01/05/2011
Here I am reporting in again after another eventful couple of weeks since my last update. I am in a pretty relaxed frame of mind, just really enjoy what might be last stages of this epic odyssey. Sat on a beautiful covered bed listening to some Bonobo and I couldn’t be more content.
The week leading upto my exams I spent a day re-acquainting myself with Norquay mountain – as I had only purchased a weekday pass for Lake Louise this was the cheapest option for me to get back on my board and get training after an incredible day off with Mandi chilling out. Loved just kicking back not doing a lot, yarning about life whilst strolling around town! Mandi Fair is a pretty awesome girl – she is definitely the hostess with the mostess – she is the kind of girl who will make sure her guests are fully taken care of and it’s a wonderful thing!
Norquay as I mentioned earlier is the hill Matt instructs at, he was working which meant I had to ride alone until 3pm. It was good to get some really focused mileage in – one of the best things about Norquay is in its smallness as a hill, it provides you with a consistent ENTIRE run of exactly what you want to snowboard. What I mean by that is if you go to the top of a chair and want to do a blue groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run, if you want to do a steep black groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run,, if you want to do a ridiculous bump run all the way down, there is always a suitable run etc...It is consistent in terms of what you want to do and ease of access is incredible. So you can imagine for training it was great – focused a couple of hours on bumps, then steeps then blues. After a day of training I played in the park for a bit whilst waiting for Matt to finish work. We took a couple of laps and filmed and as always Matts riding looked nothing short of solid. Things were starting to come together for me in terms of where my hip was placed so I was pleased.
I had sent a couple of the riding videos to various trainers from Japan and New Zealand, and the feedback I got was to then work on not so much my movements as it was going to be hard in a few days to change the way I naturally move on my snowboard, but the tactics I chose when snowboarding down bumps and steeps – turns out I was trying to snowboard to straight down steeps which was a really hard approach and instead of looking from side to side as I turn like I teach my students, this made it very difficult for me to control myself. With those subtle changes I found my riding down varied and steeper terrain got heaps better. Confidence was growing for sure!!
I was back at the Lake riding afterward and spent some time riding with Nik – this guy is soo frickin nice. I don’t know if I had covered off how we met. Kim my awesome friend from Japan worked and is very good friends with Nik. She told him whilst I was over to come and say hello – which he did during the level 3 course. He was doing his exams @ the same time I was doing my retake so we were definitely wanting to train whilst riding. He organised for me to jump in on some of the Lake Louise SBX training (snowboarder cross) which was soo good of him, but after a while and the eternal fear of riding SBX I chose to train on my own whilst he was doing that as I felt, though it was focused riding, it wasn’t on the areas I needed to work on for my exam.
I managed to get ½ day with Matt, a full day riding with Logan and Mandi, and a full day with Rich before the exams started. Riding with Matt we were aiming to do some focused riding, but after a couple of runs we were both over it and just getting frustrated with ourselves! Things just weren’t feeling right – we decided to just play around hit the park and that basically recovered the stoked factor that we were severely lacking earlier on in the day.
I didnt attend Day 1 of the exams as I was only resitting the riding portion of the exam so I spent Day 1 riding with Mandi and Logan!! I hadn’t seen Logan in soo long and it was awesome to catch up with him. I didnt hang out a huge amount with Logan in my second winter in Canada but post season we talked loads on facebook and got a long real well. It was cool to ride with Logan, we jibbed around and Mandi followed suit too! It looked like she was having fun – Logan was definitely fun to ride with so jibby agile and just solid on his board. Its amazing the amount of riders out there that don’t get the training instructors get that just ride so well without the need for anyone telling them how to ride. Even more amazing if we are taught to ride a certain way which is meant to help gain optimum performance, however you ride with someone like Logan who doesn’t do exactly what you are doing by the book, but is finding different ways of performing as optimally as you are! Thats the awesome thing about it – there is no right way – just different!
Had an awesome sunny riding day with Richie from Red also – he lives in Calgary works 4 days a week, rides 3 days a week during the winter and just loves life! We shredded Lake Louise together and it was so fun riding around with people from my past season! Everyone is major keen on just playing around having fun and not taking it too seriously – which is what it should be about! Riding with both Logan and Rich put me in a great frame of mind just before entering exams. The truth was if I hadn’t sussed out the riding at that point – it wasn’t going to happen in a couple of days.
Cue the day of the exam and nerves resonating so hard through my body it felt like there was another earthquake happening! Matt wasn’t massively confident after his first day on exams – he felt his teaches didnt go well. We fixed ourselves up for the last day of exams where I would join Matt for the latter half of the day to join in the riding!
A girl from Lake Louise called Tanya picked up Matt and I – it was her birthday and she turned 28. She works at Lake Louise snow school for Kevin, my course conductor and evaluator from my first sitting of the CASI 3 exams. She already is a Level 1 Evaluator and has her Level 2 badge – she took a sitting of the level 3 last year and didnt get anything so like me this was her second shot. What was different is she had to do everything again. It was cool to meet her she was pretty rad. We arrived at Sunshine Village and signed in. I saw Laura and Nik there and they were looking pretty happy it was the last day of exams for them.
It was my first time at Sunshine Village – it looked like a super cool hill – the place was a bit flat though – it looked like the mountain was spread over a huge surface area which led to certain areas having some seriously flat dead spots. You have to take a long gondola ride up from the carpark/base area up to the lift area – it was in the gondola we got chatting and met a rather unique character by the name of Arvind. He was the only other snowboard instructor of Indian decent that I had met – this was a pretty huge deal! Turns out he was a bit crazy in the Gondola he we discovered he was doing the riding resit like me! The only strange thing was when I looked at his board – I knew he wasn’t serious – he had a 142 cm Burton Nug – its basically the size of a skateboard and is designed purely for park! Imagine going to race in a rally car race in variable conditions in a Ferrari f1 – not going to work. His board was great for one thing – park, but not an all rounder like the rally car would be in its race. It was a bizarre choice! He was 30 yrs old from Calgary and was just pretty outlandish – he taught at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary and was definitely a park rat! Instructing for about 10-15 years and this was his 5th year trying for his level 3.
Those who were doing the riding resit were told to meet up with the group @ 12.30pm so Arv and I went riding – he knew the mountain well so I thought this would be a good option. I kinda wanted to lap the exams routes but Arv had his own ideas. In all fairness it didnt matter where we rode – however at the time I was nervous and it pissed me off a little that we hardly covered the exams routes. Arv wanted to stop in a secret spot before we started the day riding so he could “smoke a bowl” he offered me some which I politely refused! Given it was the day of a friggin exam. It was at that point that I knew the guy really didnt care.
After the morning riding with Arv I got to see just how cool Sunshine was – the park was fun, the terrain was mellow where you wanted it to be and aggressive where you wanted it to be also. Met back up with the crew and went for the ride off!
I wanted to listen to Kasabian through the entire 2 hr ride off! Its music that drives me and makes me happy also – perfect for a snowboard riding exam! We top to bottom laps of the bumps, then down through the park – good exam run to hit everything in one run. The bumps took some getting used to – we did three laps and I showed consistent improvement in each lap – the first lap was terrible but as the tunes pumped I thought about my tactics for riding the bumps, used my feet well and most important I was smiling and enjoying my riding. After my 3rd lap of the bumps I got some feedback on my edging, which concerned me. In an exam I wasn’t sure whether getting feedback was a good thing as it showed you needed to improve in an area of your riding. At that point I was convinced I had failed. In the park we lapped a jump to show we could spin – this wasn’t a huge problem. What was more worrying was the group management by the 4 evaulators. It was a very busy day lots of people coming through and it wasn’t the best jump to be lapping. Even worse was the condition of the jump – firm, firm and icy – it was terrible!
We finished up the ride off and I knew Arv had failed for sure – his attitude was hilarious – he would go and hit jumps on the side of runs instead of doing the tasks we were assigned and just had a super inappropriate approach to it all.
We had to wait an hour for results, but the time came and they said they would call out successful candidates and then everyone else could grab their forms. The call outs started and all 11 candidates were waiting in anticipation (Arv was late). First name to be called out was...MINE!!! AHHHHH!! Amazing – I couldn’t believe it – I was sooo shocked – so happy – I remember as my name was called how stoked Matt, Laura, Tanya (T bone) and Christina (Matts friend from Norquay) were for me!! I walked up to collect my registration card, certificate and level 3 pin badge ! All that hard work – a year of hard work came together – though I had to have 2 bites at the cherry I was soo happy.
Tanya’s name was next and we pretty much wet ourselves with joy as she went up to collect her goodies. I got up and hugged the crap out of her! It was amazing being able to share success with someone else.
Sadly those were the only names that were called out! Matt passed 2/3, Nik passed 2/3, Laura passed 1/3! I am wishing they had an opportunity for a second bite of the cherry like I did but there are no more exams running this summer, so they have to wait until next year. Matt was happy it was over and to get 2/3 is a great effort – my success was definitely bittersweet given the others didn’t pass, but inside I was ecstatic.
I had a great chance to reflect in the car and just couldn’t believe what I had achieved! To go from no snowboard teaching experience and a level 2 teacher and rider, to riding a season in NZ and Japan teaching full time for one of those winters and part time for another one of those was amazing in itself. To progress and get my skiing level 1 certification after 2 weeks of skiing in NZ was amazing, and to finish the year progressing most importantly in my first discipline was soo satisfying. I felt during Japan I was teaching to a high level and though my riding needed work in Canada – in Japan I felt I adapted well to the terrain and rode it the best way I could. I definitely felt ready to sit the course and exams for level 3, even though at the time I wasn’t so sure.
The year has been geared toward this and it feels great to have a high level teaching cert to my name to have something massively sustainable to show for the year I took off to do the thing I love.
We spent the evening hanging out with Mandi and a few of the crew from Norquay before heading out. I managed to get rather drunk – very unintentionally. It was my one and only night out in Banff so we had the Banff town signature drinks. The most memorable was the $9 trash can drink from the burger joint. It was a radioactive blue colour and I just tasted a lot of redbull. I just remember afterwards bouncing off the walls in the nightclub Tanya got us into – fun times!
What lies ahead is a massive crossroad where I need to make some tough decisions. Each decision leads to sacrifice and isn’t easy, but you have to have faith and believe that whatever decision is made things will work out fine. I want to make sure I am the master of my own happiness and do what I can to keep the smile on my face , even if I find myself not necessarily doing what I want to be doing! We shall see!
Anyway thats it for now! Abrupt ending I know – I am just fully aware the length of this blog is ridiculous! This might be the last one for a while – we shall see!
Much love people
Sunday, 1 May 2011
And he got the CASI 3
01/05/2011
Here I am reporting in again after another eventful couple of weeks since my last update. I am in a pretty relaxed frame of mind, just really enjoy what might be last stages of this epic odyssey. Sat on a beautiful covered bed listening to some Bonobo and I couldn’t be more content.
