A SPORTS REVOLUTIONARY? ME??

Now that the winter Olympics are finished, I can finally speak out. Whenever I saw snowboarding during the Olympic games, I managed to annoy the closet person to me with recollections of my being a snowboarding pioneer during my youth. The facts don't lie and I revolutionized winter sports on a board just like this one. 

I know! It was raw, crude and unsophisticated, but real trailblazers have deal with adversity and suffering on the path to. their goal. Truth is, I have never tried snowboarding, as you know it, but I did ride a "SNURFER" back in the 60's. That is when the Brunswick Company decided to cash in on two trends of the decade. They married skiing and skateboarding and the "SNURFER" was born. 

You might have seen me riding mine down the hill at East Brunswick High School, in New Jersey. While everyone else was zipping down the slope on their sleds or coasters, I was "snurfing".

 I was a trend-setter, I tell you!

I never saw anyone else on the hill with a "SNURFER" and I have never met anyone else who owned a "SNURFER". Probably with good reason. The equipment was basically a bent plank with a rope attached to the front. Bindings? Are you kidding? 

I stood sideways on the plank with my boots gripping a couple of rows of metal staples. I grasped the rope and zig-zagged a trail through the Jersey snow. Oh, I took my share of flops and falls and there were no fancy helmets back then, but it was a trip that I truly enjoyed. I had no idea that I was an innovator or that, decades later, my pioneering efforts would lead to an incredible form of winter recreation that would become an exciting Olympic event, but I am happy to, in my own small way, have paved the trail.

So, the next time you go snowboarding or watch the sport on television, raise your glass and make a toast to the "SNURFER" and say 
"Thanks, Larry B., you snowboarding revolutionary!"
**