Queen of the Park weekend part 2.

So here I am sitting in the Kirkwood Village, actually not too worried about what's going to happen to me. Things usually ending up working out with time so I wasn't going to stress. Sure enough a liftie, Jared came up to me and said "Hey what's up." I told him that I wasn't going to be able to stay where I thought I was because I couldn't get a hold of my Uncle to use his cabin because he was fighting fire. Jared was such a chill dude and was all "You can come over to my place. I live right down the road and you're more than welcome to stay on my couch for the weekend." Sweet. I knew things would work out.

I headed over to Jared's place and met his room mates (who's names I forget :/). I hung out there for a while and then a couple of his girl friends, Mary and Michelle came by. It was pretty fun. I was at this mountain that I didn't know anyone at and all of a sudden it was like I was hanging out with my crew. We had some drinks, got to know each other and then I got a call from my uncle. Turns out that one of my uncle's buddies had gone up to the cabin and I could stay there for the weekend. I was on the move again, this time to my uncle's cabin.

So I go off to the cabin and blah blah blah hang out with his friend Brian, and then eventually go to bed. The next morning I got up and got ready for my contest. Before I left the house I decided to put my gloves on top of the fire-stove thingy to warm them up.

Well. Turns out that that was a bad idea. I turned my head for 40 seconds and when I looked back my gloves were smoking so I pulled them off of the fire and threw them on the snow outside. Apparently (surprise to me) gloves will melt when you place them on hot metal. Cool. Good start to the morning. I like my gloves extra crispy. I spent some time picking the hardened chunks off my gloves and cleaning the melted plastic off the fireplace and then headed back to the village.

Once in the village I found the demo shop and approached Adam. Before I even said anything he went "Hey, let me go get that ticket for you." Success. So Adam slipped off and then came back with a "friend of Adam Palmer" ticket and I was off on my merry way. My first stop was the main park at Kirkwood so I could warm up for the jam. I got there and it was closed off already because it was the park that was going to be used for the contest. I was able to get a sneak peak at the set up though and I was relieved when I saw that the four features involved were ones that I felt like I could hit. There was a flat box, a battle ship box, an up drop to down box, and a jump. I was expecting rails and a bigger variety of features but these mellow boxes and jumps were fine by me.

I wandered around the mountain in search of Kirkwood's other terrain parks so I could try to learn some tricks other than nose-slides before the competition and after a while found the progression park. Oh jee. This park was itty bitty with itty bitty jumps and an itty bitty pipe. The boxes were ride on and four inches above the snow on either side at most so they didn't help much. The pipe was about six feet tall, with only like one foot of tranny. I dropped in, almost died, and then rode straight down and out of it, over that pipe in a single hit. How about those itty bitty jumps? I hit the first one (which looked to be about three feet) with no speed and didn't pop and knuckled. Really? Knuckling a three footer?? So I charged into the next one, popped real hard and flewwwwwwwww past the landing. Sorry knees. Yeah. I was over the progression park real quick.

At this point I figured I might as well just go to the village, sign up for the contest, and then hang out until the practice on the actual course started. I went to the sign up tent, gave the nice girls running sign ups my $$ and then got a tee shirt, stickers, and the girl powder bandana I had to wear during the contest. I met Zippy, this super cool chick who runs the South Lake USASA series and together we applied a sweet Girl Powder die cut to my board. And then I ate a delicious sandwich. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. While I was enjoying it a girl approached me and went "Hey are you the girl that was asking for a ride on facebook? Did you actually hitch hike here?!" I said yes and we became friends. Her name was Liz and she was there with her friend Jenna. Liz, Jenna and I ended up going out riding together until practice started.

When practice began and girls started showing their stuff I got real nervous. Everyone was doing all sorts of spins everywhere and I was never one to spin onto or off or on top of a feature. But once the contest started I just kind of went for it and I guess I did some cool tricks because I ended up coming in second. I really didn't expect second (I thought for sure Liz had second and I was battling with Jenna for third) so I was totally stoked when then called my name. I'm really glad I just kind of hucked myself because I realized that there were a lot of things I could do that I didn't think I could. One of my favorite things I did in the contest was on the up-step down down box. I mobbed into the up, popped and then flew like twenty feet to a fairly flat landing, gapping the down. That was really fun. I wanted to spin over it but got too nervous to try. I did my last run one footed and I think that might be what got me the second.

