Does anyone here know how to snowboard? Anyone here snowboard in cyberspace?

Thanks to DVD technology, our eleven-year-old son Thane and his buddies go snowboarding in our living room almost every weekend. I love to eavesdrop while their electronic selves slip and slither down impossible snowboarding courses. It's always an education.

The other day Thane started shouting, "How can this guy keep saying 'gravity is my friend!'?"

For some reason the character Thane had chosen would perform astounding 720's, egg-flips, flying squirrels, grind-the rails, and catch air – does anyone here understand this language? – land the impossible and then hoot out "gravity is my friend!"

Even grade-schoolers with no formal physics training knew that somehow and something wasn't right. "But snowboarders …