You Lazy Bum-A Blog

Hello all and welcome to my blog for boardworld.  A little bit about me and why I’m writing a blog.  I’m a snowboard instructor, I have been teaching for 4 seasons, 3 in Canada and one in my present location of New Zealand’s south island.  I’m not teaching this season, in fact I’m not working at all.  Well not paid employment, I’m taking this season to work on my riding, for fun (park riding) and to improve my technical freeriding (for professional reasons (and fun)).

My aim with this blog is to provide something that’s interesting and hopefully entertaining to read as well as giving people who haven’t snowboarded for an entire season a flavour of what the experience can be like.
This is my first blog so if people have any comments or things they’d like covered then just private message me.  Without further ado onto my first post.

Straight Airs and Dingy Lairs:

So I just found out, I can’t do straight airs.  I know this might sound a little dramatic, ok it is a little dramatic but the truth is I do a top notch impression of a Dutch corn grinding facility if I’m given more than a little airtime.  So while my friends have been throwing down in the park I’ve been taking the last week doing something I should have done in my first season not my tenth, learning the art of the humble straight air.
 
So a fair question at this point is how have you failed to notice this deficiency in all this time?  The simple truth, denial.  This ugly nugget of information has resided in a dark dank quadrant of my brain in between the knowledge that, those gymnasts are only fourteen and I really like the taste of Baileys over ice.

I’m almost 30 now so I’m trying to take a sterner line with myself.  After many years finessing the evidence in a way that would make the clothless emperor proud or simply treating it with the disdain of a seventies copper, I’ve decided to embrace the Holmesian conclusion that I’m actually a bit shite at some important elements of snowboarding. 

What I’m trying to say is that if you recognise any of the above in yourself or your own riding then I would recommend you take the hit of looking a bit rubbish in the short term and just keep thinking about how your riding is going to benefit over time by concentrating your efforts on where they’re needed most.  And just think how smug you can feel when you take your new and improved technique to that down flat down none of your friends have hit yet.

Interesting about the straight airs mate.  I think for one reason or other spinning is probably easier when it comes to park jumps mid sized and over.  Spin inertia probably helps with maintaining correct attitude through the air in much the same way rifling in a gun barrel spins the bullet and allows it to maintain accuracy.  Well maybe not in exactly the same way but you catch my drift.  Counterpoint that with doing bigger straight airs and even grabbing there is a tendency to want to wind the windows up or down at the end of it.  It’s hard to maintain the right attitude and poise in a static position than it is spinning, thats my take on it anyways.

You know the feeling, you’re just noticing the effects of your second stella, the initial unpleasant rocking of the boat has subsided into a relaxing undulation and the 3rd triple bar has just rolled into place.  You can’t quite believe it but the relentless sound of coins dispensing into the slot is hard to ignore.  You’ve just made 100 quid and you’re happiness is only dulled by that crawling embarrassment, won’t this damn machine shut up how long can 100 coins take to spit out!

Ok so perhaps Aus to NZ doesn’t have a ferry with high jackpot fruit machines on it but the point is the same.  I got that feeling today and you can too.  My first triple bar was to be standing at the top of a pristine glistening expanse of duvet soft snow.  Not the kind of duvet you get out of in the morning but the perfectly smooth opulent type that you might hope to see when entering a new girlfriends bedroom for the first time.  Ok well takes all sorts i guess….

The second triple bar was the total absence of any other sentient being, in fact the absence of any indication of human existence, no sounds, no chairlifts, no neon clad Frenchmen just well, you (or in fact in this particular case, me).

Ok so far so normal eh, powder, pretty dope yardy yardy yar…..whats new Aidy.  Well good question, well what’s new is the difference between pressing hold on the machine as well as your breath as you pull the handle and seeing a bloody bell come to rest behind the win line and seeing that third triple bar nestle amongst its brethren to the shrill of metallic cacophony.

What took my pow experience to the next level was the light.  I’ve thought of how best to describe this and for some reason the word ethereal keeps coming to mind.  The strong sunshine diffusing through the cloud producing an other worldly effect.  Snowboarding under a glowing blue light the kind you sometimes see in the background of renaissance masterpieces or if you’re a fly, that you might catch down the butchers.

This light wasn’t in any way flat or dull, allowing the undulations and facets of the snow or the objects consumed within to be clearly made out.  The only task, to negotiate a flowing path through the natural extrusions. Oh and try and remember the feeling.

Looking forward to the blog Aidy. Interesting how you say your straight airs are rubbish. How are they bad, what is it that you are doing wrong do you think?

I think I know what you are saying though, sometimes we overlook the basics (in anything really) partly cause we wanna move to the more fun and flashy grabs etc and maybe cause we’re shite at it and don’t want to look like a doosh I remember the same thing when people learn the guitar, if you skip the basics and move straight to power chords etc you will quickly find that little progress is made and your skills develop a lot slower. Also can look pretty gumby if you’re trying to play something basic but can’t cause of bad technique.

