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.
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.
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.
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