The week leading upto my exams I spent a day re-acquainting myself with Norquay mountain – as I had only purchased a weekday pass for Lake Louise this was the cheapest option for me to get back on my board and get training after an incredible day off with Mandi chilling out. Loved just kicking back not doing a lot, yarning about life whilst strolling around town! Mandi Fair is a pretty awesome girl – she is definitely the hostess with the mostess – she is the kind of girl who will make sure her guests are fully taken care of and it’s a wonderful thing!
Norquay as I mentioned earlier is the hill Matt instructs at, he was working which meant I had to ride alone until 3pm. It was good to get some really focused mileage in – one of the best things about Norquay is in its smallness as a hill, it provides you with a consistent ENTIRE run of exactly what you want to snowboard. What I mean by that is if you go to the top of a chair and want to do a blue groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run, if you want to do a steep black groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run,, if you want to do a ridiculous bump run all the way down, there is always a suitable run etc...It is consistent in terms of what you want to do and ease of access is incredible. So you can imagine for training it was great – focused a couple of hours on bumps, then steeps then blues. After a day of training I played in the park for a bit whilst waiting for Matt to finish work. We took a couple of laps and filmed and as always Matts riding looked nothing short of solid. Things were starting to come together for me in terms of where my hip was placed so I was pleased.
I had sent a couple of the riding videos to various trainers from Japan and New Zealand, and the feedback I got was to then work on not so much my movements as it was going to be hard in a few days to change the way I naturally move on my snowboard, but the tactics I chose when snowboarding down bumps and steeps – turns out I was trying to snowboard to straight down steeps which was a really hard approach and instead of looking from side to side as I turn like I teach my students, this made it very difficult for me to control myself. With those subtle changes I found my riding down varied and steeper terrain got heaps better. Confidence was growing for sure!!
I was back at the Lake riding afterward and spent some time riding with Nik – this guy is soo frickin nice. I don’t know if I had covered off how we met. Kim my awesome friend from Japan worked and is very good friends with Nik. She told him whilst I was over to come and say hello – which he did during the level 3 course. He was doing his exams @ the same time I was doing my retake so we were definitely wanting to train whilst riding. He organised for me to jump in on some of the Lake Louise SBX training (snowboarder cross) which was soo good of him, but after a while and the eternal fear of riding SBX I chose to train on my own whilst he was doing that as I felt, though it was focused riding, it wasn’t on the areas I needed to work on for my exam.
I managed to get ½ day with Matt, a full day riding with Logan and Mandi, and a full day with Rich before the exams started. Riding with Matt we were aiming to do some focused riding, but after a couple of runs we were both over it and just getting frustrated with ourselves! Things just weren’t feeling right – we decided to just play around hit the park and that basically recovered the stoked factor that we were severely lacking earlier on in the day.
I didnt attend Day 1 of the exams as I was only resitting the riding portion of the exam so I spent Day 1 riding with Mandi and Logan!! I hadn’t seen Logan in soo long and it was awesome to catch up with him. I didnt hang out a huge amount with Logan in my second winter in Canada but post season we talked loads on facebook and got a long real well. It was cool to ride with Logan, we jibbed around and Mandi followed suit too! It looked like she was having fun – Logan was definitely fun to ride with so jibby agile and just solid on his board. Its amazing the amount of riders out there that don’t get the training instructors get that just ride so well without the need for anyone telling them how to ride. Even more amazing if we are taught to ride a certain way which is meant to help gain optimum performance, however you ride with someone like Logan who doesn’t do exactly what you are doing by the book, but is finding different ways of performing as optimally as you are! Thats the awesome thing about it – there is no right way – just different!
Had an awesome sunny riding day with Richie from Red also – he lives in Calgary works 4 days a week, rides 3 days a week during the winter and just loves life! We shredded Lake Louise together and it was so fun riding around with people from my past season! Everyone is major keen on just playing around having fun and not taking it too seriously – which is what it should be about! Riding with both Logan and Rich put me in a great frame of mind just before entering exams. The truth was if I hadn’t sussed out the riding at that point – it wasn’t going to happen in a couple of days.
Cue the day of the exam and nerves resonating so hard through my body it felt like there was another earthquake happening! Matt wasn’t massively confident after his first day on exams – he felt his teaches didnt go well. We fixed ourselves up for the last day of exams where I would join Matt for the latter half of the day to join in the riding!
A girl from Lake Louise called Tanya picked up Matt and I – it was her birthday and she turned 28. She works at Lake Louise snow school for Kevin, my course conductor and evaluator from my first sitting of the CASI 3 exams. She already is a Level 1 Evaluator and has her Level 2 badge – she took a sitting of the level 3 last year and didnt get anything so like me this was her second shot. What was different is she had to do everything again. It was cool to meet her she was pretty rad. We arrived at Sunshine Village and signed in. I saw Laura and Nik there and they were looking pretty happy it was the last day of exams for them.
It was my first time at Sunshine Village – it looked like a super cool hill – the place was a bit flat though – it looked like the mountain was spread over a huge surface area which led to certain areas having some seriously flat dead spots. You have to take a long gondola ride up from the carpark/base area up to the lift area – it was in the gondola we got chatting and met a rather unique character by the name of Arvind. He was the only other snowboard instructor of Indian decent that I had met – this was a pretty huge deal! Turns out he was a bit crazy in the Gondola he we discovered he was doing the riding resit like me! The only strange thing was when I looked at his board – I knew he wasn’t serious – he had a 142 cm Burton Nug – its basically the size of a skateboard and is designed purely for park! Imagine going to race in a rally car race in variable conditions in a Ferrari f1 – not going to work. His board was great for one thing – park, but not an all rounder like the rally car would be in its race. It was a bizarre choice! He was 30 yrs old from Calgary and was just pretty outlandish – he taught at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary and was definitely a park rat! Instructing for about 10-15 years and this was his 5th year trying for his level 3.
Those who were doing the riding resit were told to meet up with the group @ 12.30pm so Arv and I went riding – he knew the mountain well so I thought this would be a good option. I kinda wanted to lap the exams routes but Arv had his own ideas. In all fairness it didnt matter where we rode – however at the time I was nervous and it pissed me off a little that we hardly covered the exams routes. Arv wanted to stop in a secret spot before we started the day riding so he could “smoke a bowl” he offered me some which I politely refused! Given it was the day of a friggin exam. It was at that point that I knew the guy really didnt care.
After the morning riding with Arv I got to see just how cool Sunshine was – the park was fun, the terrain was mellow where you wanted it to be and aggressive where you wanted it to be also. Met back up with the crew and went for the ride off!
I wanted to listen to Kasabian through the entire 2 hr ride off! Its music that drives me and makes me happy also – perfect for a snowboard riding exam! We top to bottom laps of the bumps, then down through the park – good exam run to hit everything in one run. The bumps took some getting used to – we did three laps and I showed consistent improvement in each lap – the first lap was terrible but as the tunes pumped I thought about my tactics for riding the bumps, used my feet well and most important I was smiling and enjoying my riding. After my 3rd lap of the bumps I got some feedback on my edging, which concerned me. In an exam I wasn’t sure whether getting feedback was a good thing as it showed you needed to improve in an area of your riding. At that point I was convinced I had failed. In the park we lapped a jump to show we could spin – this wasn’t a huge problem. What was more worrying was the group management by the 4 evaulators. It was a very busy day lots of people coming through and it wasn’t the best jump to be lapping. Even worse was the condition of the jump – firm, firm and icy – it was terrible!
We finished up the ride off and I knew Arv had failed for sure – his attitude was hilarious – he would go and hit jumps on the side of runs instead of doing the tasks we were assigned and just had a super inappropriate approach to it all.
We had to wait an hour for results, but the time came and they said they would call out successful candidates and then everyone else could grab their forms. The call outs started and all 11 candidates were waiting in anticipation (Arv was late). First name to be called out was...MINE!!! AHHHHH!! Amazing – I couldn’t believe it – I was sooo shocked – so happy – I remember as my name was called how stoked Matt, Laura, Tanya (T bone) and Christina (Matts friend from Norquay) were for me!! I walked up to collect my registration card, certificate and level 3 pin badge ! All that hard work – a year of hard work came together – though I had to have 2 bites at the cherry I was soo happy.
Tanya’s name was next and we pretty much wet ourselves with joy as she went up to collect her goodies. I got up and hugged the crap out of her! It was amazing being able to share success with someone else.
Sadly those were the only names that were called out! Matt passed 2/3, Nik passed 2/3, Laura passed 1/3! I am wishing they had an opportunity for a second bite of the cherry like I did but there are no more exams running this summer, so they have to wait until next year. Matt was happy it was over and to get 2/3 is a great effort – my success was definitely bittersweet given the others didn’t pass, but inside I was ecstatic.
I had a great chance to reflect in the car and just couldn’t believe what I had achieved! To go from no snowboard teaching experience and a level 2 teacher and rider, to riding a season in NZ and Japan teaching full time for one of those winters and part time for another one of those was amazing in itself. To progress and get my skiing level 1 certification after 2 weeks of skiing in NZ was amazing, and to finish the year progressing most importantly in my first discipline was soo satisfying. I felt during Japan I was teaching to a high level and though my riding needed work in Canada – in Japan I felt I adapted well to the terrain and rode it the best way I could. I definitely felt ready to sit the course and exams for level 3, even though at the time I wasn’t so sure.
The year has been geared toward this and it feels great to have a high level teaching cert to my name to have something massively sustainable to show for the year I took off to do the thing I love.
We spent the evening hanging out with Mandi and a few of the crew from Norquay before heading out. I managed to get rather drunk – very unintentionally. It was my one and only night out in Banff so we had the Banff town signature drinks. The most memorable was the $9 trash can drink from the burger joint. It was a radioactive blue colour and I just tasted a lot of redbull. I just remember afterwards bouncing off the walls in the nightclub Tanya got us into – fun times!
What lies ahead is a massive crossroad where I need to make some tough decisions. Each decision leads to sacrifice and isn’t easy, but you have to have faith and believe that whatever decision is made things will work out fine. I want to make sure I am the master of my own happiness and do what I can to keep the smile on my face , even if I find myself not necessarily doing what I want to be doing! We shall see!
Anyway thats it for now! Abrupt ending I know – I am just fully aware the length of this blog is ridiculous! This might be the last one for a while – we shall see!
Much love people
Here I am reporting in again after another eventful couple of weeks since my last update. I am in a pretty relaxed frame of mind, just really enjoy what might be last stages of this epic odyssey. Sat on a beautiful covered bed listening to some Bonobo and I couldn’t be more content.
The week leading upto my exams I spent a day re-acquainting myself with Norquay mountain – as I had only purchased a weekday pass for Lake Louise this was the cheapest option for me to get back on my board and get training after an incredible day off with Mandi chilling out. Loved just kicking back not doing a lot, yarning about life whilst strolling around town! Mandi Fair is a pretty awesome girl – she is definitely the hostess with the mostess – she is the kind of girl who will make sure her guests are fully taken care of and it’s a wonderful thing!