After the contest I went riding with Julianne and a few of the other girls for the rest of the day.

That night I just hung out with Brian and had dinner at the cabin. I passed out pretty early and then the next morning I went out riding with him. The weather was pretty gnarly on Sunday but Jared hooked me up with a "Friend of Jared Heizer" ticket so I went out to ride anyways. I was riding with Brian, who was into the all mountain go big and charge it stuff. I was just like "eh" and after about two hours I took a dry-off-and-play-angry-birds-break in the lodge. Then I went back out to the park, set my camera up in a tree and hiked the park for a bit to try and get a shot or two. My Uncle Greg showed up shortly after and commented on his surprise that I was actually good at snowboarding and could do tricks.

That night Greg, his girl friend Laurie and I went out to sushi and they had a really cool fish tank with really cool fish in it. Then we headed up to Tahoe City. They dropped me off at Lakeside and I met this guy Matt from couchsurfing. We hung out with some other couchsurfers and played pool.  After getting some late night grub Matt drove me back to my apartment. Pretty mellow night, except for the part when Matt's car slid off the road and we almost get wrecked. No big.

But that's it. That was my weekend in like a million words. If you got this far in the reading, WOW. I can't believe it. Post a comment here with a $ in it and your email address and I'll send you something cool. Jeeze I write too much.

Queen of the Park weekend part 1.

What an adventure of a weekend!

Girl Powder was putting on an all girl rail jam at Kirkwood on Saturday called Queen of the Park. I really wanted to go so I spent all week trying to find a ride. I asked people I knew, I asked craigslist, and I asked the Girl Powder Facebook page to see if anyone was driving down from North Lake. No dice. So Friday after a few runs at Northstar I headed to my apartment, threw some clothes in my snowboard bag and jumped on a TART bus. I bused it all the way to Incline and then began to hitch hike. I was a little nervous. The most I had ever hitch hiked was like 12 miles and I only did that once.

I figured it would take me at least three hours to make the 72 mile journey but within four minutes of standing by the side of Tahoe Boulevard holding my janky "So. Lake" sign I was picked up by a guy who was coming from Reno and heading all the way down to the South Lake Y. He ended up being a pretty funny dude. One of the first things he said to me was "So... Do you get picked up often when you do this?" I replied with "Oh I've never done this before." His shoulders softened and he seemed to get a lot more comfortable immediately, responding with "I've never picked up a hitch hiker before!" He laughed and explained how he never thought hitch hikers were going where he was going but he saw my sign and reversed back to me because he was going to South Lake. "Now I can cross picking up a hitch hiker off my bucket list!" He said at one point. We had a fun ride to the Y talking the whole way. At the end of the journey he thanked me for the company (apparently having someone to talk to made the boring drive a whole lot shorter). This guy, I forget his name, ends up being the Regional Manager (or something like that) of Round Table and when he let me off at the Round Table he had been heading to he gave me a coupon for a free large pizza. NICE! He also warned me about how there were a lot of cops in the area and I should be careful with my sign, which I had updated to say "89 s."

Sure enough, as soon as I went back to the side of the road and held my sign up a sheriff SUV came towards me. I stuck the sign behind my back and put my phone up to my ear. I didn't know what the law is about hitch hiking or sign holding so I took the better-safe-than-sorry route. Two minutes later another cop drove by me, just staring as he passed. This was obviously not going to work. I began walking down the highway in the direction I needed to go and came across a gas station. Perfect! I could just ask people getting gas if anyone was going my way. I went up to a nice looking young man in a truck and asked if he was going down 89. He was, but then crossing over to 50. Well, anything helps so I got in his truck and he offered me some hospitality. I ended up talking to this guy the whole drive and it was a hoot. He had driven across the country from Wisconsin and had the THICKEST Wisconsin accent I've ever heard. It was great listening to this guy talk. He let me go where 89 crosses 50 and I ran across the highway to 89 and started walking again.

According to my GPS the road I was on offered no alternatives to a destination other than Kirkwood except at one point where the highway split and went to 88 the other direction. This meant I had a 50% of making it to Kirkwood with my next ride. Not too many cars were going this way so I figured it would take a little longer to get picked up. After maybe five minutes someone drove by slowly and looked at me. I yelled "Kirkwood" and he pulled over. When I got to his car he informed me he was going to Mammoth and would be taking 88 but he could at least get me to the split so I got it. Anything to get me closer to Kirkwood would help. I had a nice time with this guy. He was a little older, maybe in his 40s or 50s but he was an avid shredder and we had lots of snow talk on the way. He gave me trail mix. It was awesome. Once we got to the 88/89 split I wished him happy shredding and was on my way.

