Today I went snowboarding, for only the second time since Owen was born. Twenty years ago, before I met Jen, even before I had this blog I used to snowboard a lot, but had not ridden for ages due to various reasons. Owen had been pestering me to learn, so when I bought him lessons for his birthday, it was inevitable that I would be getting one the slope too… The venue was my old stomping ground – Tamworth Snowdome. Owen has previously had a couple of lessons on the nursery slope, but this was his first lesson on the main slope. He struggled a bit on his toe edge, but kept trying for the whole two hour lesson, and most importantly he enjoyed himself.

I was more concerned about my old kit, than my riding skills. Fortunately snowboarding is just like riding a bike – other than the button on my trousers popping open on my first turn it did not feel like I had been away for very long at all. On the other hand my kit was not so glad to be back, after about ninety minutes the strap on my back binding felt loose when I dropped in. I thought that I had forgotten to do it up, but no, the muscle memory was still there, the strap had snapped. I was able to ride it down to the bottom of the slope, but now it gave me the opportunity to see what a modern snowboard was like… My initial feeling when I picked it up was that it felt a lot lighter. I only did three runs on it, but I could not notice much difference, the bindings were not as good, ankle straps notwithstanding. Then again I am comparing top end kit from 2002, with modern rental kit.

Owen has got a few more lessons to do before we can get onto the snow together, but as long as he is keen to do it I will keep supporting him. I may have go the taste for it back too, now time to go binding shopping…