Norquay as I mentioned earlier is the hill Matt instructs at, he was working which meant I had to ride alone until 3pm. It was good to get some really focused mileage in – one of the best things about Norquay is in its smallness as a hill, it provides you with a consistent ENTIRE run of exactly what you want to snowboard. What I mean by that is if you go to the top of a chair and want to do a blue groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run, if you want to do a steep black groomer all the way down, there is always a suitable run,, if you want to do a ridiculous bump run all the way down, there is always a suitable run etc...It is consistent in terms of what you want to do and ease of access is incredible. So you can imagine for training it was great – focused a couple of hours on bumps, then steeps then blues. After a day of training I played in the park for a bit whilst waiting for Matt to finish work. We took a couple of laps and filmed and as always Matts riding looked nothing short of solid. Things were starting to come together for me in terms of where my hip was placed so I was pleased.
I had sent a couple of the riding videos to various trainers from Japan and New Zealand, and the feedback I got was to then work on not so much my movements as it was going to be hard in a few days to change the way I naturally move on my snowboard, but the tactics I chose when snowboarding down bumps and steeps – turns out I was trying to snowboard to straight down steeps which was a really hard approach and instead of looking from side to side as I turn like I teach my students, this made it very difficult for me to control myself. With those subtle changes I found my riding down varied and steeper terrain got heaps better. Confidence was growing for sure!!
I was back at the Lake riding afterward and spent some time riding with Nik – this guy is soo frickin nice. I don’t know if I had covered off how we met. Kim my awesome friend from Japan worked and is very good friends with Nik. She told him whilst I was over to come and say hello – which he did during the level 3 course. He was doing his exams @ the same time I was doing my retake so we were definitely wanting to train whilst riding. He organised for me to jump in on some of the Lake Louise SBX training (snowboarder cross) which was soo good of him, but after a while and the eternal fear of riding SBX I chose to train on my own whilst he was doing that as I felt, though it was focused riding, it wasn’t on the areas I needed to work on for my exam.
I managed to get ½ day with Matt, a full day riding with Logan and Mandi, and a full day with Rich before the exams started. Riding with Matt we were aiming to do some focused riding, but after a couple of runs we were both over it and just getting frustrated with ourselves! Things just weren’t feeling right – we decided to just play around hit the park and that basically recovered the stoked factor that we were severely lacking earlier on in the day.
I didnt attend Day 1 of the exams as I was only resitting the riding portion of the exam so I spent Day 1 riding with Mandi and Logan!! I hadn’t seen Logan in soo long and it was awesome to catch up with him. I didnt hang out a huge amount with Logan in my second winter in Canada but post season we talked loads on facebook and got a long real well. It was cool to ride with Logan, we jibbed around and Mandi followed suit too! It looked like she was having fun – Logan was definitely fun to ride with so jibby agile and just solid on his board. Its amazing the amount of riders out there that don’t get the training instructors get that just ride so well without the need for anyone telling them how to ride. Even more amazing if we are taught to ride a certain way which is meant to help gain optimum performance, however you ride with someone like Logan who doesn’t do exactly what you are doing by the book, but is finding different ways of performing as optimally as you are! Thats the awesome thing about it – there is no right way – just different!
Had an awesome sunny riding day with Richie from Red also – he lives in Calgary works 4 days a week, rides 3 days a week during the winter and just loves life! We shredded Lake Louise together and it was so fun riding around with people from my past season! Everyone is major keen on just playing around having fun and not taking it too seriously – which is what it should be about! Riding with both Logan and Rich put me in a great frame of mind just before entering exams. The truth was if I hadn’t sussed out the riding at that point – it wasn’t going to happen in a couple of days.
Cue the day of the exam and nerves resonating so hard through my body it felt like there was another earthquake happening! Matt wasn’t massively confident after his first day on exams – he felt his teaches didnt go well. We fixed ourselves up for the last day of exams where I would join Matt for the latter half of the day to join in the riding!
A girl from Lake Louise called Tanya picked up Matt and I – it was her birthday and she turned 28. She works at Lake Louise snow school for Kevin, my course conductor and evaluator from my first sitting of the CASI 3 exams. She already is a Level 1 Evaluator and has her Level 2 badge – she took a sitting of the level 3 last year and didnt get anything so like me this was her second shot. What was different is she had to do everything again. It was cool to meet her she was pretty rad. We arrived at Sunshine Village and signed in. I saw Laura and Nik there and they were looking pretty happy it was the last day of exams for them.
It was my first time at Sunshine Village – it looked like a super cool hill – the place was a bit flat though – it looked like the mountain was spread over a huge surface area which led to certain areas having some seriously flat dead spots. You have to take a long gondola ride up from the carpark/base area up to the lift area – it was in the gondola we got chatting and met a rather unique character by the name of Arvind. He was the only other snowboard instructor of Indian decent that I had met – this was a pretty huge deal! Turns out he was a bit crazy in the Gondola he we discovered he was doing the riding resit like me! The only strange thing was when I looked at his board – I knew he wasn’t serious – he had a 142 cm Burton Nug – its basically the size of a skateboard and is designed purely for park! Imagine going to race in a rally car race in variable conditions in a Ferrari f1 – not going to work. His board was great for one thing – park, but not an all rounder like the rally car would be in its race. It was a bizarre choice! He was 30 yrs old from Calgary and was just pretty outlandish – he taught at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary and was definitely a park rat! Instructing for about 10-15 years and this was his 5th year trying for his level 3.
Those who were doing the riding resit were told to meet up with the group @ 12.30pm so Arv and I went riding – he knew the mountain well so I thought this would be a good option. I kinda wanted to lap the exams routes but Arv had his own ideas. In all fairness it didnt matter where we rode – however at the time I was nervous and it pissed me off a little that we hardly covered the exams routes. Arv wanted to stop in a secret spot before we started the day riding so he could “smoke a bowl” he offered me some which I politely refused! Given it was the day of a friggin exam. It was at that point that I knew the guy really didnt care.
After the morning riding with Arv I got to see just how cool Sunshine was – the park was fun, the terrain was mellow where you wanted it to be and aggressive where you wanted it to be also. Met back up with the crew and went for the ride off!
I wanted to listen to Kasabian through the entire 2 hr ride off! Its music that drives me and makes me happy also – perfect for a snowboard riding exam! We top to bottom laps of the bumps, then down through the park – good exam run to hit everything in one run. The bumps took some getting used to – we did three laps and I showed consistent improvement in each lap – the first lap was terrible but as the tunes pumped I thought about my tactics for riding the bumps, used my feet well and most important I was smiling and enjoying my riding. After my 3rd lap of the bumps I got some feedback on my edging, which concerned me. In an exam I wasn’t sure whether getting feedback was a good thing as it showed you needed to improve in an area of your riding. At that point I was convinced I had failed. In the park we lapped a jump to show we could spin – this wasn’t a huge problem. What was more worrying was the group management by the 4 evaulators. It was a very busy day lots of people coming through and it wasn’t the best jump to be lapping. Even worse was the condition of the jump – firm, firm and icy – it was terrible!
We finished up the ride off and I knew Arv had failed for sure – his attitude was hilarious – he would go and hit jumps on the side of runs instead of doing the tasks we were assigned and just had a super inappropriate approach to it all.
We had to wait an hour for results, but the time came and they said they would call out successful candidates and then everyone else could grab their forms. The call outs started and all 11 candidates were waiting in anticipation (Arv was late). First name to be called out was...MINE!!! AHHHHH!! Amazing – I couldn’t believe it – I was sooo shocked – so happy – I remember as my name was called how stoked Matt, Laura, Tanya (T bone) and Christina (Matts friend from Norquay) were for me!! I walked up to collect my registration card, certificate and level 3 pin badge ! All that hard work – a year of hard work came together – though I had to have 2 bites at the cherry I was soo happy.
Tanya’s name was next and we pretty much wet ourselves with joy as she went up to collect her goodies. I got up and hugged the crap out of her! It was amazing being able to share success with someone else.
Sadly those were the only names that were called out! Matt passed 2/3, Nik passed 2/3, Laura passed 1/3! I am wishing they had an opportunity for a second bite of the cherry like I did but there are no more exams running this summer, so they have to wait until next year. Matt was happy it was over and to get 2/3 is a great effort – my success was definitely bittersweet given the others didn’t pass, but inside I was ecstatic.
I had a great chance to reflect in the car and just couldn’t believe what I had achieved! To go from no snowboard teaching experience and a level 2 teacher and rider, to riding a season in NZ and Japan teaching full time for one of those winters and part time for another one of those was amazing in itself. To progress and get my skiing level 1 certification after 2 weeks of skiing in NZ was amazing, and to finish the year progressing most importantly in my first discipline was soo satisfying. I felt during Japan I was teaching to a high level and though my riding needed work in Canada – in Japan I felt I adapted well to the terrain and rode it the best way I could. I definitely felt ready to sit the course and exams for level 3, even though at the time I wasn’t so sure.
The year has been geared toward this and it feels great to have a high level teaching cert to my name to have something massively sustainable to show for the year I took off to do the thing I love.
We spent the evening hanging out with Mandi and a few of the crew from Norquay before heading out. I managed to get rather drunk – very unintentionally. It was my one and only night out in Banff so we had the Banff town signature drinks. The most memorable was the $9 trash can drink from the burger joint. It was a radioactive blue colour and I just tasted a lot of redbull. I just remember afterwards bouncing off the walls in the nightclub Tanya got us into – fun times!
What lies ahead is a massive crossroad where I need to make some tough decisions. Each decision leads to sacrifice and isn’t easy, but you have to have faith and believe that whatever decision is made things will work out fine. I want to make sure I am the master of my own happiness and do what I can to keep the smile on my face , even if I find myself not necessarily doing what I want to be doing! We shall see!
Anyway thats it for now! Abrupt ending I know – I am just fully aware the length of this blog is ridiculous! This might be the last one for a while – we shall see!
Much love people
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Soo retakes it is :( DOH!
16/04/2011
So here I am reporting in from a day off the hill, after some exhausting days of snowboarding. So I reported in after day 1 of the course, and I remember that being not such a happy day. The next few days weren’t that great to be honest – day 2 was freestyle and that was the funnest day – we spent the entire day in the park doing sample lessons and learning new manoeuvres – it was a lot of fun. No pressure to do any teaches just being taught how to teach in the park and park concepts.
The following day was spent freeriding, and this is where I struggled, the feedback on my snowboarding is that my hips were too open which made it difficult for me to achieve a stable balanced position on the board. I hadn’t really done much high end riding in Japan down variable bumps or steeps given the snow conditions were epic in Japan. I never really got much feedback or training on my riding either – not that this is an excuse – I should have seeked it out and worked on it.
The last day was spent doing practise teaches – The night before I didnt prepare at all and it showed in my teaches. My freestyle teach was way too focused on theory instead of actually teaching the manoeuvre. What I had to understand was that we were teaching a manoeuvre which would develop one of the 5 snowboardin skills, therefore i didnt need to go into detail around the skill development aspect but more around how to complete the manoeuvre. I completely crumbled in my freeride teach and didnt deliver a lesson. By the end of the day I was over the course and over level 3 I just wanted to go home. Matt, Nancy and Darrel all delivered lessons and all needed work apart from Darrels – his was pretty spot on.
