard, and I was actually trying my best to catch up the entire way down… Now remember, earlier I mentioned that my biggest fear about snowboarding is going too fast and losing control? Well, in the process of trying to catch up, I had to stop myself from crashing into skiers every ten seconds, which probably made it harder for me to reach him since I was slowed down by getting back up. In the end, he beat me by a solid 20ish seconds, and now imma have to get my rematch when we go back.
Anyways, we wrapped everything up around 5 PM and grabbed some decent food from the food court before catching the bus to the train station at 5:50 PM and heading home. Safe to say my palms, butt, and ankles will be embarking on a rough recovery journey this upcoming week, but in the end, the trip was definitely worth it.
Dynamic Duo