Snow Plough King

I think me and my snowboard are pretty good pals. He seems tolerant of my insistence to put my arse or face, rather than him, into the snow. He's not too fussed about how happy I am when I take him off and have my feet on the actual ground. Nor does he complain when I use him to shovel and plough snow into a neat pile by skidding down a slope. Sure, he's tried to escape a few times when I'm getting my boots on and I'm fairly sure that when I'm not around he slags me off to his mates, but its only a matter of time before he learns to love me. I hope. As even typing this right now is pulling tendons in my forearms I didn't know I had, in a very painful way, and the way in which I'm sitting looking at my laptop is killing my thighs and lower back. I am, it turns out, a bloody natural. At falling over on the snow. It happened a lot today, and combining that with using bits of my I never normally use ie muscles, any of them, with my incredibly level of unhealthiness, means I am somewhat knackered. It didn't help that after an incredible gig in Chamonix last night, with constant beer refills, I stayed up till about 4.30am with Rich (the man who organises is all being out here), Marty McClean and Craig Campbell, meaning that today on the piste, my levels of dehydration were so phenomenal there were times I was worried I'd cough and turn into dust.

It is, apparently, all about confidence, which is odd, as I definitely have some that. Walk out in front of thousands of people and tell jokes? Yeah sure. Pretty goddamn confident. Strap yourself to a piece of slippery wood and throw yourself forward down an icy chasm of doom? Er. I'm ok thanks. I'll just have a hot chocolate. I mean really, when you think about it, the fact that anyone ever decided this was a reasonable form of transport through snow, clearly needed some sort of mental health check. Its a completely bonkers idea in itself. Skis make slightly more sense and there is a part of me that is really wondering if I should've gone straight for boarding first or actually listened to all the people that advised me not too instead of constantly kissing the snow. Then again, where's the fun in that?

And let me tell you, it is a lot of fun. Case in point:

HOW NOT TO SNOWBOARD - A GUIDE

I'm not ashamed that happened. I'm not ashamed that everyone in Jack's Bar in Meribel has seen that video at least twice each and that its got a better reaction than some of my jokes. No. I got up from that fall pissing myself laughing. Then got up, did it again, and eventually did some turns where I didn't fall over. Then I tried to learn the 'falling leaf' technique where it turns out I am less leaf and more stone. Poor Rich put up with my constant mix of giggling, complaining about my legs and then needing to sit down to catch my breath after I'd been winded by impact. Over the day I successfully boarded into a fence, a padded pole and nearly several other people. Winner.

Tomorrow I will be back on that board. We'll have a laugh about things that happened today, and as I manage to stand upright on it for more than 40 seconds and contemplate even doing a single actual slope rather than the kids toboggan area I embraced today, I know that me and my board will get on just fine. I expect to be dead by 4pm.