Roger Cox: Some men buy a faster car when they hit 40. I’ve gone for a Hovercraft instead

About eight years ago I was at Colorado’s historic Winter Park ski resort, which first welcomed skiers in the ‘make turns not war’ season of 1939-40, getting shown around the place by a young snowboard instructor with a view to writing about it for the travel pages of this newspaper. I can’t remember the instructor’s name, but I do remember that he was a big fan of moguls (just as well for him, as Winter Park is famous for its mogul runs) and I also remember that he was very keen that I should sample some of these “bump runs,” as the Americans call them, even though they are about my least favourite thing to do on a snowboard. To be fair to my guide he did his best to help me out, giving me a very thorough bump-boarding tutorial, but in the end his frustration evidently got the better of him and he told me I was snowboarding like his dad. Ouch.