Hmm...Snow...What are you about?
Originally uploaded by blind sam.

My friend Kyle Faust took me, and my unbruised, un battered arse snowboarding. It was great of him to do that - he worked at the ski resort as a photographer (and before his knee injury as a pro-snowboarder) so it was great to have him show me around and explain to me why I kept falling over so much.

Now I feel like I'm an expert in arse-mountain-impact-pain. Its a good subject, burgeoning field and so on. I'm not kidding when I say I fell over about 100 times. In truth, Kyle taught me well, and after a few hours of eating snow I felt like I knew something about the principles of the snowboarding. However, the practice of this fine and noble sport was another matter.

Our brains are great, they learn so well. So, my brain today learned from kyle that I should use the board to stop me whilst plummeting down a mountain. It extrapolated very quickly that it was in fact more expedicious to use my entire body. It took me a little while longer to really believe that I didn't need to fall down in order to stop, and that I could in fact use that plank that I was cruelly tied to. And its true, you know, its true...

There's part of our minds that can really enjoy maladaptive thinking. The mountain was not really crowded but there were plenty of people for me to bisect and my brain was terribly aware of that. A chunk of the day was spent learning that I didn't need to throw myself into the ground in order to avoid someone who could have been 20 yards away and often quite capable of moving themselves out of the way of an obvious novice. Another slice was spent fighting against my instincts to lean with my body rather then lean the board. I remember the moment when I realised that I was trying to use the wrong understanding in order to move myself on the plank-of-inertia and when I applied the 'counter-intuitive' teachings that I was given then all was well. And from that point onwards things improved markedly.