Day 35: Oh what a bruiser.
My buddy Adam came up from Dallas for what might be his last snowboard trip for a while. He’s got a baby on the way. I’ve never ridden with Adam, so I was intent on making sure I made it up to Copper mountain yesterday. It turned out to be a great day with lots of fresh snow. Copper had 5 fresh inches on the ground as we were driving up, and it continued to fall all day long.
It turned out to be one of the most abusive days of boarding I’ve had in a while. I’ve been riding the Arbor exclusively lately, and constantly adjusting my stance as I go. Because of the fresh powder and types of runs I thought we would be doing, I switched back to the longer Burton Custom for the day. I couldn’t seem to keep the board under me. I biffed it over and over. On my first run of the day, I splattered while trying to avoid a skier that cut me off while I was airborne. He apologized, but it didn’t do much to help the thumb I laid back in the process. Ouch. During our powder runs, I found myself constantly eating it. I couldn’t understand why. Knowing that I ate it on clean powder runs, you can imagine how much the bumps tore me up.
Later in the day, I examined my stance on the board. It was a lot different from how I’d been riding. I adjusted my bindings and it made a huge difference. It was a little too late, as I was already physically wiped out from crashing so much through the day.
I still had a ton of fun. We started things off on the moguls as we were riding with skiers. Then we dropped into the Enchanted Forest (holy crap, what an awesome run!). From there, we worked our way to one of the back bowls and spent most of the day. Near the end, we took some groomers down the front and hit the intermediate terrain park and a few tree runs in the process.
Due to a variety of factors, I was left without a ride home. I ended up hitching a ride at the top of the parking lot. The dude that picked me up was a local native named Luke. Turns out, he just started competing in slope style and used to compete in boarder cross. I’m hoping to get Russ back out here to shoot some video of this guy. Luke was kind enough to go out of his way and drop me off at my doorstep. Hell, he even helped me carry my gear up three flights of stairs - very nice guy.
Everything hurts today - it’s great. Legs, back, arms, neck, toe, thumb… it’s all trashed. I’ll be headed back out again tomorrow for day 36. It’s a special day, as it will be my base goal for the season. After tomorrow, I will have doubled my riding days since moving to Colorado last May. How cool is that? My next big milestone after tomorrow will be day 64 - which will give me a grand total of 100 days ever. And, of course, I’m still striving for the ultimate goal of 100 days this season. Wish me luck!
65 days left…
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February 28th, 2008 at 12:03 am
[…] writing this post while sick. I think I pushed myself a little too hard. Day 35 was pretty tough on me. The following day (Sunday) I tried to recover. Near the end of the day, I […]