MASCHA VAN TONGEREN

I went to Mountain Creek a couple of weeks ago.

Mountain Creek is a hill in dirty New Jersey and they happen to have the biggest park out East. It’s only 1.5 hrs away from here and they have night riding! Woohoo!

It was a last minute thing; J. sent me a text message asking if I had anything better to do and the obvious answer was NO! So 2 hours later we were on our way to the Creek. Conditions were far from optimal, but really, I don’t care… I would ride it out in the City if I had the skills.

Anyway, J. wanted to do park, so that’s where we went, to ‘South’. It was bigger than last time and I was getting pretty excited. I had just widened my stance to 22 inches so I was ready to put it to the test. It worked, had to get used to it blah blah…

Sooo, to cut a very long story short… J. was resting (he’s a worse rider than I am) and I was exploring the newly opened trails by myself.

I am a pussy, I mean I am scared shitless when I think about the rails and my teeth… so I went on a baby box (progression box they call them I believe) and I did ok.. I didn’t fall, I went over it, no funny business, landed it and my imaginary cheerlead team was doing a little dance in my honor…

Next… I make a left, go on some other trail and realize that there is nobody else and started doing little butters (it’s night so not that busy as most kids have already been collected by mommy) all of a sudden I see this big kicker [chunk of ice] covering the WHOLE trail. I mean, it was big enough for me to consider taking of my snowboard and hiking back to my usual trail, I figured that would be my best bet. As I am bending over to unstrap… two little boys come flying ’round the corner and they hi 5′d for being there and getting ready to jump that bitch! I was kind of shocked…

I told them to go first and one did.

One down, one more to go… so I tell the other kid to go.

He refuses and tells me to go. By now I really felt the pressure and wanted to dissappear… I had no choice and I took a deep breath, though of our Queen in Holland and prayed for the best!I landed it (accidental) and all of a sudden I see another one of those monsters and I jumped it and landed that one as well! The two little boys turned into my real life cheerleading team and I felt pretty damn good.

Until…

One of them comes up and tells me that him and his buddy (I guess they were 14 and 17) had been wondering if I was ‘young‘ or an ‘older woman‘. I looked at them in sheer disbelief and answered that I was an ‘older woman.’

Of course they asked me my age… I said “30″ and they were pretty excited by that answer!

They asked me right away where [in the park] my kids were… I told them I had none. They seemed to be a bit thrown off by that answer, but recovered quickly by stating: “Woah! That is so awesome, you are THIRTY and you snowboard?? AND you ride Park??”

And then they took off… leaving me wondering what I should make of that comment… I decided that I needed a drink, you know… in the only old people’s place young kids would like to have access to… THE BAR.