Living large in snowboard pants

A few weeks ago I bought some new snowboarding pants. The stereotype still lives.

Are baggy pants still in style? Though I really don’t pay attention to what anyone is wearing on the slope, I would have to say yes, based on my late-season shopping purchase.

A recent outing in falling snow left me soaked, and I had decided it was time for some new pants. The ones I had were bought primarily with skiing in mind, and I just didn’t need really good waterproofing qualities. But now, I do. So it was off to my favorite local shop.

They featured retail prices at 50 percent off. Not bad for something I can see, touch, and try on for myself.

In t-shirts and sweatshirts, I normally go with an XL, or even XXL. Looking over the pants, I saw right away that XXL was going to be too large. I tried on some XL pants, but they produced tents around my calves. And I have big calves, so that tells you just how jumbo-sized those pants were.

So I went down to a mere “large.” (The medium were too tight, of course.) Even these are a bit too big, however. For one thing, it sometimes feels like they will fall down when I’m getting ready for a turn. Talk about a distraction; try making a turn when you fear that any moment now, your pants will be around your knees. It took me a while to find the belt loops, so now I wear a belt. It helps some.

But now I’ve discovered another “bigness issue.” I normally put the pants on in the house and then drive to my mini-hill. The getting-ready phase involves walking around, collecting items, putting them in the car, etc. When I go about the house without shoes on, it’s easy to trip on the leg gaiters that are part of the pants. So they’re even a big long–and I’m 6 foot tall.

Oh well. At least they do a good job of keeping me dry.