After the course we were all pretty exhausted – I got feedback and as it stood I wasn’t at standard on any of the 3 components for level 3 which was concerning given my exams were in 3 days time. Cue the hard work I always have to put in for exams – they can never be easy!! I took one day off the hill to write up lesson plans, and spent the following 2 days on the hill sussing out terrain for each and every lesson plan. I feel like when I have planned and am prepared I can deliver a good exam lesson with a little more confidence, that just thinking of it on the fly on the chairlift. That didnt work so well for me on the course so I learnt from it.
Darryl and I were taking exams and because Matt wasn’t driving us up – I had to take the staff bus at 6.15am!! I turned up at the bus stop – and the bus was 30 minutes late. It arrived and the driver asked if I was staff, I said no and he said I was probably waiting for the fresh trax bus and I should wait. I let the bus go only to realise that fresh trax was probably a service run by lake louise for guests wanting to get up the hill early. They would pay for a spot on the early bus, the only problem was there was no one else waiting for a bus, and I didnt pre book as I only wanted to head up early to make it for exams. I stressed out and went back to Matts place – the last thing I wanted to do was be late for my first day – Matt kindly drove me around town to find the bus, we ended up going to the Banff Park Lodge where a staff bus would pick me up. Darryl was waiting and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Day 1 of the exams was a teaching day. I taught a freeride lesson first and it went relatively well. I taught on pivot and steering down varied terrain, and I literally did a lesson keeping the group moving the entire time with revolutions of the training cycle and good feedback. The issues highlighted in my lesson were safety related as I didnt do a demo at the beginning. So I thought that was enough to mess up and fail. My second lesson was a freestyle teach on stance and balance – so I taught backside 180’s with a lookback blind landing. It went really well and I felt was pretty flawless and my feedback at the end of the lesson was positive – I just wasn’t sure it was enough to redeem myself. I remember just being happy that the first day of teaching was over. The following day I was assigned a pedagogue session (instructor training) on Theme. I had the night to plan it and decided to go first in the morning. All was going fairly well until a run I was going to use was closed, I panicked and did the stupidest thing to adapt. I did a development tactic down a cat track – which was SOOO dangerous. It was the dumbest move ever and I was just thrown off. It was highlighted by the examiner at the end of the lesson and I again thought I had failed that section also! I was really down for the rest of the day and still had the last section, the ride off – just snowboarding. I cleared my head over lunch and went out riding with the examiners – it was really challenging and I struggled. By the end of the day I thought I had failed everything.
There was a long wait for results, but they were delivered and to my utter disbelief I had passed teaching, and pedagogue and failed riding! I was soo happy to have passed 2 modules, and if I had to work on any I would have preferred it to be my riding. The feedback I got from the examiners was similar to the feedback I got from course – I need to work on my hips. I immediately booked retests on April 22nd at Sunshine and I will work hard to correct my riding!
Correction has been going on since the 12th since I got my results. I have taken a day off today but the 13th, 14th and 15th were spent riding. I rode the 13th and did some work on keeping my hips forward, and got a little bored – bumped into Charlotte Kierle and rode park with her and her friends in the morning which was awesome. She has such a solid base of freestyle crew friends it was awesome. She pushed me into trying the XL jump in the park which scared me so much but I made it! In the afternoon I rode with Nik and just worked on following his line. I got some video analysis of my riding to send to my trainers which really has helped also. I rode the lake on the 14th a little with Nik and a little on my own, I felt my alignment was getting there, I just need to do it without thinking about it now!
After riding the lake on the 14th we drove to Kicking Horse in Golden BC. The resort had been closed all week and accumulated 30cm of fresh snow! Matt, Mandi, Matts Dad and I set off and I immediately fell asleep. Before that I just remember the drive being oh so beautiful! Such epic scenary, the part of Canada I was in, and where we were going was sooo beautiful.
We arrived at our apartments, they were slope side and were soo nice! It was high roller living for the small price of $99 – for one nights accommodation and a lift pass to ride the mountain! Bargain! Unfortunately there was no food in the hotel and as the resort was shut only to open the next day we had to drive down to Golden, the little town at the base of kicking horse mountain to get dinner. We had a super nice feed and drove back up to play a game of beanie before heading to bed.
Riding kicking horse was nothing short of epic, I didnt really think much about my hip, just enjoying my riding – the fresh snow was oh so nice! Matt made a great call coming to the horse for sure. Never have I seen a mountain with so much steep in bounds terrain! Soo knarly! This was a big mountain with lots of good terrain available to have fun in when there was a lot of snow. We had such a fun time riding steep fresh snow! We got some awesome shots too!!
I took a day off the hill today to run some errands and relax my legs after some hardcore riding! Spending the day with Mandi was most excellent. We did a whole lot of nothing but it was great – good for the mind.
Socially I havent been upto much other than hanging out with Mandi and Matt which has been awesome – we’ve done lots of eating out – every night in Banff there is always somewhere nice to eat at affordable prices. We’ve had some incredible pizza at the bison! $10 a pizza and they are soo good, I especially liked the Donair – lamb doner meat with lettuce and onion and a sweet garlic sauce – delicious. We’ve been for some epic ribs too!! – AHH I love Ribs!
Thats about it from my update – over the next few days ill just be riding hard training for my retake – at least I only have one focus – I’ll keep you updated on how it goes –
Much love people
So here I am reporting in from a day off the hill, after some exhausting days of snowboarding. So I reported in after day 1 of the course, and I remember that being not such a happy day. The next few days weren’t that great to be honest – day 2 was freestyle and that was the funnest day – we spent the entire day in the park doing sample lessons and learning new manoeuvres – it was a lot of fun. No pressure to do any teaches just being taught how to teach in the park and park concepts.
The following day was spent freeriding, and this is where I struggled, the feedback on my snowboarding is that my hips were too open which made it difficult for me to achieve a stable balanced position on the board. I hadn’t really done much high end riding in Japan down variable bumps or steeps given the snow conditions were epic in Japan. I never really got much feedback or training on my riding either – not that this is an excuse – I should have seeked it out and worked on it.
The last day was spent doing practise teaches – The night before I didnt prepare at all and it showed in my teaches. My freestyle teach was way too focused on theory instead of actually teaching the manoeuvre. What I had to understand was that we were teaching a manoeuvre which would develop one of the 5 snowboardin skills, therefore i didnt need to go into detail around the skill development aspect but more around how to complete the manoeuvre. I completely crumbled in my freeride teach and didnt deliver a lesson. By the end of the day I was over the course and over level 3 I just wanted to go home. Matt, Nancy and Darrel all delivered lessons and all needed work apart from Darrels – his was pretty spot on.
After the course we were all pretty exhausted – I got feedback and as it stood I wasn’t at standard on any of the 3 components for level 3 which was concerning given my exams were in 3 days time. Cue the hard work I always have to put in for exams – they can never be easy!! I took one day off the hill to write up lesson plans, and spent the following 2 days on the hill sussing out terrain for each and every lesson plan. I feel like when I have planned and am prepared I can deliver a good exam lesson with a little more confidence, that just thinking of it on the fly on the chairlift. That didnt work so well for me on the course so I learnt from it.
Darryl and I were taking exams and because Matt wasn’t driving us up – I had to take the staff bus at 6.15am!! I turned up at the bus stop – and the bus was 30 minutes late. It arrived and the driver asked if I was staff, I said no and he said I was probably waiting for the fresh trax bus and I should wait. I let the bus go only to realise that fresh trax was probably a service run by lake louise for guests wanting to get up the hill early. They would pay for a spot on the early bus, the only problem was there was no one else waiting for a bus, and I didnt pre book as I only wanted to head up early to make it for exams. I stressed out and went back to Matts place – the last thing I wanted to do was be late for my first day – Matt kindly drove me around town to find the bus, we ended up going to the Banff Park Lodge where a staff bus would pick me up. Darryl was waiting and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Day 1 of the exams was a teaching day. I taught a freeride lesson first and it went relatively well. I taught on pivot and steering down varied terrain, and I literally did a lesson keeping the group moving the entire time with revolutions of the training cycle and good feedback. The issues highlighted in my lesson were safety related as I didnt do a demo at the beginning. So I thought that was enough to mess up and fail. My second lesson was a freestyle teach on stance and balance – so I taught backside 180’s with a lookback blind landing. It went really well and I felt was pretty flawless and my feedback at the end of the lesson was positive – I just wasn’t sure it was enough to redeem myself. I remember just being happy that the first day of teaching was over. The following day I was assigned a pedagogue session (instructor training) on Theme. I had the night to plan it and decided to go first in the morning. All was going fairly well until a run I was going to use was closed, I panicked and did the stupidest thing to adapt. I did a development tactic down a cat track – which was SOOO dangerous. It was the dumbest move ever and I was just thrown off. It was highlighted by the examiner at the end of the lesson and I again thought I had failed that section also! I was really down for the rest of the day and still had the last section, the ride off – just snowboarding. I cleared my head over lunch and went out riding with the examiners – it was really challenging and I struggled. By the end of the day I thought I had failed everything.
There was a long wait for results, but they were delivered and to my utter disbelief I had passed teaching, and pedagogue and failed riding! I was soo happy to have passed 2 modules, and if I had to work on any I would have preferred it to be my riding. The feedback I got from the examiners was similar to the feedback I got from course – I need to work on my hips. I immediately booked retests on April 22nd at Sunshine and I will work hard to correct my riding!
Correction has been going on since the 12th since I got my results. I have taken a day off today but the 13th, 14th and 15th were spent riding. I rode the 13th and did some work on keeping my hips forward, and got a little bored – bumped into Charlotte Kierle and rode park with her and her friends in the morning which was awesome. She has such a solid base of freestyle crew friends it was awesome. She pushed me into trying the XL jump in the park which scared me so much but I made it! In the afternoon I rode with Nik and just worked on following his line. I got some video analysis of my riding to send to my trainers which really has helped also. I rode the lake on the 14th a little with Nik and a little on my own, I felt my alignment was getting there, I just need to do it without thinking about it now!
After riding the lake on the 14th we drove to Kicking Horse in Golden BC. The resort had been closed all week and accumulated 30cm of fresh snow! Matt, Mandi, Matts Dad and I set off and I immediately fell asleep. Before that I just remember the drive being oh so beautiful! Such epic scenary, the part of Canada I was in, and where we were going was sooo beautiful.
We arrived at our apartments, they were slope side and were soo nice! It was high roller living for the small price of $99 – for one nights accommodation and a lift pass to ride the mountain! Bargain! Unfortunately there was no food in the hotel and as the resort was shut only to open the next day we had to drive down to Golden, the little town at the base of kicking horse mountain to get dinner. We had a super nice feed and drove back up to play a game of beanie before heading to bed.
Riding kicking horse was nothing short of epic, I didnt really think much about my hip, just enjoying my riding – the fresh snow was oh so nice! Matt made a great call coming to the horse for sure. Never have I seen a mountain with so much steep in bounds terrain! Soo knarly! This was a big mountain with lots of good terrain available to have fun in when there was a lot of snow. We had such a fun time riding steep fresh snow! We got some awesome shots too!!
I took a day off the hill today to run some errands and relax my legs after some hardcore riding! Spending the day with Mandi was most excellent. We did a whole lot of nothing but it was great – good for the mind.
