followup on snowboarding

it occurred to me that maybe i can write down some of the things i learned, just in case it's a while before i get back out to the slopes...

1. when someone tells you to bend your knees more, make sure you bend over at the same time... my natural inclination when bending my knees is to bend at the ankle as well and keep my torso vertical, however the boots used in snowboarding effectively prevent movement in the ankle so when i was trying to bend my knees i invariably would wind up leaning too far backwards and fall over... the only real way to bend your knees and keep your center of mass over the board is to bend your body forwards at the same time (this is something they don't generally tell you, by the way)...


2. although snowboarding is very similar to skateboarding, there are some ways in which it is very different - like turning, for example... on a skateboard if you lean to one side then the board turns, however on a snowboard if you lean to one side and that side happens to be the edge of the board that is facing down the hill you will fall... the leading edge of the board will dig into the snow and stop suddenly and you will keep going... not a good thing to do...


3. only ever lean into the side of the board facing up the hill... what this does is dig the trailing edge of the board into the snow and depending on how evenly you apply the pressure can slow your descent or adjust your direction... the more gradually you lean in, the more gradual your deceleration will be... if you lean in quickly you will decelerate quickly or even stop - you could even fall, but you should fall up the hill rather than down it and i find that to be the preferable way to fall if you have a choice...


4. weird as it may seem, twisting your torso can turn the board... hold your hands straight out from your sides and the board should pretty much go where you point so long as you're not leaning to either side of the board... once the turn has progressed to the point that the board is a little passed pointing straight down the hill you can lean on the trailing edge of the board and make the rest of the turn much more sharp or slow down or even stop if you so choose...


5. if you fall and find yourself on your butt with your feet facing the bottom of the hill it can be difficult to get up because the board will want to move out from under you as you try to stand - you can roll over on your stomach and get up much more easily so long as you don't mind having your back to the base of the hill...


6. if you do mind facing away from the direction you'll be travelling when getting up, you really need to get good at digging the trailing edge of your board into the snow while getting up off your butt (so that the board doesn't slide down the hill as you try to stand)... the more tired you get, the harder this will be...


7. the more you fall and have to get up, the more tired you will be... by far the most strenuous part snowboarding for us beginners is making and recovering from our mistakes... in that sense, the better you get at it, the more easy it will be both from a difficulty sense and from a pure work sense...


8. the easiest controlled descent down a hill is with your board perfectly sideways and the trailing edge digging into the snow just enough to slow you to your desired speed...

now hopefully i'll do a better job of remembering this stuff for the next time... or perhaps i'll just take advantage of socrates' observation about how reading and writing has given us the luxury of forgetting things (because we can just go back and reread what we've written when the need arises)...