New boots & first try of new board!

Well, after 2 weeks of scouring the internet for suitable shops to try on boots (and largely failing miserably due to the time of year and most shops being completely sold out) I took my new board along to the snowdome today with the aim of trying it out using hire boots & also checking in their shop (The Snowboard Asylum) for any potential boots.

The guys in TSA were incredibly helpful & knowledgable, I had a chat with one guy and he sat down and checked out the size and shape of my foot etc. - it was a good 5-10 minutes before I actually saw any boots. When he came back he had 1 pair of boots (Vans "Andreas Wiig") and explained that it was the only pair out of all their stock that was a suitable size/shape for my feet! Well, all I can say is, that guy deserves a pay rise - the boots fitted perfectly!

I walked around the shop in them, flexed, tried different typical snowboard positions, and they felt spot on - it went against everything I'd read about trying on as many different boots as possible but I bought them straight away. The guys then heat moulded them to my feet and also kindly set up my new board for me and applied some liquid wax stuff (good for one session really).

Then, £110 lighter, I set off for our 2 hour session on the slopes.

The phrase 1 step forwards and 2 steps back comes to mind. The new board setup was clearly an intermediate setup wheras I was used to the more forgiving beginners boards that you get from the snowdome. As a result, as happy as I was with my new gear, my boarding wasn't up to the same level as last time I was there - I fell off several times, was very wobbly / shakey, and had the kicker been out I wouldn't have attempted it as my confidence was knocked a little.

I realised however that this was normal, the board was less forgiving, so I had to up my game a bit, and by the end of the 2 hours I was getting better again - in fact technically even better than before as I'd had to be more precise with my movements. So I wasn't put off, but this made me even more determined to come back again soon and get more practise!

At the end of the day, I was happy with my new setup.