Have Yourself a Mini Time
On Saturday I visited my usual local place for snowboarding, but had an unusual experience: I met someone from the Grays on Trays® bulletin board.
As it turns out, Bob and I share a season pass. If you put four people’s purchase on one credit card, everyone gets a discount. Bob and I had never met; we had conducted our business through e-mail and postal mail.
When you ride on our hill, those of us who are a bit older tend to stand out. Bob and I were at the top of one slope and started talking. Then we discovered — hey! — we already knew each other, though we hadn’t met.
Bob and I had a great time swapping stories about how we started snowboarding, what attracted us to it, where our favorite places to ride are, and so forth.
We also talked about gear (he wears Flow bindings; smart man), and he mentioned that he had a Rossignol mini-snowboard that is just 123cm long. By comparison, Bob’s was riding a 157cm, and mine is 162.
Once we were ready to wind down the day, we headed over to his truck and Bob pulled out the mini and let me try it on the bunny slope.
He has Flow bindings on the mini as well as his usual boards, so I didn’t even have to mess with strap bindings. Hooray!
The stance was set for a regular rider and I’m goofy, but the angles were roughly equivalent, the board is an asymmetrical twin tip, and the bindings are set in (duck) stance similar to what I’m used to and they were roughly equidistant from tip to tail. So I didn’t have much trouble riding the board the “wrong way.”
I took three or four runs on it, trying first to get used to the feel of such a short board, and then working on spins. At one time I did 7 spins in a row and stopped because I was getting near the flats. That was actually a good thing, because at that point I was starting to get dizzy.
I also rode it switch from top to bottom. It was definitely easier than trying to do the same with my longer, directional board, though the experience pointed out that switch isn’t my strong point.
So what do you do with a board like this? I didn’t have the time or knowledge to play with the board to its full potential.
As one review puts it, “The Mini board makes small mountains big, easy trails interesting, and little obstacles larger.”
More interesting. I can see that. The desire to make big, easy trails (and small , vertically challenged ski areas) more interesting is one reason why I started snowboarding.
I have very few freestyle tricks in my quiver. For those of you who are more experienced in this department, would a mini board help, hurt, or make no difference in learning some basic freestyle moves? If it would help, which tricks would it help me learn?