I’m sitting in the Whistler Walk-In Clinic, while the slim athletic doctor reviews my x-rays. “So how long have you been snowboarding,” she asks, her blond hair falling forward. “Um, well, it was my sixth time when I fell,” I reply, trying gently to shift the weight off my very, bruised backside.

“Are you a skier?” She demands, this time raising her sharp blue eyes above the laptop she is typing furiously on. I am quickly realizing her concern is not focused on my very, very sore bottom, but rather on what I am doing on a snowboard in the first place. “We see a lot of snowboard injuries in here, mostly knees, wrists and elbows, way more than skiing. Take my advice and go back to skiing. It’s much safer.”

There it is my prognosis and my treatment along with a prescription for Tylenol 3’s. She has, in her not so subtle way, warned me that I am too old, and will likely continue to get hurt if I keep up this foolish notion of snowboarding.

Am I too old? Should I have started this sport sooner? In the prophetic words of W.M. Lewis,

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

Everything I read about our aging populations states that 60 is the new 40. So isn’t it only fair to conclude that 40 must be the new 20 or 30 at least? Is age a state of mind or a way of ensuring our survival? According to the Life Expectancy tables, Canadian women are now living (on average) until we are 82.3, and yes, we are still outliving our male counterparts who are checking out at 77.2. According to these tables, and not God, I will be around for at least another 40 years.

Walking by my snowboard, now gathering dust in our garage, I feel this twinge of disappointment. My posterior has long since healed, but the fear of falling and hurting myself again, prevents me from climbing back on the board. I am further taunted, each weekend, by the young fearless people who effortless curve by me, barely conscious of their skill and ability.

I don’t want to be too old to try anything, this excludes sushi. Sure I may be 40 ish, but like Jean Cretin, I plan on water skiing well into my 70’s, that goes for downhill skiing too. So maybe that’s the trade-off. Maybe I have a 100 runs left in my knees, and maybe staying away from snowboarding will ensure that I get to cash-in on every one of them.

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a barley used snowboard, send me an email.

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 11:10 am and is filed under Toys, Wakeboarding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.