Looking Ridiculous is Part of Learning

In the heat of summer, here’s something to make you think of snowboarding: something from the archives of the Detroit Free Press.

Eric Sharp, the paper’s outdoors writer, tried his hand at snowboarding, and — this was back in February of 2006 — gives us a report.

Some first-person accounts of snowboarding novices are warnings and complaints: it hurt, I shouldn’t do this, it was a bad idea.

Sharp, by contrast, leaves a reasonably favorable impression, while not underestimating the trouble that it takes to start out.

“It turned out that like windsurfing, snowboarding is as much fun as it looks, and something a lot of adults would enjoy if they put aside their dignity long enough to look ridiculous while learning.”