When I live in Canada next season I want to make the effort to learn the basics of riding pretty well, like straight airs, turns etc etc. For my airs I know I don’t lift my lower body much at all, so I could be getting way more air.

I’ve not updated my blog for a while and I guess there are a few reasons for that.  In no particular order (ok that’s not strictly true).

I’m a pretty slack and lazy man by nature, I’ve known this for a long time now and up to this point I’ve failed to substantially deal with it to any degree.

I also know that there are quite a few blogs on this forum being done by better bloggers than I, so I have decided to save you all the time it would have taken (not much I concede) for you to figure that out and tune out.  It is true that it also saves me the time that writing such mediocrity would have taken but I’ve already covered this in point one above.

Instead of an inferior replica I’ve tried to write a little bit about things that catch my eye or imagination and somehow relate to snowboarding or at least snowfun in general.

I have been waiting for something to strike me and frankly I’m as yet unstruck.  I have been starting to worry that Jeremy (Rider26) might think I’d come to a sticky end so I thought I’d show my virtual face.

The mountain had its first closed day of my tenure as a season pass holder a couple of days ago.  This is quite a common occurrence at the smaller club fields of NZ but Queenstown doesn’t much suffer inclemency of weather.  Now in previous times this would have meant a breakfast comprising of coffee and a British Columbian cigarette followed by countless hours engaged in the minutiae of managing a virtual football team.  For those who don’t know which game I allude to, let’s just say it’s shares a lot of the bad points of a crack or heroin addiction without the dangerous mystique or unimaginable peaks of ecstasy.  Basically stay away from Football Manager (and probably try and forget what I said about those peaks of ecstasy as well I guess).

As it happens I didn’t partake in any of the above mentioned activities and hence had quite the productive day.  I’m not going to tell you much about the 3 trips to the Laundromat in the rain that comprised the bulk of my morning except to mention that by my standards (see point 1 above, again) this would already push the day well into the ‘lots achieved well done Adrian’ category.  The reason I skim like a world record 52 bounce stone on a placid lake over these achievements is that they are mere cast off canisters and energy bar wrappers surrounding basecamp in comparison to the rest of my Everest of a day.  Ok i’ve got way way carried away (I hope nobody with an affinity for grammar is still reading this).  Instead of Everest, read Mount Cook, no hold on Ben Nevis, ok Scarfell Pike.  That will mean very little to all but the few Englishmen that know that Scarfell Pike is our highest peak but hey that’s the point.
I’ve wittered on so much that ironicly (and thankfully) I’ll have to condense the rest of my day.

Went to the swimming baths, usual stuff, token effort at swimming before retiring to the hot pool, return to pool after a solid poaching to be accidentally splashed with over chlorinated water by kids zealously engaged in waterfun, in-between weeing in the pool no doubt!
UNTIL….I enter ‘the lazy river’.  Now this place is up my street!  After a lengthy dialogue with a couple of girls of around 10 who were monopolising the pools supply of floats I entered the elliptic flow sitting atop of my newly salvaged raft.  I can’t lie, I felt a little silly as I passed the lifeguard on my tenth lap just sitting there like the aquatic version of some historic potentate.  My only mental float came via the reasoning that by balancing on the foam aid I was doing invaluable work toning my core stabiliser muscles.  When I couldn’t take the shame anymore I decided I’d pay my penance by swimming against the flow.  I’m crap at swimming, I only ever do breaststroke and I never let my head go in the water.  These choices meant that after my initial gains I was soon treading water and then the inevitable happened.  It’s not so much the physical blow that I’m clearly losing the battle against the lazy river and going backwards while swimming forwards; it’s the inescapable metaphoric resonance.  Anyway 3 laps later physically and mentally broken I leave the pool.

To finish the day I went for a night out in Queenstown with friends.  I don’t know if the whole concept of going out was masterminded by a committee of men but you have to admire the brilliance of combining plentiful cheap booze with music just loud enough that sentences of more than about 4-5 words are naively doomed.  A few hours of getting well refreshed and it’s time to showcase the newly acquired dancing skills that appear to come free of charge with those 3 dollar vodkas.  Oh and chuck in a few of those 4-5 word lines and then depending on, a) how well you’ve done at spittle retention b) how close it is to 1.50am and c) not unluckily getting scuttled on the unsporting rocks of designated driver or t-totallerism, and you could be in luck.

I promise my next post will be about snowboarding!

sorry everyone, clearly went a bit nuts there.

I must make a pilgrimage to lazy river you speak of.

I recently had a battle.

MY ADVERSARY:

Hailing from New Zealand, this park feature is 6 inches wide, 6 metres long and setup in a street style.  May I introduce to you, DOWNBOX! 

