Stratton: Day 2

By day two, my group's riding skills had improved so much that we were considered good enough to ride with the cream of the Burton crop! We rode two hours with Donna Carpenter, co-owner of Burton snowboards. Well, I admit, maybe it wasn't really our skill level that afforded us this rare opportunity but it sure was good public relations on her part, and she gave me great tips on the snowboards I should demo. She's a lovely, laid-back woman, originally from the South, with great stories about this year's olympics in Italy, about travelling and riding in New Zealand and the bad pick up line that Jake used on her in the bar where they met. Donna is peddaling the pink -- expect to see a lot of it in next year's line of Burton women's apparel. Our group actually included a New Zealander named Peta (now a New Yorker, shown here resting). Peta was good at riding her board what our instructor called "la la style" – like a surfboard – something Peta does in her other life, but Maryanne put a stop to that bad habit right away. Like I said, we all have our bad habits.