Not all trips have to be across the ocean to be an adventure. At 56 years of age and after over 30 years of skiing, I decided to give snow boarding a go. After 7 hours on a coach with very excited students, many of whom had never seen snow before and then a somewhat sleeples night in a cabin with what seemed like only cardboard between me and 3 Year 8 girls, we set off on the Ski Tube to Mount Blue Cow in the Australian Snowy Mountains. You can imagine our disappointment to see mainly rock and grass poking out from under a small area of manmade snow.
Never say die ... we novices headed off with our boots on ... sort of ... and snow boards in hand. After getting the boots adjusted by our instructor - no, they are NOT more comfortable than my dear old ski boots - we were given the guided tour of our boards. Then, with the front foot in the binding, he taught us how to skate. I managed to stretch all of the muscles in my groin trying to stop myself from doing the splits.
The next step was to learn to climb the mountain, errr hill, well bump actually free foot forward and then bring the board up using the edge. Can't do it!!! I ended up putting my free foot to the back and using it to stop the whole catastrophy from sliding down again.
Now at the top of the bump, we were to slide down and then use our free heels to stop at the bottom. The gradient was so slight that I needed to jiggle up and down to get the thing moving. This, of course, put me right off balance and into a state of panic about making it stop.
Right, got that bit ... sort of. Now we move on to toe turns. Up on the balls of the foot ... no! not the toes ... the balls of the feet. Nose in the snow, I had flashbacks to the first day I got on a pair of skis. I recall sitting in the snow, sobbing and vowing NEVER to do it again.
My snowboarding career did not last that long. The blizard on day two kept this big whimp indoors and by the third day I was back in my now much loved ski boots and onto two lovely, stable skis. I am the first to admit that I didn't give it much of a try but I DID try.
