I was born in Winter Park, Colorado so skiing is in my blood. I have been skiing for as long as I can remember. But about two years ago I switched over to snowboarding. I did this because I was in Wisconsin and there were no good mountains to ski on and it just got too boring. It got boring because it was not a challenge to ski on. I was used to the 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado. So I decided to start snowboarding.

When I started, I had to really get to learning. There was so much to learn before the season really got started. I started with plows and stopping then I learned to turn left and right. Left was harder than right by far because I’m Goofy. Goofy means I ride with my right foot in front. Most people are regular, so at Sunburst there is a jump at the bottom that is made for regular people. If I was to do it I need to go in B.S or back side. Then I started doing 180s, almost kind of on the ground, then 360s. (A full circle) Then I just started spinning as long as I can. Almost butter, just not fully on the front because I always fall. Buttering is when I put all your weight on the front of the board and spin down the mountain.

My first snowboard was a Burton Chopper; there are many types of boards they’re rated on how good they are. On the edge, flexibility, and stance are the three main factors. There are a lot of types or brands of snowboards too. The four most known brands are Rome, Burton, Ride, and Form. The Burton I had was a very low quality. It was bad because it was really stiff and the stance was small and the edge was really straight. But I learned really well on it though. I went to Sunburst as much as I could. Sunburst is our local ski-snowboarding hill. I used to live in Colorado, so Sunburst was like a hill compared to Colorado.
I just got a Rome Label it is so cool. It is a really nice and I will improve on it quite a bit. It has like 50 stickers from skiing hills; companies, labels, and that stuff there are stickers from mountains from all over the world like Vail, Pikes Peak, and Wyoming. It also has a really high quality stomp pad. A stomp pad is something you use when you get off the lift to put your boot on. So you can stay steady because it is really hard to snowboard with one foot on.
When I go to Sunburst I warm up on Pussy Foot a slightly steep hill kind of like a 40 degree angle or a little less. It has a rope I hold on to that pulls me up it is a good hill just to mess around on. Then we hit the park. There are two parks there is a one with a lot of rails and jumps and stuff with. The stuff is different depending on what side you’re on. The stuff is like a table, and a rainbow rail that is a rail that’s about six inches wide and looks like a rainbow. There is a box that is like a foot and a half wide and like six feet long. It is good for learning. There is a kink that is like two inches wide and has a kind that goes from flat to a twenty degree angle down. We gapped the whole first half, so like three feet. There are like seven jumps and two fifteen foot ones, one twenty-five foot, and one thirty foot, and two five foot ones good warm up jumps. Then at the bottom of the park there is another tow rope that brings you back up to the top. Then we play follow the leader or stuff like that. I still ski every once and a while. We like to take vacations to Colorado and Wyoming or other big ski mountains.
But some of the stuff I do when I snowboard is like spins. Like 540s, (one and a half spins) 360s, (one spin) and 180s (half a spin). There are many other things like grabs. But that’s just jumps. There are also rails, on rails you can spin on it, 180 off it and a lot more tricks. You can combo in a rail because of the grind aspect.

So when you’re moving to a place like Wisconsin or a very low elevated area, think about switching to snowboarding. Trust me, skiing gets very boring. I dealt with it for six years. It was the worst six winters ever for me.