Teaching an Old Board New Tricks

Your average snowboarder spends weeks salivating over snowboard purchase. They spend countless hours reading through the magazine tests, foraging through the Internet for any semblance of good advice, asking friends to give their opinion even if they know nothing about snowboarding and when we finally enter the shop we will spend even more time perusing all the shiny new boards and asking the assistant for even more advice. In the end we buy the one with the pretty colours.

And that’s just the start of the long and complicated relationship we will have with our snowboard as we pass the initial stage of lust into a state of love. It follows closely the progress of any loving relationship, except of course we go out of our way to batter our boards which ‘apparently’ is just not acceptable with spouses or kittens. But at some point we will tire of our once-loved boards and they will eventually find themselves replaced by a new more colourful and shiny object of our affection.

So what happens at the end of a board’s life? It’s a question on almost no one’s lips, so in a complete about turn on the shameless seeking of popular topics we have been covering of late, here is an article with no topical relevance at all.

Teaching an Old Board New Tricks...

Option 1.

Lend them to your mates.

Snowboarding’s a pretty expensive habit to take up. Why not lend your board to those more needy than yourself? Plus it has the added benefit of getting your friends hooked so they will keep coming on holidays with you.

Option 2.

Start a museum.

OK this one is not going to be for everyone. I would think that once you start down this path having just a couple of snowboards would probably not draw in the crowds. You would possibly have to start actually trying to find more old boards. I imagine for museum standards and quantities you would need a fair bit of spare cash lying around and nothing better to do with it, like say going snowboarding. Also bear in mind that the calls for a snowboarding museum in the UK has not yet reached fever pitch.

Salty Peaks Museum. 

Salty Peaks – A real pearl (necklace) of a museum.

Option 3.

Go all hippy and recycle it.

This does require a board that can be easily be recycled and you just happen to be in luck. Someone has just invented one and even better it’s a see through one with go-faster holes in it. http://www.makboard.com

Look mum, no snowboard!

Yeah, classic air guitar pose!

Option 4.

Make a split board.

This is almost a good idea. If I lived in the mountains, I had invested in a large DIY kit and I had an insurmountable fear of chair lifts that prevented me from taking the easy route up a mountain, this might just be an option. What is a split board? Essentially if you cut a snowboard down the middle to make two crude skis it will allow you to hike up a mountain before you lock the skis together to make a snowboard so you can ride down again. Enough of this, here is a moving picture explanation...

This guy goes proper feral at the end by also showing us how to sleep in your car and cook on the still warm engine.

 

Option 5.

Stick them on your wall.

I went down this route and had a lovely bachelor-pad snowboard display on one of my walls. It was great until I had to leave the country and leave my flat to my sister. Now the hooks are being used as a delightful handbag display.

Option 6.

Make an alternative instrument of snow terror.

Chop your board up, attach a bike frame to it, hurt yourself in new and exciting ways.

Here's a movie with some of the weirdest laughing I’ve ever heard and some guy showing that rails will be more painful if you have handlebars aimed at your crotch.

Option 7.

Make furniture from your board.

This option guarantees a permanent retirement for your board so it’s one for those of you with a fair few old boards. It’s a bit more of a logistical challenge but there are a number of things you can make and do.

A bench...

A chair...

A picnic bench

Another bench

Some clocks

A bed

Or a bench

Shelving

Or even... a bench

A skateboard

Or how’s about a bench?

A clip board.Clip boards. Yeah. That will get your juices flowing. 

Genuinely, when thinking about how to recyle their snowboards, 

this is what Burton came up with as a solution. 

Recycling snowboards - Problem solved. 

And lastly... a bench

OK this last one’s not a bad idea.  It's only a temporary bench so you can ride your snowboard again when winter comes around. http://vitaminliving.com/products/sport/powderseatblade.php

Option 8.

Make something no one has had the balls to try yet

Don’t just follow the crowd and create another freaking bench, why not make your board into something no one has tried yet like...

• A diving board
• A coffin
• A Trojan horse
• A serviceable light aircraft
• A life size replica of the Titanic
• Jelly
  

Or finally

You could just do what everybody else does. Use them to prop up your house...

Wall props

Door props

Furniture props

 An elaborate bay window propping arrangement, a fence prop and an entire house prop

Alright the structural engineers amongst you may have spotted that snowboards cannot actually be used to support buildings. These photos actually all illustrate the default pose for selling ropey old snowboards on eBay. Why everyone takes the same generic photo I can’t answer, but they do.

So I’ll leave you with a link the sorry grave yard of unloved wall-props that snowboards become.

eBay's snowboard graveyard