Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 24, 1994 TAG: 9401250006
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Su Clauson-Wicker
DATELINE: WINTERGREEN LENGTH: Medium
That was before I learned to ski.
And so last week, looking for new thrills at the age of 42, I joined that group of snow enthusiasts considered crazy by an even larger portion of the world and pushed off the mountain with my feet securely strapped sideways to one board.
Just a few years ago, anyone seen slashing across the slopes on a snowboard was almost certainly part of the very young, very hip, authority-questioning sub-culture - a surfer on the snow. But not anymore, not here, Winterplace Resort snowboard instructor Chaz Fleming said.
``Not unusual at all to find someone over 30 in my group lessons,'' he reassured me as he towed me and my board to a section of slope with a gentle fall line. Former Vice President Dan Quayle had in fact showed up on the front page of The Vail Daily riding a board not long ago. And his wife, Marilyn, the sensible one, was purportedly by his side.
``I'm well over 30 myself,'' Fleming confided. ``I got hooked a couple of years ago because you can play with it a lot more than you can with skis. You can do things like go down backward.''
Thrills lure many longtime skiers to snowboarding's sideways stance - thrills and the challenge of mastering something new. For me, a novice who wedges her way down the slopes, snowboarding was an exercise in casting my caution to the wind.
Just when I would feel seriously out of control on the sliding board, Fleming would command, ``Turn,'' and I would pivot the board uphill in a half crescent around my left foot, hop up on my toes, and find myself crossing the slope backward - if I was lucky. Usually, I'd forget to shift my weight to wherever it was supposed to go: to my toes, off my pivoting foot or off my derriere, which wasn't supposed to be stuck way out like ballast anyway.
And if you think getting up on a slope after a spill with two slippery boards strapped to your feet is tricky, try rolling around like an infant as you attempt to put your board in a position that doesn't zip you off the side of the trail.
You need to be in decent shape to fall downhill on a snowboard, I found. Pulling yourself off the ground, turning, even maintaining good boarding stance requires good working muscles in your back, arms, stomach and about eight places in your legs that you never knew existed. In half an hour, I was feeling like a marionette who'd had all her strings yanked too hard.
But I persevered. And Fleming persevered. ``Get your weight on your front leg.'' ``Get your weight on your toes, then your heels - whatever's uphill. I want to see the edge of that board when you're coming downhill at me,'' he instructed, adding: ``I must say that 200 times a day.''
Indeed. He even yelled it at snowboarders he spied from the lift.
``Maybe I can encourage them to take a lesson,'' he said.
Most snowboarders don't take lessons, although that's changing as more older folks get on board. Slightly more than one-third of the snowboarders contacted in the American Recreation Property survey last year had taken a lesson, compared with 70 percent of the skiers.
Fleming says snowboarders comprise about 3 percent of those taking lessons through Winterplace's ski school, but that by early January, the school had taught twice as many snowboarders as it had last season. The day of my lesson, Fleming was preparing to instruct a busload of prospective boarders from Florida. He hoped they were surfers.
``Skateboarders, surfers, and skiers - they're the easiest to teach, in that order,'' he said.
Instruction definitely made a difference for me. By the end of the 11/2-hour lesson, I (1) was still alive, thanks to an instructor who divided the hill into manageable glides and grabbed me before I hit the woods, (2) Was able to make a few creditable backside and frontside turns. Not the thrilling, high-speed type that throws up snow like a fountain and makes ``gnarly'' noises on the crust, but creditable nevertheless.
This was groundwork, I say, for the day when I will slice across the slopes intuitively. Maybe, after about 50 more falls, snowboarding won't seem so crazy.
\ Su Clauson-Wicker is a free-lance writer living in Blacksburg who took her first ski lesson in 1971.|
Memo: ***CORRECTION***