Socially I havent been upto much other than hanging out with Mandi and Matt which has been awesome – we’ve done lots of eating out – every night in Banff there is always somewhere nice to eat at affordable prices. We’ve had some incredible pizza at the bison! $10 a pizza and they are soo good, I especially liked the Donair – lamb doner meat with lettuce and onion and a sweet garlic sauce – delicious. We’ve been for some epic ribs too!! – AHH I love Ribs!
Thats about it from my update – over the next few days ill just be riding hard training for my retake – at least I only have one focus – I’ll keep you updated on how it goes –
Much love people
Monday, 4 April 2011
And so the madness begins - level 3...ugh!!
04/04/2011
So here I am reporting from Matt and Mandi’s lovely apartment in beautiful Banff, Alberta Canada. I cannot express how amazing it is to be back in Canada.
With the time difference being 7 hrs behind the UK I suffered with a little bit of jet lag and was up at 4.30am. Matt rose up at 7.30am to go to work, and I headed up to Norquay mountain with him. There are 3 lift operated mountains around the Banff area – Norquay, Sunshine and Lake Louise. Given Matt had spoken to his manager at Norquay Ski School about me being available for some snowboarding work I headed up with him. In exchange I would get lift tickets to ski the quay.
We drove up and arriving at the resort reminded me very much of my winter at Red Mountain. Small hill, everyone knows everyone and just really friendly times. I was pretty stoked to be there. We went to speak to Gord the ski school director at Norquay and there was no work for me but I got a free lift ticket anyway which was great. Matt had work all day as did Mandi so I pretty much rode on my own. In the morning I did some training with a ski instructor called John who was training for his level 1 snowboard. After the training was done I went off and explored the mountain. I took it as an opportunity to get used to riding steeps again – I hadn’t really done much steep riding at Japan and it took a bit of getting used to. I loved the fact that within an hour I was comfortable with the mountain at Norquay – its a small hill but has everything you need in terms of Terrain – good bumps, good steeps and a good park! All very accessible and easy to get to! Loved it.
Getting home Matt, Mandi and I ate a lovely Pork dinner and called it a night! Matt was working all weekend, but amazingly Mandi wasn’t so we agreed to do some snowboarding together over the weekend.
On Saturday we were up on a fairly cold overcast day at Norquay – I managed to score another free ticket and Mandi and I did some runs together! There was a save the melons drive – breast cancer awareness! As a result an airbag and rail jam was set up. I decided to pay the $20 donation to hit the airbag, and I had such a fun afternoon sessioning it.
There were local riders doing some amazing aerial tricks, back double cork 10’s and general insane trickery. I managed to do a couple of 360 spins, I failed on my underflip attempts, but was massively proud of nailing a couple of nollie front flips onto the bag – it was very awesome. I remember having a delicious $9 rib lunch with Mandi which was lovely, before heading home to chill.
The following day was spent riding with Mandi in the morning, and then some of the Norquay ski school staff in the afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day so it was perfect for getting some really good shots. The amazing thing was 10cm of fresh snow fell so it was a bluebird pow day!! Soo good. Managed to get some sweet fresh snow! I was spoilt in Japan because a pow day was a 30cm dump, whereas here its more like a 10cm dump. But I am surprised we are even getting snow in April! So its all good. The season in Canada appears to have been a good one with lots of snow!
Matt Mandi & I had an epic Pizza dinner before heading home to watch the Bourne Identity and hit bed, ready for our first day of CASI 3 pre-course...
Matt and I woke early to make it to Lake Louise for 8.30am. From Banff its a 45min drive. We picked up one of Matts friends Darrel and made our way. The course got underway in the morning, our trainer Kevin is a really nice guy. Banff local, married with a child and has been in the business for 14 years. He works at the Lake as the assistant director for the ski school. Conditions weren’t amazing, it was pretty cold and visibility wasn’t great. In terms of the course I don’t really want to go into the day too much other than it flipped everything I knew about the level 3 pedagogue section on its head! Matt, Darrel and I were pretty confused by it all but we’ve got time till the exams. There were 2 other participants Mitch from Oz – currently working at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary and Nancy. Nancy worked for Kevin at the Lake , however took a winter off teaching to focus on enjoying riding again! I know the feeling! I hate exams, and the feeling that I am being watched and told I am not good enough.
That brings me up to the here and now – I am just chilling with Matt and Mandi getting ready for another day on course tomorrow – I am really hoping that it will be a better day – but we shall see!
I better roll out – feeling pretty frustrated by the whole course situation thing but hopefully things will work out!
Take care people – much love and respect!
So here I am reporting from Matt and Mandi’s lovely apartment in beautiful Banff, Alberta Canada. I cannot express how amazing it is to be back in Canada.
With the time difference being 7 hrs behind the UK I suffered with a little bit of jet lag and was up at 4.30am. Matt rose up at 7.30am to go to work, and I headed up to Norquay mountain with him. There are 3 lift operated mountains around the Banff area – Norquay, Sunshine and Lake Louise. Given Matt had spoken to his manager at Norquay Ski School about me being available for some snowboarding work I headed up with him. In exchange I would get lift tickets to ski the quay.
We drove up and arriving at the resort reminded me very much of my winter at Red Mountain. Small hill, everyone knows everyone and just really friendly times. I was pretty stoked to be there. We went to speak to Gord the ski school director at Norquay and there was no work for me but I got a free lift ticket anyway which was great. Matt had work all day as did Mandi so I pretty much rode on my own. In the morning I did some training with a ski instructor called John who was training for his level 1 snowboard. After the training was done I went off and explored the mountain. I took it as an opportunity to get used to riding steeps again – I hadn’t really done much steep riding at Japan and it took a bit of getting used to. I loved the fact that within an hour I was comfortable with the mountain at Norquay – its a small hill but has everything you need in terms of Terrain – good bumps, good steeps and a good park! All very accessible and easy to get to! Loved it.
Getting home Matt, Mandi and I ate a lovely Pork dinner and called it a night! Matt was working all weekend, but amazingly Mandi wasn’t so we agreed to do some snowboarding together over the weekend.
On Saturday we were up on a fairly cold overcast day at Norquay – I managed to score another free ticket and Mandi and I did some runs together! There was a save the melons drive – breast cancer awareness! As a result an airbag and rail jam was set up. I decided to pay the $20 donation to hit the airbag, and I had such a fun afternoon sessioning it.
There were local riders doing some amazing aerial tricks, back double cork 10’s and general insane trickery. I managed to do a couple of 360 spins, I failed on my underflip attempts, but was massively proud of nailing a couple of nollie front flips onto the bag – it was very awesome. I remember having a delicious $9 rib lunch with Mandi which was lovely, before heading home to chill.
The following day was spent riding with Mandi in the morning, and then some of the Norquay ski school staff in the afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day so it was perfect for getting some really good shots. The amazing thing was 10cm of fresh snow fell so it was a bluebird pow day!! Soo good. Managed to get some sweet fresh snow! I was spoilt in Japan because a pow day was a 30cm dump, whereas here its more like a 10cm dump. But I am surprised we are even getting snow in April! So its all good. The season in Canada appears to have been a good one with lots of snow!
Matt Mandi & I had an epic Pizza dinner before heading home to watch the Bourne Identity and hit bed, ready for our first day of CASI 3 pre-course...
Matt and I woke early to make it to Lake Louise for 8.30am. From Banff its a 45min drive. We picked up one of Matts friends Darrel and made our way. The course got underway in the morning, our trainer Kevin is a really nice guy. Banff local, married with a child and has been in the business for 14 years. He works at the Lake as the assistant director for the ski school. Conditions weren’t amazing, it was pretty cold and visibility wasn’t great. In terms of the course I don’t really want to go into the day too much other than it flipped everything I knew about the level 3 pedagogue section on its head! Matt, Darrel and I were pretty confused by it all but we’ve got time till the exams. There were 2 other participants Mitch from Oz – currently working at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary and Nancy. Nancy worked for Kevin at the Lake , however took a winter off teaching to focus on enjoying riding again! I know the feeling! I hate exams, and the feeling that I am being watched and told I am not good enough.
That brings me up to the here and now – I am just chilling with Matt and Mandi getting ready for another day on course tomorrow – I am really hoping that it will be a better day – but we shall see!
I better roll out – feeling pretty frustrated by the whole course situation thing but hopefully things will work out!
Take care people – much love and respect!
Thursday, 31 March 2011
And he's in BANFF baby
31st March 2011
So here I am reporting from an aeroplane of all places. With 20 minutes left before I land in Calgary I was trying to think of ways to kill the time – so a blog seemed like the best idea. Sleeping would be ideal however it will be 2pm in the afternoon when I land, better to save all that tiredness to sync up with the Canadian time zone!! – Oh Joy! In the 10 days I was back in the UK I just managed to get the sleeping pattern back for there, now I need to re-adjust yet again! I hope I am ok for my exams. They start on the 4th April.
So I am currently going through that nervous/excited feeling of yet another adventure! This one in a new part of Canada – I have never been to the state of Alberta and am certainly looking forward to Snowboarding in the Rockies. I have exams in Lake Louise and Sunshine Villiage so I will get to see 2 amazing resorts. I am really looking forward to picturesque beauty and tranquillity for sure!!
I had to close the laptop down as the plane was landing. However to continue after landing, going through customs was not as painful as it normally is and Matt was there in his Toyota Corolla to pick me up. It was good to see him and I was so grateful for everything he was doing for me. It was amazing driving through from Calgary to Banff, I loved out of nowhere, the horizon changed from and before you knew it you could see this epic mountain range in front of you. It was truly beautiful. I tried to get pictures to capture the beauty but unfortunately they didn’t do it justice. Matt and I were catching up on the journey home and stopped off at Costco to do some shopping. I managed to organise a bank account card for my Canadian Savings Account and dumped a load of cash into the account so I wouldn’t have to carry it. I converted all of the yens I had saved from Japan into Canadian Dollars – there looks like there might be enough for me to survive but its going to be tough not earning in the mountains. Matt was telling me how slammed Norquay Mountain Ski School were, and suggested I could do a couple of hours of lessons for a free pass for the mountain. I gratefully accepted the offer so I could get some free snowboarding in and check out Norquay. I am up early tomorrow to start with the school. The thought of working for the school does amuse me a little given I know nothing about the mountain or the products the school sells etc... but it should work out.
When we arrived into Banff I settled into Matts lovely little place, we had some dinner and then went for a stroll around Banff town. It is a typical ski town and I absolutely love being back in the small Canadian ski town scene. It is soo nice to be around friendly people and just those who share the same passion as you!
As we were strolling through some of the shops, I bumped into a friend from Hemel Snowdome – Charlotte Kierle! It was so random I didnt even know she was here – we caught up and she seems to be living the dream in Canada doing winter after winter and just enjoying life – sounds familiar . It was great to see a friendly face for sure!
I met Matts lovely girlfriend Mandii in the evening after she finished work and we talked for a while about stuff and now after being awake for 24hrs I am tucked up in my little sofa bed just waiting to put my head down. I will report further later but for now its sleepy time.
