Snowboarding through 210’s Lenses
Snowboarding through the lenses of a therapist, an artist, a musician, and a martial artistArchive for December, 2007
How To Ollie on a Snowboard.
This is such a basic, fundamental trick – it’s literally the trick every other trick is based on – that I’m embarrassed to admit I spent my first four seasons of snowboarding doing it dead wrong. Follow these easy steps and take the intellectual leap so you don’t look as stupid as I did.
Here’s the Reader’s Digest version:
Doing an ollie is not simply jumping up and down. Jumping up and down is, well, just jumping up and down. In fact, jumping up and down makes you look more like a spastic bunny rabbit than Shaun White. To properly ollie, you take advantage of the inherent springiness of your snowboard and use that to propel you higher than you could hope to jump alone.
You’ll probably want to practice this standing still first before you throw one down in the middle of a black diamond mogul run.
1. Stand on your board in your natural stance (make sure you’re buckled in BTW).
2. Flex your board by bending your knees and driving your weight down. Done correctly, this will flatten out the camber of your board; you’ll feel this as “pressure” (it’ll almost feel like your board is pushing back up at you).
3. Immediately (so you don’t lose the spring) begin the “jump” – raise your front foot up first, then your rear foot. Your rear foot comes up to straighten you out in the air.
If you did the first part correctly but didn’t bring your back foot up, you get a neat-o corking effect like Roald here:
Really cool looking, but it’s not an ollie proper. In an ollie you’re “balanced” (or “flat”) in the air, like this:
Remember, bring that back foot up!
4. Staying balanced over your board, soften your knees to prepare for the landing. As you land, bend your knees a little more to absorb the force of landing. Ride away like you don’t even give a ship.
Whew! An exhaustive treatment, I know, but very necessary – a house is only as strong as its foundation, and having a solid ollie is the foundation for getting big airs, spins, etc.
To recap:
1. Get balanced on your board.
2. Bend your knees and push into the ground.
3. Jump. Pick the front foot up first, then the back foot.
4. Stay balanced in the air, bend your knees upon landing.
5. Ride some more.
Okay, now head up to the slopes and kick some ass! It’s supposed to be a lovely weekend up here in the Northeast…
:E
Subaru Drivers: Save $30 EACH Weekend…
If any of you readers out there drive a Subaru (especially a Subaru Outback Sport), you may want to give the following a try – it could end up saving you nearly $400 this season! That’s a lot of bowls of chili.
Here’s the deal: The drive from my front door to Stratton mountain in Bondville, VT is exactly 233 miles. Normally, this amount of mileage requires a little more than 3/4 of a full tank of gas (around 11 gallons). At the current gas prices, this gives the trip a travel cost of roughly $36 ($72 round trip).
Now, typically, we drive up at the “standard” 10 miles above the speed limit, 75 mph. Today, due to the inclement weather (and wack-ass drivers on the NY Thruway), I was forced to slow down to an average speed of between 60-65 mph (the reputed “sweet mileage spot” of most modern cars). Lo and behold, upon pulling into my driveway, rather than the less than 1/4 tank of gas I was expecting, imagine my surprise upon discovering that my tank was literally half-full!
Now, I’ve experimented with driving in the “sweet spot” with the other cars I’ve owned (Toyota Camry, Toyota Matrix 4WD, Dodge Caravan) and while there’s always been some gas savings, I’ve never experienced the magnitude of effect that I did with the Subaru. It’s as if the already eco-friendly company decided to install a super-secret special feature on their cars to reward drivers who drive with fuel extending strategies.
Back to our calculations: So, if driving in the Subaru’s sweet spot saves a 1/4 tank of gas (a little more than 4 gallons) , then at a median value for today’s gas prices, the savings would be $13.50 each way, about $27 round trip. Given that there are more or less 13 weeks in a winter, assuming all are rideable weekends, you’d end up with $351 extra in your pocket – just enough to fund the cost of a Burton one-piece. The actual savings could be even greater as:
1) My car is overdue for an oil change and tire rotation
2) Winter could be longer, depending on where you’re headed
3) Oil (and subsequently gas) prices seem to have no ceiling (damn that dollar!)
So to summarize, driving slower saves gas. Take that info at face value.
:E
