The Snowboard asylum Helps me out

Adil Latif | Snowboarding-Mont Blanc glacier Descent | ON 28th November 2006 | 0 comments

When snowboarding first came on the scene, refined personalities and some of the more genteel skiers may have had the opinion that it was a sport consisting of badly dressed adrenaline junkies partaking in high risk ventures, resulting in hold ups on the slope and every so often the descent of a stretcher carrying the unlucky risk taker.

Increased research into the sport and the diversity of clientele ranging from Management Consultants to Ministers has slowly shaped a new image of snowboarding. The primitive, just escaped from an asylum, snowboarding days are in the past. It’s a sport you can take at your own pace combining the flowing movements of surfing; maintaining the raw creativity of skateboarding and adopting the mountain craft of the skier. Maybe it was the original link between snowboarders, asylums and the relentless uptake of snowboarding which
lead to the birth of the snowboard asylum (TSA).

TSA is found all around the UK and is the place if you want to buy serious kit for the slopes whether that’s skis snowboards or any item what so ever mildly related.

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the general manager for the UK at the ski show London who agreed to kit me out. I told him about the project and mentioned that I was looking for a snowboard as I was struggling with the rental boards as they were preventing me from really getting a closeness to the snow, that is, preventing me from experiencing the snow conditions under my board. A new board would enable me to have a better feel for the bumps, dips, ice patches and powder sections on the slope —though my friends tell me that I already feel the snow too much as 90% of the time I am lying with my face in it.

My gear kindly sponsored by TSA included:

• Icon board (Wall paper addition).
• Vans snowboard boots which you tighten by twisting a dial on the front of the boot which in turn pulls on titanium wires.
• Snowboarding socks, as my Top Man’s plain blacks weren’t up for the challenge.
• Best of all I was given a little tool which I named Nigel. It basically has 4 different screwdriver heads on it together with a spanner. This was to help me adjust my bindings which are attached to the board and in which I place my boots.