Whenever I go home my friends and family ask me about my season.
Unfortunately, I give canned responses just like anyone else who tries to explain a five-month trip in one sentence. In all my years of racing I've never really tried to sit down and explain what I do. "Yes mom, Italy was beautiful" or "I raced really well." Maybe, when someone looks at my pictures, I'll tell them about a castle I saw, but that's about it. I think most of my friends think I travel around Europe for free, ride powder, race once a week, and drink good beer.
My reality is quite different. From the 1st to the 23rd of January I had nine starts. And these nine starts were in four different countries. Travel time between events was anywhere from an hour-and-a-half to 13 hours. Some days I had a race followed by four hours of driving in order to race the next day. But, I love trying to keep this schedule, no matter how run down I get. Though there are exceptions.
The
World Championship slalom race was a classic shitty race day. The night before the race it started dumping. It wasn't light powder, it was the heavy, avalanche-causing stuff. We woke in the morning and it was still snowing with fog hanging low in the valley. The temperature was warm so the falling snow was on the verge of being rain. We got to the parking lot to catch the shuttle to the race hill and heard the race was postponed for two hours so the course workers could try to clear the snow from the hill. We reloaded the van and drove back to the hotel to kill some time.
I pondered the absurdity of actually clearing snow from a mountain. Once we finally made it back to the race hill, we attempted some warm-up runs through the slush bumps and bobsled track that was supposed to be a course. Due to the fog in the air and the fog in our goggles, we, of course, couldn't see anything. After two inspections of the course and a qualifying run that felt more like a ride on a jackhammer I stood at the bottom and watched a large percentage of the men's field crash in these poor conditions. Actually, I didn't really watch it, I stood looking at the big screen TV and tried to see through the pea soup if there was actually a rider on course.
This slalom at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, is a part of my snowboarding life. The majority of my life snowboarding is challenging race hills, Gs and speed, tough competition, disappointment and success, and parties that go off. I also get to travel to different countries, experience different cultures, and snowboard at the premier resorts around the world. I have sat in a healing cave two kilometers into a mountain in Bad Gastein, watched snow monkeys swim in natural hot springs, snowboarded on a volcano, and even in downtown Munich.
I had the opportunity to snowboard in the British Virgin Islands on snow shipped from Miami and compete in the most prestigious athletic event in the world, the Olympics. I have come close to death in a
van in Austria, lost friends in avalanches, and have seen friends retire and move on to new endeavors. I have suffered some of the most frustrating times of my life due to my snowboarding: difficulty racing; crashing in event after event; poor results; injuries; and, trying to adjust to new teams. I have experienced some of the greatest highs in my life due to my snowboarding: winning my first big race and getting my first real check; medals at the World Championships; feeling financially stable enough to give money to charity; and, donating my time to work with kids.
