Snowline – Bournemouth

Snowline time, Bournemouth – 02/12/2010

We set off at 7am to enlighten 150 children at Dorchester Middle School into the world of slacklining, as planned. But both Ian and myself knew this would probably not be the case. Not today anyway.
A quick phone call to the school confirmed what all the local radio stations had been telling us:
“Go and play in the snow!” So we did…

Bummer had been up all night, too excited to sleep, and was already out on the slopes of Queen’s Park with a body-board, battered bindless snowboard and half of Bournemouth. So we got his camera, put on an extra pair of socks and joined the masses.
After a quick go on the ‘sledges’ and some entertaining viewing of sledgers coming close to mutilating each other, we headed up the hill to setup the lines.
Another sweet spot, with plenty of slacking possibilities.

We opted for a trick line with a tree a couple of feet away from the line, for Jennings to head-plant later in the day, and a 100ft long line to put our endurance to the test. It’s Snowtime!
Before we’d even finished rigging the lines people were already getting very curious as to what we were doing.
Although it’s great showing people something they’ve never seen before, I do look forward to the day when people see a slackline and don’t bat an eyelid, and at the rate the sport is growing it won’t take long.

It was cold. Very, very cold.
So we were keen to warm up as quickly as possible, and to Ian this meant getting straight on the long line…and then slipping straight off again. Snowy shoes + slacklines are not a good mix! While Ian was getting going on the long line, I had a quick bounce on the trick setup to mobilise my cold, stiff joints, followed by sending the long one with what seemed to be a significant amount of ease. Today felt good.

Once we got into it, the tricks started flowing. Jennings was going big and I was on the combos. Both themes resulted in some epic moves being pulled off, but also some epic slams. As Slacklining is still a relatively new sport there is loads of scope for creating new tricks and styles. So as one slacker progresses in one direction and another slacker in another direction,
when they come together for sessions like this the sparks of inspiration fly between them and the results are phenomenal.

This sport is going to be big, and in this context bigger is definitely better. As slacklining grows, don’t watch this space, fill it. Get on a line and get involved!

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