Francis Tries Snowboarding

Judy took me snowboarding for my birthday. I had a lot of fun.

I don’t recommend trying to learn snowboarding while wearing jeans. Just the fact that I was wearing jeans on the slopes is rather ironic. See, I ski raced for many years and us hotshot racers always looked down on the losers who skied in jeans. They were inevitably some of the worst skiers. If they wore a leather jacket in addition to the jeans, they were atrocious. I guess they thought they were cool. They certainly sucked at skiing though.

Being out on the snow got me all excited to ski again. Something that I haven’t done much of recently. Looking around at the other skiers on the mountain didn’t leave me with a high opinion of southern skiers. Now I want to get back on skis and see if I really am still that good.

Knowing that, it’s easy to appreciate the irony of me wearing jeans as I attempt snowboarding for the first time. Not that I was atrocious—I left my leather at home—but I certainly sucked.

Everyone seems to think that learning to snowboard is hard on your posterior. I disagree. My ass hardly hurt at all. It was much too cold and wet from the snow melting through my jeans to feel any pain at all.

In all seriousness, I found that falling backwards is not so bad. The falls tended to be relatively gentle and my natural padding, though slight, helped a lot. Enough about my buttocks.

Let’s hear some about my knees, which really took a pounding. Falling forward is much more violent than falling backwards and the knees have absolutely no padding. I was gouging deep craters the hard-packed snow every time I fell forward. Now I know why many boarders use the heel edge exclusively.

All in all, learning to snowboard turned out to be fun and relatively easy to pick up. I started by walking up the kiddie slope a few times. Then, thankfully, I had no trouble with the lift when we moved on to the bunny slope. After a few runs, I got the hang of zig-zagging along on the heel edge. Hell, I even managed to make a few toe-edge turns in between slamming down on my knees. I might even be good enough to wear snow-pants the next time I board. Maybe.