Much love
Koo
So here I am reporting from an aeroplane of all places. With 20 minutes left before I land in Calgary I was trying to think of ways to kill the time – so a blog seemed like the best idea. Sleeping would be ideal however it will be 2pm in the afternoon when I land, better to save all that tiredness to sync up with the Canadian time zone!! – Oh Joy! In the 10 days I was back in the UK I just managed to get the sleeping pattern back for there, now I need to re-adjust yet again! I hope I am ok for my exams. They start on the 4th April.
So I am currently going through that nervous/excited feeling of yet another adventure! This one in a new part of Canada – I have never been to the state of Alberta and am certainly looking forward to Snowboarding in the Rockies. I have exams in Lake Louise and Sunshine Villiage so I will get to see 2 amazing resorts. I am really looking forward to picturesque beauty and tranquillity for sure!!
I had to close the laptop down as the plane was landing. However to continue after landing, going through customs was not as painful as it normally is and Matt was there in his Toyota Corolla to pick me up. It was good to see him and I was so grateful for everything he was doing for me. It was amazing driving through from Calgary to Banff, I loved out of nowhere, the horizon changed from and before you knew it you could see this epic mountain range in front of you. It was truly beautiful. I tried to get pictures to capture the beauty but unfortunately they didn’t do it justice. Matt and I were catching up on the journey home and stopped off at Costco to do some shopping. I managed to organise a bank account card for my Canadian Savings Account and dumped a load of cash into the account so I wouldn’t have to carry it. I converted all of the yens I had saved from Japan into Canadian Dollars – there looks like there might be enough for me to survive but its going to be tough not earning in the mountains. Matt was telling me how slammed Norquay Mountain Ski School were, and suggested I could do a couple of hours of lessons for a free pass for the mountain. I gratefully accepted the offer so I could get some free snowboarding in and check out Norquay. I am up early tomorrow to start with the school. The thought of working for the school does amuse me a little given I know nothing about the mountain or the products the school sells etc... but it should work out.
When we arrived into Banff I settled into Matts lovely little place, we had some dinner and then went for a stroll around Banff town. It is a typical ski town and I absolutely love being back in the small Canadian ski town scene. It is soo nice to be around friendly people and just those who share the same passion as you!
As we were strolling through some of the shops, I bumped into a friend from Hemel Snowdome – Charlotte Kierle! It was so random I didnt even know she was here – we caught up and she seems to be living the dream in Canada doing winter after winter and just enjoying life – sounds familiar . It was great to see a friendly face for sure!
I met Matts lovely girlfriend Mandii in the evening after she finished work and we talked for a while about stuff and now after being awake for 24hrs I am tucked up in my little sofa bed just waiting to put my head down. I will report further later but for now its sleepy time.
Much love
Koo
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
The end of an Amazing Winter in Japan
21st March 2011
Here I am a week on from my last blog and I can safely say I didnt expect to be writing it from where I am currently sitting. I am back home in the UK having cut my trip short by 12 days. I was due to leave Japan on the 30th March and do some travelling from the 23rd to the 30th – however I changed my flights and departed Niseko on the 18th March.
I received calls and messages of concern from family and friends in regard to the Fukishima Nuclear Power plant leakage resulting from the Earthquake. Since the disaster the power plant was damaged and as a result there have been serious radiation leaks from the plant. A 30km radius around Fukishima has been evacuated and there has been all sorts of news regarding the rise in radiation levels.
Hearing this news on a daily basis and constantly receiving calls and messages of concern struck fear in the visitors to Japan. However we needed to bear in mind this was all happening on the South Island of Japan of Honshu not Hokkaido. The fear of radiation being sent our way via the wind was enough to convince people to leave early.
Cue the mass exodus of a lot of staff from the NBS Ski School. I didnt want to leave but saw it only fair given I had a lot of people worried for me at home to return – so here I am. I will work in reverse and tell you about my journey and then the few days leading up to me leaving as well as my overall thoughts on my winter in Japan .
So my journey was nothing short of painful! I did a lot of sleeping – it started from Niseko to Sapporo on a bus – no real dramas, and then the flight from Sapporo to Tokyo was also pretty painless. I transferred from Haneda airport to Narita International airport in Tokyo. It was in Tokyo I was expecting madness but it seemed like it was very much business as usual. I was expecting hazmat suits but though the radiation levels have increased slightly in Tokyo there was no panic as the levels are not at a point which could affect human health. People forget how dignified and proud Japanese people are, the press internationally seems to be blowing the problem massively out of proportion which as a result has meant people have left. The Japanese press cannot do that as it will cause widespread panic. I don’t think there is a need to either the situation is contained and being handled in the best way possible.
My transfer from airports was spent snoozing again. I arrived at Narita International and the airport was calm and steady – I got into my check in queue and got speaking to a couple from Dorking, their son lives in Tokyo and they were here on a visit. They mentioned to me that our flight was being re-routed through Hong Kong as the pilots were located there. This meant my journey was going to be a 5 hr flight from Tokyo to Honkers, then a 9 hr layover in Honkers before flying from there to London which is a 12 hr flight – total journey time 26 hrs – this wasn’t even including the journey I had made from Niseko to get to Narita Airport...
I got to a check in desk and weighed in my bags only to find my board bag was 30kg and my other bag was 18. The check in lady was nice and patient as I asked to move things from one bag to another to avoid the 6000 Yen charge for overweight baggage. I made one attempt and managed to get the 18k up to 23k (the limit) however my board bag was still 2 k over having re-weighed it. At this point the people in the check in queue were laughing at me as I was in my snowboard gear with my beanie over my eyes as I was frantically trying to make the bags lighter. I shifted more weight from my board bag to my carry on and managed to get it down to the 23k limit. When she said it was ok I cried out “YESS!!” and jumped in the air – she laughed and the entire queue behind me were all laughing and smiling! It was hilarity. As she finished up checking me in I gave her a hi5 to the amusement of the onlooking crowd and as I turned away I got a few smiles!
After checking in I made use of the 2000yen dinner voucher with a pretty mean feed consisting of Carbonara and fried chicken with naan – interesting but very satisfying combo for sure! The airline gave us a meal ticket to use in the departure area as the flight was meant to leave @ 11am but was rescheduled for 9pm. As I waited at my departure gate I was on the web killing time, as I was on skype another quake struck! It started small and I was like – ahh must be a plane landing but it got stronger and stronger to the point where I got up and got away from the window – so scary! It calmed down after a minute and the panic was over. I checked the web again for news of another quake and sure enough there was one that hit Tokyo at that moment 6.1 on the scale and shook up most of the buildings in Tokyo but luckily no damage was reported. An airport announcement came through saying the quake wasn’t going to affect the ongoing services of the airport and all flights were still all good!
A couple of hours before the flight was to take off I noticed a guy from Niseko sat a couple of chairs away from me. I hadn’t spoken to him in Niseko but we got chatting. Rob Buchanan was his name and he was a friend of Becs and he worked for Pro Powder this season. We had a good old chat about the snow and what our plans were and how our seasons were and it was good to have company for the journey.
We boarded the plane for our first flight to Hong Kong – 5 hrs and I pretty much slept through the entire journey! We arrived at Honkers for our 9 hr layover – NOT IDEAL. We got another meal voucher so we had some Ramen which was damn tasty. Honkers airport was pretty immaculate. It really gave a good impression to me of China however it didnt surprise me given economic powerhouse that is China.
Jumped on the plane to the uk from Hong Kong and with Rob pretty much out the whole trip I watched 4 movies – going the distance – a movie about long distance relationships it was rubbish – love and other drugs – also pretty crap, RED and Convicted – the best of which was convicted.
After the flight I was picked up by my happy father and taken home! Was an epic journey that started @ 9am Friday morning Japan time and finished 5pm at home in London on Sunday. 41 hrs in total – killer!
The days leading up to me leaving Japan were spent doing a little bit of work a lot of riding and a lot of eating. I had basically shopped for 3 weeks when in fact I only had 3 days left, because when I went shopping I thought I would be in Japan for a few more weeks. So Kimmy reaped the benefit of all this food and I ended up pretty much cooking for her each night before I left. As well as that she got lunch too and before I left she got all the leftovers – lucky girl!
The riding was fun I remember riding loads with Kim and did loads of fun freestyle riding, and my last day was spent riding with Teruko and her friend Yoku – Teruko wasn’t too happy with riding and wasn’t into it so I was determined to get her stoke factor back. We did a couple of runs down strawberry and blue berry fields and the hits were so much fun i was whooping away and teruko would follow my line hitting the stupid hits I was just having a great time. We went to the park and had loads of fun in the pipe and trying out tricks we knew how to do on newer features. I was spinning front 3’s of the 30ft kicker which was scary but once I understood how to do it it was fun! Teruko was trying new things and doing some super cool stuff – she definitely got her stoke back for sure. In the evening I rode with Manny and Kimmy and that too was a super fun time.
Summing up my winter, I have to say it was pretty incredible – there were ups and downs as there are in any season, however being in Japan the eutopia of powder snowboarding and being able to experience the snow I have ridden is something very special and I think I will take these memories to the grave with me. In terms of the snow school I couldn’t have worked with a better group of people and for a better school – NBS really take care of their staff and employ good people with amazing personalities. I lived in pretty much ski in ski out accommodation, we had a lot of people living together which led to quarrels and mess however on the whole it was a great place to be. Japan is the home of some of the most dignified, humble, honest, kindest people I have met. They make the place what it is and its this culture and behaviour I would like to keep with me as I move on to other places. I could go on and get really melodramatic but I wont – it might make me cry .
Top memories from the season
- Snowboarding the annapuri back bowls
- CAT Skiing with Kay
- Working in Rusutsu for a week
- Snowboarding in Moiwa cornice dropping
- The countless incredible Miharashi/Super Ridge/Strawberry fields/Gates powder runs
- The never ending game of horse with Mo
- Bec and I’s birthdays – the hangovers brutal
- Meeting Angela Ashby
- Riding gentemsticks
- Watching signatures the movie about Japanese pow riding
- January and March powder
- Back 1’s of a 40 ft kicker in Hano
- The numerous tree hits
- Watching j-crew kill it
- Trying to spread the art of jibbing
- Kimmys bail down the steep section on the backside of miharashi toward Rob Roy
- Kimmys tail spins and that day in the park and pipe with Kimatron
- Getting stuck in super ridge buried for ½ hr
- Tony’s 360 on his last day of riding
- Tony’s penguin slide on the garmish jib
- Becs 27 to face smash
- Toms mad butter box skills
Its been incredible – next stop Canada for exams – will keep you posted!
Much love people
Here I am a week on from my last blog and I can safely say I didnt expect to be writing it from where I am currently sitting. I am back home in the UK having cut my trip short by 12 days. I was due to leave Japan on the 30th March and do some travelling from the 23rd to the 30th – however I changed my flights and departed Niseko on the 18th March.
I received calls and messages of concern from family and friends in regard to the Fukishima Nuclear Power plant leakage resulting from the Earthquake. Since the disaster the power plant was damaged and as a result there have been serious radiation leaks from the plant. A 30km radius around Fukishima has been evacuated and there has been all sorts of news regarding the rise in radiation levels.
