There are so many things that I really like, enjoy, and love. Actually I would have to say I love lots of things the most. I love meeting new people jn general, friends, some animals, music, some food, my family, my snowboard, and many other things but I will not go on about all of them. And most of them are not objects though. One thing I really like would be my snowboard. I am right in love with it.
I have enjoyed snowboarding for about six years now and I always will. I love the looks, the feeling, the handling, and all the tricks that can be done on them if you know what you are doing. Ever since my first site of a snowboard and someone snowboarding I went nuts, I was skiing at the time. I was watching the Winter Extreme games on the sports channel and then the event half-pipe came up.
I thought it was a skateboarding thing so I decided to watch. Then the most beautiful thing came up on the T.V. It was the men's half-pipe event and they were on snowboards. After that, I learned as much as I could about snowboarding.
My snowboard is a Burton 160.5 Freestyle with Burton Custom bindings. I bought it 2nd hand from a friend who had no use for it anymore. I bought it for around $150, which is considerably cheap for the brand. I have done lots of things with and to my board. I have taken it up to Sugarloaf, up into the mountains behind my house, I have dinged it up many times and almost snapped it once. I have customized my board to my likings. my bindings are set to an irregular degree, which I like. I have decaled it with many stickers; such as Green Day, Dust For Life, WCYY, and many others that I cannot think of. This is my board and so I just had to make it scream with a passion, saying, "This is James's Board." It is beautiful.
The feeling of my board is very nice to the touch, with its smooth top and waxed bottom. The bottom of my board however has taken many torturous scrapes from rocks, trees, and other snowboards. The site of these wounds on my board pains me greatly, this board is my baby and I can't stand to see it hurt. On the surface of my board you can see pieces that have chipped away from hitting those trees and finding those unwanted hidden rocks. I try to take it easy with my board but it does not always go the way I see fit.
My nephew Joey Legere and I would always go up behind my house on skidder trails and make jumps for or boards. We would try to do 180's (This is a spin that rotates 180 degrees or half a circular revolution) and stuff like that. Then we started to do crazier things like trying back flips, even though I have not yet to land one, I have come very close though.
One time that I remember during a snowboarding journey with Joey; he and I wandered up the road from my house onto the local tree farm. Joey and I built some jumps like we would always do and then tested them out, in the process of testing one jump; Joey had decided to keep going after he had hit the jump. Joey then proceeded across the snow and ice covered road in which he managed, in his own amazement, used the snow bank as a jump and received some major distance and height. The site of this stunned both of us. Never had there been a more righteous jump around our neighborhood. This was the mother of big air jumps, for the time being. This was the jump we would try our back flips off of.
It was the first to actually attempt a back flip. It was such a rush of adrenaline and when I did not rotate the required amount, I also experienced a rush of agonizing pain. I managed to land on the upper half of my back and lower half of my neck.
The feeling of the jump is pure sublimity. It is like temporary flying to me, and it is one hell of a rush. A utopia, nirvana, and fantasy all in one package, I love the feeling. I would love to become a professional snowboarder. I would be on T.V. and I would wave to all my fans and I would do a bunch of crowd-pleasing stuff, because that is what it is all about. But I am a big dreamer to, so I am only in my dreams for now. But some day, some day