YOU'VE COME THIS FAR Let's say April 15 is coming up, so you call your accountant and say, "Hey Bob, how about doing my taxes this year?", and Bob replies, "Nah, I can't do that this year. I mean, I'm always an accountant. I was thinking today I'd be a dental hygienist."
How many days a year do you get to go skiing? Unless you live at the mountain, it's not that many. You've spent a lifetime learning how to ski, and you're saying that there are no more challenges? You lean into every turn, you swing your hips, you always keep your feet together? You're so good now that you're going to give that all up and try to do something else? Be serious. The snowboarding learning curve itself will take the better part of a week, so even if you go for a full two-week vacation, you'll spend at least half of it falling down.
Learning to snowboard in small doses is both pointless and difficult, like studying philosophy in correspondence school. I mean, yeah, technically you could try to do it, but why even bother?
FORGET ABOUT MOGULS Forget about them. There's no way you'll ever get that good. They're fun, and a completely different type of skiing that offers new challenges to even the most seasoned of us, but those runs are plainly off limits to you now. Have fun getting over to the "Mosey Home" trail, though. I'll see you at the bottom. Wheeeee!
And you're thinking, "Some people do it." Well, some people fly planes. Some people can dunk a basketball. Baby, you ain't some people.
THE TRENCHES ARE TOO DEEP They'll tell you that we've entered the halcyon days of coexistence, but I call shenanigans. Ever since snowboarding was invented in the '60s, there has been bad blood. Snowboarders think skiers are pompous, bourgeois exclusionists, and skiers think snowboarders are rude and reckless assholes. Ski magazine's number-one resort in the United States for the last three years has been Deer Valley in Utah, no small part because they don't allow snowboarders.
Now you're going to just switch sides? Where's your sense of loyalty? The Montagues and the Capulets needed to learn to live side-by-side, but they weren't trying to become each other. And you remember, don't you, what happened to the two who did try to cross over? Violent death.
YOU CAN'T BUY COOL Hey, joiner. No, I get it, there's a reason that every snowboarder on the mountain is dressed all the same way. If you sign on with the subculture, you have to look the part.
So, after you buy the Scott SMS Gore-Tex gloves with the laser-etched sheepskin palm and the Micro Bemberg™ rayon lining with warming zipper patch, the white matte R.E.D. Trace Snowboarding Helmet molded with Unison Technology™ and a GlovesOn™ buckle with NoAir™ Vent Plugs, and of course the Oakley SPP Polarized Photochromatic goggles with Passive Airflow System (PAS) and microfiber cleaning bag, all of it naturally with some cartoon skulls or muted stripes or art from a bastard offshoot of tattoo-culture . . . after that, does the corporate-slave buy-instinct go down on you, too, or is it all one-sided?