Hearing this news on a daily basis and constantly receiving calls and messages of concern struck fear in the visitors to Japan. However we needed to bear in mind this was all happening on the South Island of Japan of Honshu not Hokkaido. The fear of radiation being sent our way via the wind was enough to convince people to leave early.
Cue the mass exodus of a lot of staff from the NBS Ski School. I didnt want to leave but saw it only fair given I had a lot of people worried for me at home to return – so here I am. I will work in reverse and tell you about my journey and then the few days leading up to me leaving as well as my overall thoughts on my winter in Japan .
So my journey was nothing short of painful! I did a lot of sleeping – it started from Niseko to Sapporo on a bus – no real dramas, and then the flight from Sapporo to Tokyo was also pretty painless. I transferred from Haneda airport to Narita International airport in Tokyo. It was in Tokyo I was expecting madness but it seemed like it was very much business as usual. I was expecting hazmat suits but though the radiation levels have increased slightly in Tokyo there was no panic as the levels are not at a point which could affect human health. People forget how dignified and proud Japanese people are, the press internationally seems to be blowing the problem massively out of proportion which as a result has meant people have left. The Japanese press cannot do that as it will cause widespread panic. I don’t think there is a need to either the situation is contained and being handled in the best way possible.
My transfer from airports was spent snoozing again. I arrived at Narita International and the airport was calm and steady – I got into my check in queue and got speaking to a couple from Dorking, their son lives in Tokyo and they were here on a visit. They mentioned to me that our flight was being re-routed through Hong Kong as the pilots were located there. This meant my journey was going to be a 5 hr flight from Tokyo to Honkers, then a 9 hr layover in Honkers before flying from there to London which is a 12 hr flight – total journey time 26 hrs – this wasn’t even including the journey I had made from Niseko to get to Narita Airport...
I got to a check in desk and weighed in my bags only to find my board bag was 30kg and my other bag was 18. The check in lady was nice and patient as I asked to move things from one bag to another to avoid the 6000 Yen charge for overweight baggage. I made one attempt and managed to get the 18k up to 23k (the limit) however my board bag was still 2 k over having re-weighed it. At this point the people in the check in queue were laughing at me as I was in my snowboard gear with my beanie over my eyes as I was frantically trying to make the bags lighter. I shifted more weight from my board bag to my carry on and managed to get it down to the 23k limit. When she said it was ok I cried out “YESS!!” and jumped in the air – she laughed and the entire queue behind me were all laughing and smiling! It was hilarity. As she finished up checking me in I gave her a hi5 to the amusement of the onlooking crowd and as I turned away I got a few smiles!
After checking in I made use of the 2000yen dinner voucher with a pretty mean feed consisting of Carbonara and fried chicken with naan – interesting but very satisfying combo for sure! The airline gave us a meal ticket to use in the departure area as the flight was meant to leave @ 11am but was rescheduled for 9pm. As I waited at my departure gate I was on the web killing time, as I was on skype another quake struck! It started small and I was like – ahh must be a plane landing but it got stronger and stronger to the point where I got up and got away from the window – so scary! It calmed down after a minute and the panic was over. I checked the web again for news of another quake and sure enough there was one that hit Tokyo at that moment 6.1 on the scale and shook up most of the buildings in Tokyo but luckily no damage was reported. An airport announcement came through saying the quake wasn’t going to affect the ongoing services of the airport and all flights were still all good!
A couple of hours before the flight was to take off I noticed a guy from Niseko sat a couple of chairs away from me. I hadn’t spoken to him in Niseko but we got chatting. Rob Buchanan was his name and he was a friend of Becs and he worked for Pro Powder this season. We had a good old chat about the snow and what our plans were and how our seasons were and it was good to have company for the journey.
We boarded the plane for our first flight to Hong Kong – 5 hrs and I pretty much slept through the entire journey! We arrived at Honkers for our 9 hr layover – NOT IDEAL. We got another meal voucher so we had some Ramen which was damn tasty. Honkers airport was pretty immaculate. It really gave a good impression to me of China however it didnt surprise me given economic powerhouse that is China.
Jumped on the plane to the uk from Hong Kong and with Rob pretty much out the whole trip I watched 4 movies – going the distance – a movie about long distance relationships it was rubbish – love and other drugs – also pretty crap, RED and Convicted – the best of which was convicted.
After the flight I was picked up by my happy father and taken home! Was an epic journey that started @ 9am Friday morning Japan time and finished 5pm at home in London on Sunday. 41 hrs in total – killer!
The days leading up to me leaving Japan were spent doing a little bit of work a lot of riding and a lot of eating. I had basically shopped for 3 weeks when in fact I only had 3 days left, because when I went shopping I thought I would be in Japan for a few more weeks. So Kimmy reaped the benefit of all this food and I ended up pretty much cooking for her each night before I left. As well as that she got lunch too and before I left she got all the leftovers – lucky girl!
The riding was fun I remember riding loads with Kim and did loads of fun freestyle riding, and my last day was spent riding with Teruko and her friend Yoku – Teruko wasn’t too happy with riding and wasn’t into it so I was determined to get her stoke factor back. We did a couple of runs down strawberry and blue berry fields and the hits were so much fun i was whooping away and teruko would follow my line hitting the stupid hits I was just having a great time. We went to the park and had loads of fun in the pipe and trying out tricks we knew how to do on newer features. I was spinning front 3’s of the 30ft kicker which was scary but once I understood how to do it it was fun! Teruko was trying new things and doing some super cool stuff – she definitely got her stoke back for sure. In the evening I rode with Manny and Kimmy and that too was a super fun time.
Summing up my winter, I have to say it was pretty incredible – there were ups and downs as there are in any season, however being in Japan the eutopia of powder snowboarding and being able to experience the snow I have ridden is something very special and I think I will take these memories to the grave with me. In terms of the snow school I couldn’t have worked with a better group of people and for a better school – NBS really take care of their staff and employ good people with amazing personalities. I lived in pretty much ski in ski out accommodation, we had a lot of people living together which led to quarrels and mess however on the whole it was a great place to be. Japan is the home of some of the most dignified, humble, honest, kindest people I have met. They make the place what it is and its this culture and behaviour I would like to keep with me as I move on to other places. I could go on and get really melodramatic but I wont – it might make me cry .
Top memories from the season
- Snowboarding the annapuri back bowls
- CAT Skiing with Kay
- Working in Rusutsu for a week
- Snowboarding in Moiwa cornice dropping
- The countless incredible Miharashi/Super Ridge/Strawberry fields/Gates powder runs
- The never ending game of horse with Mo
- Bec and I’s birthdays – the hangovers brutal
- Meeting Angela Ashby
- Riding gentemsticks
- Watching signatures the movie about Japanese pow riding
- January and March powder
- Back 1’s of a 40 ft kicker in Hano
- The numerous tree hits
- Watching j-crew kill it
- Trying to spread the art of jibbing
- Kimmys bail down the steep section on the backside of miharashi toward Rob Roy
- Kimmys tail spins and that day in the park and pipe with Kimatron
- Getting stuck in super ridge buried for ½ hr
- Tony’s 360 on his last day of riding
- Tony’s penguin slide on the garmish jib
- Becs 27 to face smash
- Toms mad butter box skills
Its been incredible – next stop Canada for exams – will keep you posted!
Much love people
Monday, 14 March 2011
Disaster Strikes - Sad Times
14/03/2011
So here is another instalment of the madness that is my life here in Niseko Japan. I am currently in a 5 star hotel called the Vale lying on a bed next to bec farrar (just chilling by the way) on my laptop just relaxing. She basically won a competition at the beginning of the season for coming up with the best acronym for VBG. I wont tell as its not ideal for public exposure but it was worthy of the victory. The prize was a night in the Vale hotel which I am currently reaping the benefit of along with her. Its nice to be in a luxiourious place for sure!!
As I lye here I think about how recently I have been wrestling with my mind about what to do. IT has been causing me to feel so uneasy and stressed and is really affecting my mood – however the mountain seems to be the form of escapism I need. Its incredible! Over the last few days I have been more and more content with the idea that “everything will work out” and I am going to let my time run its course and not worry so much. I need to enjoy the here and now I am in Japan and it deserves my happiness.
Currently Japan is in devestation due to the recent Easthquake and Tsunami, as well as this a volcano has erupted today and nuclear reactors are melting down. Disaster after disaster has left coastal towns in ruins, people are missing or dead and the aftermath is devastating. I was in the lounge eating my lunch as the quake hit and even tho it was on the south island of Honshu and I am in Hokkaido – the north Island I felt the tremors. I immediately checked the news only to find out the Tsunami and Earthquake had devastated the north eastern coast of Southern Japan. The following day was a powder day on a Saturday, these days are normally relished by locals and travellers on a weekend trip, however when I went out at 8am to join the lift line, instead of the 100 people you would see excited and waiting for the lift to open, there were about 20 people all deadly silent. I was snowboarding and no one was on the hill. In any other circumstance this would be great because I was getting fresh lines and no one was around, but it was lonely – it almost felt like the mountain was mourning it was soo sad.
In terms of my time here socially I havent been upto much – I havent been going out in the evenings much just relaxing and getting ready for the following day of riding. That has pretty much taken priority over anything else just because the riding has been nothing short of epic. We have had SOOO much snow! Mo was a very lucky boy when he got here because he got an incredible amount of powder days mornings and evenings. When snow is like that you have to ride, you feel obliged to therefore you find yourself riding in the morning working and then riding in the evening. The fatigue and exhaustion kicks in but its a good feeling.
The powder riding has been soo deep and epic – it makes you realise why you are here in Japan! The unfortunate thing is I think I am some sort of super hero in the pow and end up going way harder than I should I have had a couple of serious tree knocks and an incident with a cornice that could have seriously damaged me.
The first of the tree incidents was snowboarding down the gates. Recently as there has been lots of snow I have discovered the gates – these are roped off areas where there is an opening into the backcountry of Niseko – there are expensive consequences if you need to be rescued in these areas and you should be wearing backcountry avalanche gear to be safe – but we assume if patrol are opening these gates then it should be safe enough right? Stupid really! Better to be safe than sorry! Basically out of gate 4 or 5 you can access some amazing fresh open snow terrain dropping into the hanazono area of Niseko! It is incredible. I was heading down a run on the gates going through amazing open trees and was snowboarding under a low lying tree branch and hit a bump just before the branch we elevated me up and i smashed my head on the thick branch hard enough to clothes line me to the floor – insane impact – so hard a mark was left on my helmet. I was lucky 1 I wasn’t elevated up to my eyes or face otherwise i would have seriously damaged myself! I was also thankful for my amazing helmet – had i not had that on I would have been knocked out cold and without Mo around me as we were riding I would have needed rescuing – it is so important to stay close to your friends when riding in those areas so straight after the incident i got up shook it off and looked for Mo – madness!
