I love my new board! The Black Widow I was waiting for arrived at 15:55 yesterday, 5 minutes before I was due to leave for my evening airbag session. As is usual when travelling on the London Underground with a long black bag I received a lot of strange looks, fighting the urge to get my board out in the half empty tube carriage I fought my way to Kings Cross and hopped on the train to WGC.
On arrival at the slope I opened the board bag (free with purchase)…..and there she was, my shiny new Nitro Black Widow. OK so the graphics aren’t quite as good as my original BW but they’re still more than ridable. For those of you that don’t ride it’s important to understand that how a board looks is (almost) as important as it’s technical specification. If a board looks good then you will ride it well, if you don’t like the graphics or you’ve stuck a sticker in the wrong place then you’ll forever ride poorly. Don’t ask why this is so, it just is! So on went the bindings and HURRAH! I had toe over hang, yes on my shiny, new, narrow girls’ board my bindings actually overhang slightly on the toe-side. This was great news as the sole reason for buying the board was to give me more response on the toe when compared to my wider Hatchet.
So it was off to the slope for my first run down. Having been told that the slope was running fast I took it easy, gently setting off and then picking up speed as I settled in to it. As ever with a new board it all felt a bit odd at first, my stance was a touch narrower, I definitely had more toe response (but not too much), it felt comfortable and smooth to ride. Setting off for my second run I intended on another speed gauging fly by to make sure I was used to the board, coming down the slope everything felt right so rather than passing the kicker I lined up, hit the jump and flew through the air……it seems that the poppiness of the board makes a difference when hitting a 7 foot kicker. According to my mates I’d just gone the highest and furthest I’d been off the kicker since we got the airbag, and surprisingly it hadn’t scared me. Could it really be that it was riding a too-wide board that had made me feel scared and crap on kickers? It was certainly looking that way.
The session progressed with some grabs, tweaked grabs and backside 180s, all of which felt bigger and smoother than in previous weeks, I was also feeling much more settled and less nervous on the run in. The board was responsive but not twitchy, super fast but not running away with me and it just felt right. Here’s hoping that as I get more settled in the air my confidence increases and my tricks start to get some style to them.
On a side note, sticky patches on dendix are evil….somersaulting at speed on a run in is not a good idea but when your board stops and your body carries on you know it’s going to sting a bit. In my case I think it was ass bounce to somersault to belly flop, as ever with a slam though it’s always hard to work out exactly what happened as time gets warped and you get disoriented. My stomach and chest currently fell like they’ve been trapped between dendix and a large elephant but despite general achiness there doesn’t appear to be any major pain hot spots.
Thanks must go out to www.bargainboards.co.uk for processing my order from Saturday and getting the board to me by Tuesday and of course to J for buying me the board. I promise it wasn’t a waste of money!