Now I was on the last stretch of 89 where the only option was to go to Kirkwood. I was almost there. Seeing the 14 mile sign stoked me out. I was so proud of how far I had made it. And it had only been two hours! Three cars passed before someone pulled over. This guy's name was Adam and he ran the demo shop at Kirkwood. I told him that I was staying at my uncle's cabin in Kirkwood and my uncle was trying to get me a ticket, or at least a discounted one. Adam, this wonderful guy, says "Well if something happens and that doesn't work out I've got like 7 extra tickets left this season that I won't use so come see me if you need one." Score! This guy gives me a ride and offers me a lift ticket. I lucked out on this trip. Every person who gave me a ride hooked it up in some other way as well.

Adam dropped me off in the village and I was elated. I had actually made it to Kirkwood!! I sat down in their village and called my uncle. I didn't know where the cabin was and that hadn't really been a top priority that day. My uncle didn't answer his phone though. I sat in the village and hung out for a while. Finally my mom called and told me that my uncle, who's a fire fighter, had been called in to duty and wouldn't be coming up. Uh-oh. There goes the cabin. Well. I'm good at figuring things out, I wouldn't be stuck outside. I had made it this far and now I just had to wait for something else to come my way....

Coming soon: Queen of the park weekend part 2. and coverage of the competition.

Yuck.

Played it safe in the competition.
Wrecked myself on the ride down to the lodge.
Messed my groin up so much worse.
Shouldn't ride for two weeks.
Taking three days off and calling it good.
Hope I don't make myself worse.
I just can't stand not riding.
BLAHHHHH.

Pulled groin. What a groan.

It's one pm on a beautiful bluebird day. So why am I not snowboarding? Can you say, groin annihilation?

I pulled my groin (don't know how) on Tuesday but I've been riding it all week because it didn't really bother me too much. Yeah, it was hard to lift my leg up and hurt when I pulled tail grabs but still, it didn't get in the way of riding. Yesterday (Friday) was looking like it was going to be the best day of my season. Actually, it was the best day. Weather was perfect, I was hitting new rail features without getting too nervous, I was spinning threes all over, trying things I hadn't ever tried, and was feeling really solid in the air on the big jumps. And I was riding with some really good friends. A couple hours into the day I spun a front three on the first pinball jump (which I had been doing fine all day) but finished the rotation a little later than usual and felt a slight pull in my groin. I straight aired the next jump and then went in for the three jump line in pinball. Besides landing the first jump in that line pretty deep multiple times, I had been feeling awesome on it and felt confident about hitting it. This time however I got a little tail heavy in the air. I knew I was going to land the jump but it was just going to be a tail first land rather than a stomp. From the moment my tail touched the landing to when my board was fully contacting the snow I felt this horrible super pull in my groin, like my leg was just ripping off of my body. I got off to the side of the jumps and started cursing up a storm because I knew that was the end of my day. It hurt so so bad to just ride down to the bottom of the run. Then I spent twenty minutes walking over to the Burton Academy, a walk that usually takes 3 or 4 minutes because I had to stop every fifteen feet. After an hour of laying on a couch and trying to stretch my leg I figured I could test my groin out. If I could walk back to my board without having to stop too many times I would take a run. If I could ride through the park without too much pain I would keep riding. Well I made it to my board and then took a lap through the progression park. I was fine in the progression park on the ride on features and baby jumps so I cut over to pinball for the last few rails in that park. Ollie on to the Oakley pyramid rail and kabow; there's the pull again. Once again I barely made it down the rest of the run and then went straight for the clinic. I didn't want to pay for a hospital bill so I just talked to the nurse and asked if there was anything I could do for my groin. Nope. No stretches. No exercises. Just rest.

So here I am. In bed on this beautiful day. This is the first day that I've been here and haven't ridden. It sucks. Walking hurts a little less today so I might go over to this rail park we set up by the apartment complex and see if I can ride at all. Injury sucks. Especially when you get taken out on the best day of your season. ARG. I don't want to wait to ride. I'm going now. I can't sit around on a perfect day. Hopefully I don't make myself worse. I guess this is my lesson about how I should stretch everyday...