Sandboarding

Well, I have to say that sandboarding's good fun, but I wouldn't travel somewhere specifically to do it. It's early afternoon, and I'm a-chillin' after this morning's exertions. We went out for dinner last night (at 'Neapolitan's', an Italian restaurant – obviously). I had an Oryx steak, which was great, but clearly all wasn't well with my stomach. I think it's been coming for a day or two, but I was a little 'unwell' last night. Nothing major, and I feel a little better now, but it meant I had to duck to bed early. A poor show.

So, sandboarding this morning – a bunch of us were picked up in a minibus and taken out to the dunes. First impressions, to be honest, were very unfavourable, and I could feel a rant building. Once we had our kit, we hiked up to the top of the dune. The slope size meant I could basically do three semi-decent carving turns before I was at the bottom, and heading up again on foot. My boots were a size too big, and after one run, my left binding was rotating fairly freely. Not great. So, one of the guys headed back down to fetch me another board while I passed the time doing 'head-first' runs on the 'Kalahari Charger' – a piece of greased hard board on which you can get up to 80km speeds. That was very good fun, if a little one-dimensional.

Once the guy had brought my board back, it was back to 'standup' boarding. Getting them to adjust my bindings was a bit of an effort, since they didn't seem to want to let me do it myself.They also had a huge pot of soft wax polish at the top, and we had to wax our boards before every run, since the sand quickly grinds it off. I got my boots to fit by taking them off, scooping a couple of handfulls of sand into each, and putting them back on. Sorted.After my second run, I tried the jump that was set up, and it was then I began to see the appeal of sandboarding. It's not so much about long sweeping carves as tricks and jibbing. In that sense, the walking back up was more like you might do in a board park. I started jumping, now, and it was really quite easy. As part of the package, they put together a dvd, which we're going to watch in the pub later, so I felt a bit of air was essential. And so it came to the last run...

I'm sitting at the top, debating whether or not to try a backside 360 spin. The jump is horizontal, so has no 'kick' to it, but I thought I'd have enough air to try it. I was weighing it up when the cameraman – a South African guy who used to live in Hove, practically my home town – said to everyone, 'okay, watch Nick. He's going to do a great three-sixty.' Right then, I thought. Apparently, I came very close to pulling it off. It was all a bit of a blur, but came down hard on my head, and I think the camera man may have over-reacted a bit.
'Hey buddy, are you okay?
'Yeah, fine.'
'Lie still. You're winded. Raise your legs over your head. It'll help you breathe.'
I was a little groggy, so I actually tried to follow this instruction. 'Erm, I can't. The board's covered in sand.'
'No, your arms.'
'Oh, you said “legs”.'
'Did I?'
'Yeah'
I think we'd established by this stage that I was compos mentis. I rather think the conversation had also established the fact that I wasn't winded either. My left eye was full of sand, but funnily enough, this guy's 'safety-first' approach actually scared me more. I was lying there thinking, 'What, is my spine twisted 180 degrees and I don't know it? Is my ear hanging by a strip of skin?' Thankfully, a limbs were present and correct.
'I tell you, that was the jump of the morning', he said, and did that thing where you touch knuckles with a closed fist. Frankly, I felt a bit of a prat doing that when I was twenty-five, and I'm thirty-one now. In any case, he has it on the dvd. Just has to cut out the landing...