One of my favorite things to do in Second Life involves trying out different sports and gadgets. This make for great photos and video, but I'm more interested in the process - how the equipment is obtained, how you interact with it, and if it's any fun.

Over in Voss, I found a snowboard vendor at the bottom of a (sadly) non-functional chairlift. The white snowboard on the white snow is a little difficult to see, so they placed a bright green arrow pointing to it, but people still didn't see it right away. The first thing that was confusing is that the box that the snowboard arrives in looks identical to the actual snowboard, so there were several people trying to ride what was actually the delivery mechanism.

Once you unpack the box, a notecard is displayed with instructions. First you need to put on the boots, which have two parts for each foot.



Once you've got the boots on, you drag the snowboard from your inventory and then right click it and select Ride. When I did this, however, I got an alert that I needed to put on the boots, which I was already wearing. Then I got an alert that I was being given a folder with boots in them, so I accepted it, took off the boots I had on, and put on the new boots. Same problem though. Then I wound up with two snowboards attached to my feet, and I was able to walk around with them on???

Just as I was about to give up, it started to work and I was shooshing around all over the place. Quite cool, but a little difficult to control.



It was at this point that a stranger in a car pulled up. He kept trying to lure me into the car saying that he had the heat on and it was nice and warm. Uh, no.



I wound up stuck in an area where I couldn't move, so I had to detach the snowboard and start all over. I didn't have any luck getting it to work again, so I sent the creator a message to find out what the secret is. Until I hear back from him I'll just stand here at the bottom of the non-functional chairlift holding my non-functional snowboard, ignoring the guy in the car.