Switters wrote:
Any newbie tips received with thanks.

You'll find this place much quieter and less volatile than the other
place. :-)

Apparently so!

Neil's covered the staying dry bit. You might also consider some knee
pads and maybe some padding down your butt. You'll fall over a lot at the
start,

Ain't dat da troof.

Write-off the evening, you'll be spent.

I have never, ever, been in such a condition where someone said to me
"have a guess what time it is?" to which I could not only not answer
intelligibly, but also be utterly astounded to hear it was only 8pm when
it felt like 2am.

Stick with it. There'll be 2 or 3 days of falling over, frustration and
pain. At the end of it, it clicks and nirvana awaits.

So, the Friday lesson was a bit, well, so-so at best. The group was
reasonably small, me, missus and I think, four others. Instructor was
however, a bit pants. I would have thought that a few minutes on
terminology and perhaps some explanation of how the board 'works' might
be first up, but apparently not. You can imagine when he said 'you need
to lean forward', some of the group did exactly that (as opposed to
leaning towards the nose of the board) and then promptly face planted.

By the end of the day, we'd barely covered 'how to get yourself up', let
alone getting anything close to competent at falling leaf, or turns. We
had managed to get comfortable with balance and a bit of pre-fall movement.

Day two (Saturday), we didn't have lessons booked, so figured that we'd
go and wing it. The missus was done by noon, too much pain from falling.
I however persevered, figured out by myself how to get up and that
running toeside was much easier than trying to run goofy. Then by about
3pm had got to the point of linking 3 or 4 turns before stopping sharp
or falling. Again. Then I took a tumble that really wrenched my ankle,
so I figured I'd call it quits for the weekend.

Sunday was a no-board day, as we had to get ourselves back home again
(6hour drive). I really wish we could have recovered Sunday and had more
play on Monday, but alas, that will have to wait.

Overall I'm pleased - we had fun, didn't die, don't think we've broken
anything (although she has a hurty wrist). I'm positive that I'll be
giving it another go, and I'll give it 60:40 that she will.

Thanks all for your responses - between you, you covered pretty much
everything we needed.

--
Dnc