Snowboard novice gets no air time

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They made it look so easy, those U.S. Olympians did. Hannah Teter and The Flying Tomato. Seth Wescott and Danny Kass.

Heck, even Lindsey Jacobellis made it look easy … right up until her ill-timed in-your-face celebration turned sure gold into an oops!-my-bad silver during the women’s snowboard cross finale.

That, I suppose, is the reason I ended up at New Hermon Mountain on Sunday, both feet securely fastened to an odd-shaped slab of fiberglass.

Everybody’s doing it, I thought. It looks so graceful, I thought.

“Let’s give it a try,” he said.

“He” is Dave Simpson. He’s the head camera guy at ABC-7, and films all of our Going Outdoors episodes.

Increasingly, it’s important to note, I have found that those episodes involve someone (Me) making a fool of himself as someone else (Him) films the entire event for posterity.

Which, believe it or not, is OK with me … most of the time.

On Sunday, I had my doubts.

“One thing I forgot to tell you is when you bend your knees, 60 to 70 percent of your weight is on your front foot,” snowboard instructor Matt Dean told me before he let me begin making Simpson’s day.

Then he gracefully clicked a boot into his snowboard, leaned back onto its curved tail, and schussed away.

Gracefully.

Just like Hannah and Seth and Tomato do.

So easy. So simple.

So impossible.

On my first attempt, I rode exactly seven feet. I know this because I’m six feet tall, and when I ended flopping backward into a heap, that (graceful) heap ended up exactly a foot from Dean’s left toe.

Flying Tomato, meet Falling Pumpkin.

In life, you walk before you run. In snowboarding, I learned, you fall before you do anything else.

Then you fall again. And again. And again.

Eventually, if you’re smart, you switch edges and try to learn how to fall while turning the other direction, so that both buttocks are equally bruised at the end of the day.

Of course, I didn’t know that on Sunday. That particular piece of knowledge (which I only realized as I sat here, perched at an awkward angle that takes pressure off a certain tender part of my anatomy) isn’t something they tell you in snowboard school.

Instead, they tell you this: You’re doing great! You’re picking this up better than most people!

And, my personal favorite: You almost had it that time!

The fact that they’re always telling you these things when you’re upside down or stuck in a snowbank … or both … isn’t something we snowboarders choose to dwell on.

Instead, we dwell on this: If I get up really, really fast, maybe nobody will notice that I fell (until, that is, Dave Simpson broadcasts all your assorted crashes on the 6 p.m. news).

In all honesty, Matt Dean was a great and patient teacher. He taught me more in 60 minutes (and 15 or 20 falls) than I would have learned in 1,000 solo wipeouts.

And by the end of the session, I was, indeed, snowboarding.

Or something like it.

I didn’t actually progress to the chairlift on Sunday. I didn’t get huge air on the halfpipe, nor carve graceful turns in mounds of fresh powder.

But by the end of the session, things began to make sense. Kind of.

I was standing up longer, falling less frequently, and actually turning in the direction I intended.

Which, my instructor kept telling me, is much better than most people do!

And even though I’m sure he was just being polite, I’ll take his word for it.

He, after all, is the expert.

And me? For now, I’m just another Falling Pumpkin.

First grand-dogs arrive

Over the past three years, regular readers of this column have gotten to know my four-legged “son” pretty well.

In fact, many make a point to stop by and visit our BDN booth at the Eastern Maine Sportsman’s Show not to say “hi” to me but to shower attention on Pudge, my always-friendly English springer spaniel.

Pudge has marched in the Bangor Fourth of July parade (in truth he boycotted the oppressive heat just before reaching the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge and rode the rest of the route in air-conditioned comfort).

He has appeared in our in-house advertising spots, and on TV in the Going Outdoors segment we do for ABC-7.

And now, I’m happy to announce, Pudge is a father.

The puppies of Pudge and his “wife,” Belle, arrived just after Valentine’s Day, and breeder Jo-Ann Moody of Waldo says all nine youngsters are doing just fine.

The litter consisted of six females and three males. If you’re a springer person, you may be interested to know that all three males and three of the females were black-and-white, while the other three females were liver and white.

They’re all shaped the same way their dad was when he was born.

“Beached whales,” Moody called them a few days after their birth, pointing out that none seemed to be missing any meals.

And that’s a trait they may share with their paternal “grandfather,” I readily admit.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.