I received a boost today when Flipside, a new dvd from Absinthe Films, arrived in the post. It’s a documentary about the making of their snowboarding film More.

A few years ago I used to run website that reviewed snowboarding films, video games and the handful of resorts I’d been to since I learned to snowboard in 2001. It was called Stoked On Snowboarding and even though I did it for fun, it was a lot of work, took up most of my free time and got me in to trouble.

My red and white logo was a parody of the Coke can but with a snowboarder pulling a trick over the wavy line … Stoked… Coke… geddit? Anyway someone at Coca Cola threatened to sue my ass if I didn’t change it. They couldn’t stop me using a similar typeface or from using red and white but they could stop me using a wavy line as they owned it (no joke!) It wasn’t worth the hassle so I changed it, first to a blue and red logo like Pepsi (just to wind them up) and then I was going to redesign it altogether.

When I was first diagnosed with HIV I became very ill and had to make a choice between my job and running the site. I wasn’t well enough to do both and the site didn’t make any money so I chose my real job (hey which web person wouldn’t want to work for Radio 1?)

I wrote to everyone that I knew in snowboarding and told them I couldn’t run my site anymore because I was ill (I didn’t say what illness) and asked them not to waste their time and money sending me their films and video games to review anymore because I couldn’t give them publicity anymore.

Patrick ‘ Brushtie’ Armbruster is the only person who still sends me his snowboard film every year regardless. He co-owns Absinthe films, undoubtably the best snowboarding film makers in Europe and responsible for one of my annual highlights, their new movie.

It’s hard to explain what snowboarding means to someone who isn’t in to it or has never tried it. It’s not for everyone but it was a life changing experience for me and since I first took lessons at Milton Keynes’ Snozone in 2001, I had gone away every winter for a week or two in Europe of Canada.

It was also responsible for one of my most important friendships because I first met my buddy Ben when me and Raf bumped into him by chance on a train to Milton Keynes Snozone. It turned out that they were both skateboarders and now both were snowboarders. Raf was my housemate and work colleague and Ben was someone he knew from university.

Raf introduced me to snowboarding and snowboarding introduced me to Ben. If you count snowboarding itself, all four of us has been inextricably linked ever since and we have shared many memorable trips together with an ever fluctuating crew of riders.

I have two regrets. Firstly that I never learnt to snowboard earlier and so missed out on a great opportunity by not going to any of the US resorts when I was an exchange student there. And secondly, not going last winter for the first time because I was too ill. Yes I am dumb enough go if not under doctor’s orders not to.

I am desperately hoping I will be well enough to go this coming winter. Life is too short to miss another year and who knows realistically how long I will be able to snowboard for? I’m already 42. Still it’s my incentive to get well again and beat cancer.

So here I am getting stoked on snowboarding again, watching one of my favourite snowboarders Travis Rice and wondering where I will be come February. Is it really just a co-incidence that my next chemotherapy is also called R-ice?

Thanks Brushtie.