A little more about my adversary, it’s only about a foot off the ground and you have to jump up onto it about 5 inches.  It’s a slightly dodgy build in so much as it starts off steeper then it finishes.  Its not so much a kinked box as a wonked box.

MY GOAL:

To dominate the downbox by remorselessly throwing down front board bagels.  Now for those not adept at snowboardspeak I must clarify at this point that I’m not assaulting the mass of plastic and metal that constitutes my adversary with a new variety of doughy bread product.  No indeed, I am attempting to jump onto the downbox which is in front of me as I approach on my toe edge and slide down it facing backwards spinning out at the end of the rail in the same direction I jumped on to complete a 360 rotation and ride off the way I rode in.  Oh I’m also planning on sliding on the tail of my board, for steeze and ease.

THE FIRST ROUND:

I respect my opponent so in order to quell the prospect of getting knocked out in the first round I decided to take it easy and try and sap some of its strength by laying down some frontboards.  This tactic worked well, I even managed to catch it a little unawares by applying a bit of noseslide into my frontboards, nasty. 

THE SECOND ROUND:

After taking the first 10-9 i’m pretty sure, I continued in the same vein.  Sapping the boxs’ strength with a series of backlips.  I must add that I almost got caught early in this round when my first attempt at backlip turned into backside 50-50 with a panic back 1 out.  Don’t ask.  I kept my feet however before firing in 2-3 solid backlips.

ROUNDS 3-6:

Enough flirting with the box trying to score points, the middle rounds of the fight were here and it was time.  My first drop went pretty well, jumped on but found myself sliding somewhere between nose and the centre of my board which isn’t where I needed to be but the 27 out worked pretty snug.

Ok just gotta shift my board underneath me when I jump on, to get locked into the front tail.  How hard can it be…  Today my trainer had decided that sitting around managing virtual footballers was preferable to shredding so I had to give myself the pep talks.

It’s a bit bloody scary approaching a downbox and as you pop on launching your mass down towards the end of the feature as you turn your back and accept the blindness of the trick.  In that split second I’m trying to shift my feet and feel for the box under my back foot.  Then i’m trying to keep my shoulders moving but not my hips getting a bit counter rotated on the box ready for the bagel (27) out. 

These rounds lasted for around 30-40 minutes and to be honest I got heavily down on points at this stage.  I didn’t get floored at any point however, the closest I came was over rotating the pop on by letting my hips follow my shoulders so it was more like back 1 on.  This resulted in me sliding out from switch 50 into bum slide before being unceremoniously being dumped onto the landing.

I just couldn’t get both the tail slide and the bagel together so when I could feel I was getting worse rather than better I tried a different tack.

ROUND 7:

My tactic of causing catastrophic damage with my frontboard bagels had backfired.  Still Frank Bruno didn’t become champion of the world by only having one punch! Oh.  Anyways, I thought i’d lay down some front 27 to switch frontboards on its ass and see how it liked that!  Now similar to the frontboard bagels I’m reasonably solid at front 27 on on flat boxes but this was the debut on a down feature.  As my confidence was shaken I decided to go back to my successful tactics of the first 2 rounds.  I started off doing front 1 into 5-0 (tailpress) before scrapping the tailpress as I know i’m sure as hell not good enough to do front 27 into press so why practice landing in press?  This trick I can do on some down features already so it’s a good warmup before hammering my opponent with some more heavy hitting tech. 
Next I landed some front 1 on back 1 offs.  That hurt it.  To take advantage of my opponent being rocked I went straight into front 1 on into switch front board coming out regular again.  Stomped a few of these and then on the hike back up I knew it was time.

ROUND 8: 

It’s strange the calm that comes over you when you’re about to do something you know you’ve not done before but that you’ve got pretty sure in your head.  In the oasis of calm under the glaring gaze of the chairlift tracking its path directly overhead I dropped for the 27 on that would get me back into the contest.
Shit, forgot to counter rotate my upper body!  Bloody 200 on to crooked frontboard, haven’t seen one of those as a cover shot in a while!  Still only a stumble, you can do this.

Next drop,    Aidy, why are you looking down at the start of the box?  It’s like I was willing myself to hang my nose on it!  Damit.

Next drop, bingo apart from being a tiny bit rushed to complete the 27 before touching down that felt solid! 

Next drop, bah, why didn’t you prewind OR not look right at the part of the box you’re trying to avoid with your nose. 

Conclusion:

Basically I did this trick well 2 or 3 times and badly way more than that.  I got a bit cheesed off after a while and letting the white cloth fly I headed off to do some freeriding.

I may have lost this contest today but i’m pretty happy jumping onto the downbox now and trying either frontboard bagels or front 27 on so that is a fillip I take from this mentally if not physically bruising encounter.

awesome write up Aidy! good way of viewing it and an entertaining read