Skip to main content

How to begin snowboarding, when you are over 30

It seems there's an unspoken rivalry between snowboarders and skiers.  We found this out when we tried out snowboarding two years ago.  We can barely ski, but we thought we'll try it out.  After all, at worst we'll probably add one more thing to the list of stuff we aren't good at.  Here are some things we learned in the process, offered in instructional format:

  1. You will, most probably, be among the oldest people on the beginner slope.  People who hadn't been born when you were graduating high-school will speed past you and do tricks you will probably never be able to do, and that's fine.
  2. Get proper gear.  You don't need to buy a snowboard, but make sure you are wearing snow pants and perhaps thermals.  Don't wear cotton pants or khakis.  I've seen people wear those.  After a few falls, the snow sticks to you and melts, making it look like you wet yourself.  It's not pretty and is uncomfortable.  Wear snow pants.  Also, go to a sporting goods store and find long socks.  Some might carry snowboarding socks.  They will protect your shins when you are wearing snow boots.  Although we never used them, knee pads might be a good idea.
  3. Prepare to fall often.  Many many times.  You will probably spend more time on your knees and on your back than on the snowboard.  It's okay to fall.  When renting snowboarding equipment, make sure you ask for a helmet.  It costs extra, but well worth it.  Specially if you have to go to work the next day.
  4. Take lessons.  You are over 30 years old and you probably have a day job.  You only want to spend a couple of weekends learning how to do this.  Find some place that is known for having a good training program.  We went to Gunstock and found their instructors to be excellent.  During winter, many of these places have multi-day training programs that are economical.
  5. Save money and only pay for the beginner slopes.  Since you are just starting out, you'll probably only need to use the easier slopes.  Some resorts cater primarily to beginners, and some others have cheaper lift tickets that only let you on the beginner slopes.  Don't pay for lifts you aren't going to use.
  6. Don't go skiing/snowboarding if it hasn't snowed in a while.  Learn to read the snow reports and make sure the place you choose has good snow.  Hard packed snow is difficult for beginners and it will hurt more when you fall.
  7. Unless you are in excellent physical condition, the first few days will be very painful.  Not counting on hitting the slopes five days in a row is probably a good idea.  Bring painkillers.  Planning on staying overnight at or near the slope is also advisable if you don't have a slope nearby.

Compared to skiing, I found snowboarding to be easier to pick up.  I'm still not good at it, but it is a lot of fun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Critical Section Contention

If you've done any sort of multi-threaded programming on Windows, chances are you've worked with CRITICAL_SECTION s. They are lightweight and effective. However, if your critical sections are causing too much contention, they might be the cause of serious performance problems. While working on Network Identity Manager, I was curious about how all of its hundreds of critical sections are doing. Network Identity Manager is a multi-threaded plug-in based application that is often prone to contention during certain operations. But how bad is it? Critical section contention is a fact of life. It is the normal mode of operation for them. However, each time it happens, the application may pay a fairly hefty performance penalty. We are only interested in keeping contention in check. As such, we would like to know which critical sections are experiencing the highest contention levels so we can evaluate design changes that may help alleviate them. A thorough treatment on the semantic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hello there, Mr. Stallman!

The last time I saw Richard Stallman was when he got into a bus that I was on in Cambridge, MA about 6 or so years back.  His name comes up often whenever the Free Software Foundation , GNU , or open source software in general is discussed.  It should have been no surprise for me to see his name show up in Ohloh , a “ free public directory of open source projects and people ”.  What surprised me was where I found it: There we go.  Five slots above mine. My Kudo Position recently received a fairly large boost (as evidenced by the +2339 above) due to Secure-Endpoints pushing Network Identity Manager and the KCA Provider for Network Identity Manager into GitHub.  Once this got me excited about my Kudo Rank, I discovered that much like democracy, the rank isn’t based upon my opinion of my work or the quantity thereof, but on what others think about it. So how exactly is the Kudo Rank and Kudo Position calcuated? Ohloh’s About Kudos page describes the proce...
Post a Comment
Read more