I’ve got a giant black-and-blue bruise right above my ass-crack this morning, the result of two failed front board attempts on this rail last night. Happy times!
My friends who ride (or ski) aren’t generally interested in park or doing tricks or anything, which is fine – I love just riding and carving steeps and what-not, but in Michigan, that’s really not an option. The only way I can challenge myself on the slopes is by hitting the park or the jumps.
Last night I went riding at PK with this guy Jesse who I met on snowboardingforum.com. My wife thinks it’s weird that I met some “random dude” from the internet, but I guess when you put it that way, it is kind of weird. Whatever. The ‘net is cool like that for bringing people together with similar interests.
Our goal was to shred some parkage, and work on a little progression.
It worked out really well because both of us were about the same in terms of ability; there were some things I did better, but some things he did better; I seemed to do better at the big airs on jumps, but he was stomping some 3′s which I wouldn’t try (someone needs to call my ass out on that, btw).
We both could’ve been better, but I think we both kicked it up a little bit, stepping outside our comfort zones.
We only got a few seconds of video which I’ll post over the weekend but fortunately it’s decent, got one clip of each of us doing 50/50 on a rail. This particular rail, I’ve been eyeballing for a long time, but I’ve never tried it, and I probably wouldn’t have tried it without having someone else there who was also going to try it. So yeah, both of us ate shit a few times, but got the hang of it pretty easy. My first two attempts were the failed front boards, so I dialed it back to 50/50 (either one would’ve been a first for me) and nailed it on the next lap.
Also landed some front boards on the butter box (also a first for me!). Next session I’ll probably work on hitting the narrower boxes which are a little bit longer and arguably more difficult than the butter box.
Boardslides and rails were two of my several shred goals this season. I’ll probably work on progressing both of those maneuvers, like adding a backside boardslide to the mix, and maybe trying to tail-press that rail, but for now I’m thrilled to be able to cross those of the list.
