I recently went home to Alaska for a weekend and decided that it was time I learn how to snowboard, so off I headed to the closest resort to try my luck freeriding the powder (snowboarding on freshly fallen snow just for fun). In a small ski town in Girdwood, Alaska, two hundred young adults were gathered in a confined day lodge at the Alyeska Ski Resort. The air had the foul odor of wet, moldy shoes and my arms and legs still ached from my first attempt to make a run (to go down the course). As I tried to weave my way through the disarrayed chairs, tables, and groups of mingling teenagers, I realized that I could not understand anything they were saying to each other. I quickly found my friend, Adam, and asked him why everyone was talking in a way that I did not understand. The words they used sounded like street-slang sometimes, and at other times, were of such technicality that I could not even guess the meanings. Not only did I want to find out what they were talking about, I also wanted to discover where this jargon came from, what purpose it serves, and if snowboarders are labeled negatively because of it. Adam is nineteen-years-old and has been riding for four-years and fills every spare second of his life sleeping, breathing, and sweating snowboarding. He grew up in Alaska and we have known one another for many years, although we have never been really close friends because throughout high school, we belonged to two different groups. Adam participates in many different, local big-air snowboarding competitions, where he gets judged on how well he can do certain tricks off of jumps. If he does well, then he pulled (executed, did) a flick, sometimes he'll even tweak the tricks a little to add more style to them. Adam says that living in Alaska gives him a great opportunity to participate in these events, but for now, snowboarding is just a hobby that fills the cold, short, winter days. He does not try to be a part of t...
