The Enchantment of Snowboarding

By James Zheng

Reporter: Hello sir, can you briefly introduce your situation and why you came to us?

Guest: Well let’s just say my girlfriend is addicted to something.

Reporter: Drugs? Smoking? Drinking?

Guest: Worse than that, she cannot stop being obsessed with Snowboarding.

Reporter: … Excuse me? 

Guest: Let me finish before you say anything more. Here are what her symptoms are:

• Being excessively elated when seeing and hearing any words associated with snow.
• Desperate waiting for winter, don’t even care about the other three seasons.
• Spending all time watching videos and reading articles about Snowboarding. This is worse during the winter.
• She is always an unorganized person, which totally changes during winter.
• Being nearly depressed and starting to complain A LOT when winter is over.

Reporter: Now I am having sympathy for you more than anyone else…

Likely a few tries snowboarding will make you obsessed with snowboarding–although this might not apply to everyone. 

Snowboarding is not as fun as popular sports like basketball, football, and soccer. Plus the limitation is that if you live in a city with a warm climate, just like my city Kunming, I never get a chance to see the snowy slopes. Snowboarding also requires equipment. Equipment is usually quite expensive. I rented the equipment for the first time, and the price was around $200, but I was not happy with the price. Snowboarding also takes time to learn. I would say if you haven’t got the talent, this process is going to be painful. I mean painful both physically and mentally. For my first time, even if I was tutored about the basics, I was only allowed to try the low-slope area, which becomes tedious after five times. So, I went on the hill with my friends, and God knows how many times I fell… But some people master it quicker than others as they know how to balance the body and focus on the power exerted by the waist. 

However, I still want to admit that I was addicted to these “failures.” I had indeed fallen on the snow countless times, but I was closer to the bottom. I became more and more energetic towards my goal. I had this feeling that I had just learned a skill. I was becoming better and better, so no matter how the process tortured me, it was all worth it. Actually this could apply to any sport, but snowboarding never gets you bored. You still have a long way to go even after mastering control of your board.

Why are people so enthusiastic and delighted about snowboarding? Snowboarding is somehow considered to be the same level of excitement as skydiving, surfing, and paragliding etc. When we are involved in these types of sports, we increase our rate of blood circulation, and experience a feeling of flying and rushing. People do love perceiving this feeling. It truly feels free when you are dashing on the snow mountain. It makes you forget everything that is trivial or annoys you in real life. At this moment, you only care about entertaining yourself and integrating into a part of nature. Not to exaggerate, when you are travelling arbitrarily on the mountain, you have escaped the mist in the city, troublesome traffic, the scolds from your boss (teacher if you are a student), just everything that you are concerned with has nothing to do with you. All you need to do is just enter another dimension to have an enjoyable trip. Hearing the sounds of your snowboard pressing on the snow, feeling the wind flowing by, you find nothing is more pleasant than this. 

I have only captured a fraction of the charisma of snowboarding. It is definitely better if you experience it yourself.

Some have claimed that snowboarding is regarded as a dangerous sport, and I have the wounds to prove it. Make sure you have outfitted perfectly. Sometimes you need a helmet if you slide from a hill, but remember there are no sports that make you completely secure. The injuries you had are the precious proof of your efforts; just having scratches or falling on the ground may hurt, but they do not change the fact that they are a part of your progress (well unless you are that fragile). Therefore, make yourself brave, and do it! You will like it. 

Winter Sports Editor: Chelsea