'Do not attempt this at home. We're professionals'
Did I mention I’ve never snowboarded ever? Alright I have skied a fair bit but snowboarding is a different beast. Angie was in the same boat as me. Shall we get lessons? Nah sod it lets just figure it out ourselves. I’m gonna bloody break something here aren’t I?
After a frustrating start, we managed to get something resembling turning and stopping after an hour or two on the baby slope. Even got the confidence to try the pole lift (the one where you put the thing between your legs). Disaster of course and as I’m on my back still grabbing the pole for dear life hoping it drags me up the slope I hear “LET GO OF THE SKI LIFT!” from the lift attendant. It’ll be alright, the big slopes are all chairlifts, I can do them. So the next day, after a few hours of practice snow boarding from the previous day, Im hurling myself down a very steep blue run. Naturally I spend most of my time on my arse and it gets all frustrating and scary. But with these things, it’s all about confidence and just going for it.
It can be very frustrating, but like learning anything new you’ve got to keep at it to make sense of it. So I kept at it and very nearly got the hang of it. By the end of the last run I had simply ran out of energy and could barely turn so had to spend most of my last run on my arse.
The trouble with ski resorts for me is, I always get this uneasy feeling that every single other person on the slope is a pretentious twat. I don’t know what it is, maybe its just a deep rooted feeling of not fitting in with the whole “boarding” or “skiing” thing but I just feel its all a big mix of people I have nothing in common with. This is almost definitely all in my head as I have lots of friends who go boarding and skiing and luckily it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of skiing on snowboarding too much (unless anyone gets close to me).
Enough of my psychiatric problems. Overall snowboarding is not bad and I can see myself enjoying it more if I had a bigger, longer course with better snow and less 4 year olds on school holidays cutting me up and showing me how they’re 100 times better than me even though they've only just being born.
After a frustrating start, we managed to get something resembling turning and stopping after an hour or two on the baby slope. Even got the confidence to try the pole lift (the one where you put the thing between your legs). Disaster of course and as I’m on my back still grabbing the pole for dear life hoping it drags me up the slope I hear “LET GO OF THE SKI LIFT!” from the lift attendant. It’ll be alright, the big slopes are all chairlifts, I can do them. So the next day, after a few hours of practice snow boarding from the previous day, Im hurling myself down a very steep blue run. Naturally I spend most of my time on my arse and it gets all frustrating and scary. But with these things, it’s all about confidence and just going for it.
It can be very frustrating, but like learning anything new you’ve got to keep at it to make sense of it. So I kept at it and very nearly got the hang of it. By the end of the last run I had simply ran out of energy and could barely turn so had to spend most of my last run on my arse.
The trouble with ski resorts for me is, I always get this uneasy feeling that every single other person on the slope is a pretentious twat. I don’t know what it is, maybe its just a deep rooted feeling of not fitting in with the whole “boarding” or “skiing” thing but I just feel its all a big mix of people I have nothing in common with. This is almost definitely all in my head as I have lots of friends who go boarding and skiing and luckily it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of skiing on snowboarding too much (unless anyone gets close to me).
Enough of my psychiatric problems. Overall snowboarding is not bad and I can see myself enjoying it more if I had a bigger, longer course with better snow and less 4 year olds on school holidays cutting me up and showing me how they’re 100 times better than me even though they've only just being born.
'Note there are no photos of me actually riding'
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