"Grays on Trays is one of the best introductions to snowboarding on the web--regardless of your age." -- Erika Dillman, Outdoors Online: An Internet Guide to Everything Wild & Green (Keep It Clean, Keep It Green) June 18, 2008: No Skulls Here! What makes Grays on Trays different from your typical snowboarding site? No skulls! Here's what one skier had to say about GraysOnTrays.com: the "site is cool too. I grabbed a look at the front page - gee no skulls or pistols!" That's right. No skulls or exploding eyeballs or obscene gestures. Just a grown-up, sensible, straight-forward approach to a sport that adults are learning to love. June 8, 2008: Summer sliding With a few exceptions, the 2007-08 snowboarding season is over. If you'd like to do some dryland training, check out some information about skateboards on the Grays on Trays blog. If you still want to talk about riding, head to the Grays on Trays discussion board. The traffic isn't much, we admit, but you may still get someone to talk about snowboarding with. June 1, 2008: Get the feed During the summer, the Grays on Trays blog will be periodically updated. We're not going to make any promises as to its frequency, so why not put the Grays on Trays RSS feed into your blog reader so that updates are automatically delivered to your computer? Grays on Trays is an online resource for adult snowboarders and adults who are interested in riding, whether novice or advanced. Why We're Here Why a site geared to adults? We enjoy snowboarding, but find that most existing publications dealing with riding aren't written for adults; they're written for kids. Read a few of them and you'll understand. We think that learning how to ride a snowboard is enough of a challenge. You shouldn't have to put up with an environment that make you feel like you have returned to high school or entered a foreign land that is indifferent or even hostile to you. That's why Grays on Trays was created--to give the adult a chance to read about snowboarding in a grown-up fashion. Instead of mocking the achievements of grown-ups--"Grandpas don't snowboard"--we celebrate them. By the way, "Grays on trays" as a term was first used by adolescents to insult grown-up snowboarders. Today, we embrace it and relish the chance to blow away stereotypes. One 64-year old snowboarder told the Associated Press, "I love the term. I think it's the ultimate compliment. If we keep active, we can contribute to the participation. Everybody's gaining from it." What You'll Find Here at GraysOnTrays.com Our goal at GraysOnTrays is to help the grown-up rider by providing information, encouragement, and a place where a community can develop. If you're curious about snowboarding but have not tried it yet, know that you're not crazy for having an interest, and you're not going through a mid-life crisis. (If you are, well, that's between you and your deity and your family members.) We don't try to mimic some sort of snowboarding attitude or culture; we're just here to encourage the love of the sport. So let's get a quick lay of the land. Why Ride? gives you some reasons--you guessed it--why people ride. We also let some Grays Speak about what they think is so great about this sport. If you look at the profiles of some adult riders, you may find someone just like you. You're not alone! Snowboarding is unique, yet it's like some other sports, so you may already have experience using some of the required skills. Still, we highly recommend that on your first day out you take lessons. One reason to take lessons is that you're more likely to get hurt if you don't have proper instruction. Consider this and some other facts from the safety first page. If you have a lot of friends who are skiers, you might read riders v. skiers to get some ideas of how to deal with the conflict between the two groups. It's a diminishing problem, but there is an interesting history to it. One great thing about snowboarding is that there is always room for improving your skills, should you wish. One way to improve is to purchase your own equipment. Gear 101 gives a quick rundown on the types of equipment. On the slopes, you'll probably consult a trail map; our skills progression page is a map that tells you how well you are progressing. As you master the fundamentals, you may wish to experiment with the various styles of riding, which include cruising on groomed trails, riding in the back country, and freestyle tricks in the terrain park. And there's nothing to hone your skills like engaging in some friendly competition. Of course, snowboarding adults are competing against each other in real life anyway, so if you want to simply enjoy the ride on the mountain, that's OK, too. Aside from its on-slope thrills and challenges, snowboarding is an interesting subject on its own. Lots of kids come to this and other sites looking for information about the history of the sport. The statistics page offers some interesting facts, including this one: there are over 1,000,000 adult snowboarders. They're found at any number of the many slopes in our resort listing. Too Fun to Leave to the Kids That's the quick review of Grays on Trays, the web site. We hope it is a tool that will help you become part of Grays on Trays, the growing number of adults who prefer getting out in the winter to sinking into the couch. Poke around the site. Go to our discussion board and meet others who have learned the appeal of snowboarding for grown-ups. Ask questions. Encourage others with you experience. Introduce yourself; you probably have something to offer someone else. And above all, don't be afraid to learn. Snowboarding is too fun to leave to the kids.