Open class, and open for improvements.

I don't know what I was thinking Friday night and set my alarm clock for 6am, thinking it'd give me an hour to get ready before I had to meet Jake and go to Sierra. I woke up at 6 to a text message saying "Hey I'm at Safeway" and almost crapped. I was supposed to meet him at 6am at Safeway! I flew out of my apartment like a bat out of hell and had this horrible feeling that I wouldn't be able to get in the event because of my own dumb move.

Well we got to Sierra at 7:30, and I was the first to get on the wait list. I was also able to register for the Superpipe event the next day. I didn't feel too worried about the course; it was pretty average. Flat box, down-flat-down box, and then a two jump line with different options for the jump size. I saw the other girls throwing threes off the big side but most of the time they weren't landing them. I figured I'd play it safe  and do a line I knew I could land in case the other girls didn't have clean runs. My first run I did a 50-50 to nose slide on the first box, 50ed the down flat of the kinked box and then slid off, did a sloppy front 180 on the first jump and then went for a tail grab on the second but couldn't find my tail. Yuck. I was planning on doing a front 3-revert-cab 3 for my second run but since my safety didn't go the way I wanted I thought I should do the same run again. Second run I only 50ed half of the flat box tail grabbed over the knuckle, 50ed the whole kinked box did a clean-er 180 and got my tail grab on the second jump. Playing it safe didn't work out though because the other girls were able to pull off their runs and score higher than me. I placed 6 out of 7 and I was only 3 points behind the girl ahead of me, so if I had done the run I wanted or at least did a cab 1 on the second jump instead of a tail grab I could have grabbed fifth.

Superpipe day. I felt good about pipe. I like pipe and think I'm fairly decent in the stunt ditch. Well the four girls I was up against were good, not fairly decent. During my practice I was getting above the lip just slightly and these other girls were a few feet above the lip. I rode the best I could and ended up fifth. It would have been nice to at least beat one person but I didn't really mind too much. I've only been riding pipe for a month and the girl who placed above me told me this was her sixth season riding that semi circle. I looked up my four competitors and they've all been riding big contests and placing high for a while. This was my first non-USASA event.

Even though I didn't place the way I would have liked, I had fun and learned a lot. I learned that if I keep practicing more I can hold up in open class. I learned that competition isn't the place to hold back and play it safe. And I learned that I need to step it up because the girls I'm going to be competing against in the future are more experienced and are pretty solid riders.

The DC park at Northstar is open today so I'm going to head out there to ride the big boy park.
Until next time,
CKOS