My buddy Russ came up a little while back and we shot video on one of the days he was here. The above clip was his edit from the one day of riding. I thought he did a hell of a great job cutting the video to the music. His equipment is top notch too, making for some really clean footage. It’s too bad I didn’t get more of him in the park. Maybe next time.
Wow… (thanks for the link Velzy)
My surf teacher, as I like to call her here, came up to visit me for a couple of weeks. This past weekend we drove up to Dillon and stayed with Jayne and Jason during their last weekend here.
Saturday, we went for a snowmobile ride at High Country Tours. Our tour guide, Mike, was just plain awesome. He was all about safety - but later he started showing off on the sled and took us on some really neat runs. We had a blast. Ya know, it really doesn’t take much to get those things up on one ski!
Saturday evening we hit Keystone for some night riding. As Velzy got up on her board for the first time in more than a year, I was well prepared to carefully watch and instruct her. I’d mustered up all my patience and wanted to show her what a wonderful teacher I could be. I had nothing to offer - she rode like a frack’n champ.
Sunday we headed out to Breckenridge and rode the day away. It was a bit crowded at the main lifts, but we wandered over to peak 7 and found a relatively empty lift servicing a wide variety of mostly blue runs. Once again, I was impressed with Velzy’s riding ability. She said she felt something click in her head during her Costa Rica surf trip. I think all the Yoga she’s been doing lately helped too! I know it helps me.
Finally, on Monday we headed back up to Keystone for the day. We spent a long time in the park playing on jumps and the pipe. I did some more 180’s both on the flat ground and coming off of little lips. Velzy was playing on all kinds of little kickers and finally hit some of the larger jumps in the Incubator park. She also took some runs down the half pipe carving up on the walls. I was shocked to say the least. Later in the day on one of our last runs - maybe it was the very last run - I decide to bomb a hill flat out. At the bottom of the run I spun around getting ready to wait on everyone to catch up. Sure enough, right behind me was Velzy.
My favorite thing, hands down, was seeing the stoke in that little girl’s eyes. Just priceless!
As mentioned before, I managed to smash the nose of my Burton Custom 162 on a rock. I took it in to Colorado Ski and Golf to see if I could get it fixed. This is the second major repair job I’ve made to the Custom - not counting filling gouges in the bottom sheet. The first repair I was able to make myself. I didn’t want to take this latest one on myself.
For $20, they did a really decent job of patching it up. He had to remove some of the metal and fill the gap in with epoxy. The ‘after’ part of the before/after photo attached was taken after a day of riding. I did manage to rough up the sensitive spot while riding. The original patch job was really clean looking. This photo shows that, even after abusing the nose of the board, all the layers are holding together nicely. I’m not sure how many more days I’ll get out of my Custom; but thanks to a job well done at the shop around the corner, it looks like I’ll get a few more.
Dear Self-Titled “Starbucks Buffoon”,
I was serious when I said, “I’m so blogging this.” I’d like to dedicate this post to thanking you and your co-workers (but mostly you) for providing me with the most entertaining Starbucks ordering experience I’ve had thus far. My first cup of Starbucks coffee with an extra “shot of love” was both a tasty treat and wonderful pick me up before a hard day of riding. Thanks for the laughs.
For the record, Wikipedia defines buffoon as:
…someone who provides amusement through inappropriate appearance and/or behavior. Strictly, a buffoon describes a “ridiculous, but nevertheless amusing person.” In the broad terms, a buffoon is a clownish, publicly amusing person, such as a court jester…
Thank You,
The guy who ordered a cup of coffee with a shot of mocha, a shot of espresso, a shot of love, a few cubes of ice, and room for cream.
I just had a fantastic weekend. One of my first snowboarding buddies, Russ, flew up from Austin for the weekend. Tina and Laura (from here in Denver) came out to Dillon with us and we stayed with Jay and Jayne. Tina and Laura rode with Russ and I all day Saturday at Keystone. We rode tree runs, moguls, fast flats, and spent some time in the park. Everyone had a blast. Kudos to Tina for enduring the knee bust on the park box.
So, today (Sunday), Russ and I rode together at Keystone again. We spent the better part of the day just playing in the park. Russ also finally had a chance to break out his $4,000 Sony DV cam. He shot some footage of me warming up on some runs and we caught a little bit of footage of each other playing in the park.
We were in a smaller terrain park playing on some rollers near the end of the day. Russ was clearing the jumps smoothly and tossing in some methods and a nose grab. I just wasn’t getting enough snap to clear the backside of the jumps. I was consistently landing just half a board length shy of the downside and was getting a bit frustrated.
On my last jump on film, I once again failed to completely clear the table top. Frustrated, I started carving to the right off of the upside of the next jump. I bailed off the lip and - without even thinking about it - hopped a 180. I landed switch clean with no shake or chatter.
This is a big deal to me! I’ve been *thinking* about a 180 for a while now. In fact, I thought about it on the way up the lift several times today; but I had no intention of trying one. Sure, I only had about a foot of vert, which is not a big deal… but I’ve never successfully landed a 180 - until today - making this my very first one. I was super stoked!.
71 days left…
