Other Sports Show the Importance of Good Boots

Lately I have been trying rollerblading. (It’s been difficult, as most new things are.) Doing this has showed me the importance of having good gear–especially boots–for snowboarding.

My rollerblades are $30 cheapies that I bought at Target. The footbed keeps popping out whenever I take the boots off. But that’s not the worst part of it. The worst part is that the support the boots offer my ankles is, at best, modest. Skating in this situation feels more difficult than it should be. And it probably is. But I’m still experimenting, and am not sure that I will be skating enough to go to the trouble of buying an expensive pair of skates.

I went out for about an hour last night, gliding through the neighborhood. Then I stopped to see my next-door neighbor, who was sitting out front with her son. We talked for a while; after a while, I saw down and unloosened the laces on the boots.

Eventually I stood up and started to talk across the yard to go home. What a difference! I had little control over my skates.

Sometimes taking a lesson to its logical extreme can be quite useful. In this case, I had a lesson in the importance of a boot that fits snugly.

We sometimes learn the most when we compare something new with something old. In this case, “new” is inline skating, and “old” is snowboarding. Perhaps other lessons for snowboarding will become obvious if I continue to work on inline skating.