Hi,

I live in Colorado, USA. I am working this season (2000-2001) as a part-time snowboard instructor at Copper Mountain Ski Area in Colorado.
I teach mostly adults and really like to teach adults who are over 30.
I do this because I have found a great deal of pleasure and gratification from this sport and enjoy sharing that pleasure.

The first few days can be not much fun because you tend to catch the wrong edge and fall hard (the body slam).  Many people who come to the sport from skiing (as I did) find this to be not worth the pain and humiliation, especially since they enjoy skiing and are competant skiers.

If you to give the sport a seriois try, I strongly recommend starting with a half-day lesson, and then go practice for the rest of the day on your own. Then, if you're not too bruised, try a second half-day lesson. Once you figure out how to avoid the body slam, progress is quick.
If you make it to the third day, you should be able to handle any blue run on the mountain, and if you make it to the fifth day, you'll want to sell your skis.

If you are coming at the sport from skateboarding or surfing, you won't want to mess around with skis at all.

Click on the image below for a bigger pic.

This is me on a sunny day at Copper last year.
I have been doing this since the early eighties and started on a Burton split-tail in Sorel boots.
These days, I mostly like riding bumps, steeps and powder and avoid the parks, pipes, and hand rails.
I am about 5' 8", 155 lbs and ride a Rossignol Stylus 156cm goofy. I prefer a shorter board because it is quicker in the bumps and doesn't get caught in the troughs as easily.

I use Burton Step-in bindings set at 15 degrees (front) and zero or minus 5 (rear) because I have to demonstrate turns fakey as well as forward when I'm teaching.  The stepins help a lot for teaching because demonstration of simple moves with both bindings attached is very important in the first few days.
I
 

Snowboards                    Boots
Rossignol                        Rossignol
K2                                   K2
Burton                             Burton
Salomon                           Salomon
Sims
Palmer
Ride
Morrow
Gnu
Atlantis
TipeA
Nitro
Techdeck
Arbor
Sessions

Boots
 
 
 
 

I
 
 
 
 
 
 

And the glyphman in the background is from the Butler Wash panel on the San Juan River, Utah in March, 2000.