Snowboarding
I learnt to ski - as most Brits do - on a series of school trips as a teenager, and got quite enthusiastic about it for a while, to the point of avidly watching the Calgary Winter Olympics, anyway.
It's not the sort of sport you can do whimsically on a Saturday afternoon though, so it was several years before I got to visit the slopes again, this time as a snowboarder (Roj had already gotten the hang of it on a couple of corporate trips). It was certainly worth making the most of our proximity to the slopes of Upstate New York while we lived out there.
Unfortunately my first two proper snowboarding holidays were plagued with wrist problems (a fracture in Copper Mountain, Colorado, and a severe sprain in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Ca). It didn't put me off though, particularly as they just wrap you up in bomb-proof fibreglass and send you back out on the slopes.
Having spent a great week boarding in Courchevel early in 2006 with some good friends (and taken advantage of the excellent childcare facilities therein), I am very much hoping that snowboarding will become an annual activity, though snow issues will probably force us to North America next time. Roll on ski-school for the kids!