The second tree incident was in in the Super Ridge backside trees. It was fresh and fast and epic I was bouncing between powder tree turns going super fast, a turn bucked me too high and I couldn’t turn – I knew I was heading straight toward a tree full speed so just before I hit the tree I got into a recovery position on my board and smashed the hell out of my left hip/pelvis and bum i was down for a couple of mins screaming in pain, but it wore off and I ended up carry on riding. The pain was more bruising and soreness as opposed to any damage the next couple of days were sore sleeping and lying on my left bum cheek but its getting much better.
The cornice incident was stupid. I was riding with Mo on an epic pow day and we were lapping Gate 4 for some mad fresh open powder turns and on the laps I saw a friend from Demo rental shop called Tomas from France. We had always talked about riding together but never got round to it so we did a lap on Gate 4 – he made us traverse hard left right into the back country and before we knew it we didnt know where we were going – we decided to head back right and as we were traversing right without knowing it we were on top of a 25 ft cornice and were traversing lower and lower – Tomas and I went over the lip broke the top of the cornice and dropped 25 ft into powder – the first thing i did because i didnt realise what was happening was look up at the cornice and check to see if it was collapsing – luckily it didnt but I was so lucky. Mo followed up over the cornice with our guidance – only after did we realise how stupid that was! We could have been buried quite easily.
Mo has now left and had an epic time – I had a great time riding with him – such good memories shredding powder with him, watching him put in amazing turns and watching him progress with us was awesome. He is an amazing rider and I am eternally grateful for him introducing me to this sport! I find riding with him the collaborative learning and progression was amazing we both learnt tricks off each other, as well as new ones together. One more memorable run was playing horse – where you call a trick and both of you have to do it – we must have done about 20 tricks in a whole run exhausting but soo much fun! Amazing!
We managed to demo the Gentem sticks and they were incredible its like having a piece of art on ur feet! Amazing unfortunately it wasn’t a pow day but it was still pretty amazing – the boards epitomise the beauty of riding Japanese pow, we didnt have fresh snow but we took it through some soft chopped up deep snow and it just blasted through. I don’t think I was ready for it – it was soo lively! It was like a teenager about to get involved with a pornstar – just wasn’t ready to ride it – like I wasn’t ready to ride the Gentem – one day I feel like I will have done enough riding and achieved enough on my board to shred a gentem – amazing!
Another memorable riding day was with Kimmy today – it was raining in the morning and started snowing late morning. I met up with Kimmy for her 4 hr ride break at 12 and we had some amazing fresh wet heavy pow turns and she took my down runs I have never been down – its awesome to ride with people to learn new runs. But more importantly Kimmy is just awesome fun to ride with! We hit a cornice and it was the biggest she’d hit – I was so stoked to push her riding but at the same time keep it within her limits and progressive. I took her into the Kings Park for the first time this winter, and she killed it hit the first jump nose and tail slid the box and smashed up the flat down – she was super stoked as was I. Hit the 30ft and managed a front 3 indy and front 5! Was soo happy because its a big booter – landed clean with confidence too! Amazing! We hit the mini pipe and it was the first time I felt comfortable in the pipe getting air out of it! Amazing times!
Nothing really else to report – we had a end of season staff party however I was more interested in snowboarding the following day so I just ate the free food and left – it was fun – 80’s theme and I wore the most ridiculous outfit – pink velor track pants and a wifebeater – disgusting!
In the house a lot of people have moved out – with Mo leaving I had to vacate my room and am now living upstairs with Pablo – all good! Really enjoyed Mo’s company we had many good conversations about snowboarding – he described the personality traits I have that are reflected in my snowboarding include – power, determination, happiness and control – I couldn’t have put it better myself and it was 4 words which really helped me shape the way I should continue to ride! Gosh I love this sport its amazing!
Anyway I better get going – much love to all
So here is another instalment of the madness that is my life here in Niseko Japan. I am currently in a 5 star hotel called the Vale lying on a bed next to bec farrar (just chilling by the way) on my laptop just relaxing. She basically won a competition at the beginning of the season for coming up with the best acronym for VBG. I wont tell as its not ideal for public exposure but it was worthy of the victory. The prize was a night in the Vale hotel which I am currently reaping the benefit of along with her. Its nice to be in a luxiourious place for sure!!
As I lye here I think about how recently I have been wrestling with my mind about what to do. IT has been causing me to feel so uneasy and stressed and is really affecting my mood – however the mountain seems to be the form of escapism I need. Its incredible! Over the last few days I have been more and more content with the idea that “everything will work out” and I am going to let my time run its course and not worry so much. I need to enjoy the here and now I am in Japan and it deserves my happiness.
Currently Japan is in devestation due to the recent Easthquake and Tsunami, as well as this a volcano has erupted today and nuclear reactors are melting down. Disaster after disaster has left coastal towns in ruins, people are missing or dead and the aftermath is devastating. I was in the lounge eating my lunch as the quake hit and even tho it was on the south island of Honshu and I am in Hokkaido – the north Island I felt the tremors. I immediately checked the news only to find out the Tsunami and Earthquake had devastated the north eastern coast of Southern Japan. The following day was a powder day on a Saturday, these days are normally relished by locals and travellers on a weekend trip, however when I went out at 8am to join the lift line, instead of the 100 people you would see excited and waiting for the lift to open, there were about 20 people all deadly silent. I was snowboarding and no one was on the hill. In any other circumstance this would be great because I was getting fresh lines and no one was around, but it was lonely – it almost felt like the mountain was mourning it was soo sad.
In terms of my time here socially I havent been upto much – I havent been going out in the evenings much just relaxing and getting ready for the following day of riding. That has pretty much taken priority over anything else just because the riding has been nothing short of epic. We have had SOOO much snow! Mo was a very lucky boy when he got here because he got an incredible amount of powder days mornings and evenings. When snow is like that you have to ride, you feel obliged to therefore you find yourself riding in the morning working and then riding in the evening. The fatigue and exhaustion kicks in but its a good feeling.
The powder riding has been soo deep and epic – it makes you realise why you are here in Japan! The unfortunate thing is I think I am some sort of super hero in the pow and end up going way harder than I should I have had a couple of serious tree knocks and an incident with a cornice that could have seriously damaged me.
The first of the tree incidents was snowboarding down the gates. Recently as there has been lots of snow I have discovered the gates – these are roped off areas where there is an opening into the backcountry of Niseko – there are expensive consequences if you need to be rescued in these areas and you should be wearing backcountry avalanche gear to be safe – but we assume if patrol are opening these gates then it should be safe enough right? Stupid really! Better to be safe than sorry! Basically out of gate 4 or 5 you can access some amazing fresh open snow terrain dropping into the hanazono area of Niseko! It is incredible. I was heading down a run on the gates going through amazing open trees and was snowboarding under a low lying tree branch and hit a bump just before the branch we elevated me up and i smashed my head on the thick branch hard enough to clothes line me to the floor – insane impact – so hard a mark was left on my helmet. I was lucky 1 I wasn’t elevated up to my eyes or face otherwise i would have seriously damaged myself! I was also thankful for my amazing helmet – had i not had that on I would have been knocked out cold and without Mo around me as we were riding I would have needed rescuing – it is so important to stay close to your friends when riding in those areas so straight after the incident i got up shook it off and looked for Mo – madness!
The second tree incident was in in the Super Ridge backside trees. It was fresh and fast and epic I was bouncing between powder tree turns going super fast, a turn bucked me too high and I couldn’t turn – I knew I was heading straight toward a tree full speed so just before I hit the tree I got into a recovery position on my board and smashed the hell out of my left hip/pelvis and bum i was down for a couple of mins screaming in pain, but it wore off and I ended up carry on riding. The pain was more bruising and soreness as opposed to any damage the next couple of days were sore sleeping and lying on my left bum cheek but its getting much better.
The cornice incident was stupid. I was riding with Mo on an epic pow day and we were lapping Gate 4 for some mad fresh open powder turns and on the laps I saw a friend from Demo rental shop called Tomas from France. We had always talked about riding together but never got round to it so we did a lap on Gate 4 – he made us traverse hard left right into the back country and before we knew it we didnt know where we were going – we decided to head back right and as we were traversing right without knowing it we were on top of a 25 ft cornice and were traversing lower and lower – Tomas and I went over the lip broke the top of the cornice and dropped 25 ft into powder – the first thing i did because i didnt realise what was happening was look up at the cornice and check to see if it was collapsing – luckily it didnt but I was so lucky. Mo followed up over the cornice with our guidance – only after did we realise how stupid that was! We could have been buried quite easily.
Mo has now left and had an epic time – I had a great time riding with him – such good memories shredding powder with him, watching him put in amazing turns and watching him progress with us was awesome. He is an amazing rider and I am eternally grateful for him introducing me to this sport! I find riding with him the collaborative learning and progression was amazing we both learnt tricks off each other, as well as new ones together. One more memorable run was playing horse – where you call a trick and both of you have to do it – we must have done about 20 tricks in a whole run exhausting but soo much fun! Amazing!
We managed to demo the Gentem sticks and they were incredible its like having a piece of art on ur feet! Amazing unfortunately it wasn’t a pow day but it was still pretty amazing – the boards epitomise the beauty of riding Japanese pow, we didnt have fresh snow but we took it through some soft chopped up deep snow and it just blasted through. I don’t think I was ready for it – it was soo lively! It was like a teenager about to get involved with a pornstar – just wasn’t ready to ride it – like I wasn’t ready to ride the Gentem – one day I feel like I will have done enough riding and achieved enough on my board to shred a gentem – amazing!
Another memorable riding day was with Kimmy today – it was raining in the morning and started snowing late morning. I met up with Kimmy for her 4 hr ride break at 12 and we had some amazing fresh wet heavy pow turns and she took my down runs I have never been down – its awesome to ride with people to learn new runs. But more importantly Kimmy is just awesome fun to ride with! We hit a cornice and it was the biggest she’d hit – I was so stoked to push her riding but at the same time keep it within her limits and progressive. I took her into the Kings Park for the first time this winter, and she killed it hit the first jump nose and tail slid the box and smashed up the flat down – she was super stoked as was I. Hit the 30ft and managed a front 3 indy and front 5! Was soo happy because its a big booter – landed clean with confidence too! Amazing! We hit the mini pipe and it was the first time I felt comfortable in the pipe getting air out of it! Amazing times!
Nothing really else to report – we had a end of season staff party however I was more interested in snowboarding the following day so I just ate the free food and left – it was fun – 80’s theme and I wore the most ridiculous outfit – pink velor track pants and a wifebeater – disgusting!
In the house a lot of people have moved out – with Mo leaving I had to vacate my room and am now living upstairs with Pablo – all good! Really enjoyed Mo’s company we had many good conversations about snowboarding – he described the personality traits I have that are reflected in my snowboarding include – power, determination, happiness and control – I couldn’t have put it better myself and it was 4 words which really helped me shape the way I should continue to ride! Gosh I love this sport its amazing!
Anyway I better get going – much love to all
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
The beginning of the end
02/03/2011
Sooo a couple of weeks have passed and here is another instalment of my life and whats going on in Japan and how I am doing! I am currently listening to a bit of arctic monkeys in the lounge just thinking about the huge amount of spare time I am have been having on my hands and how I really need to get my arse in gear with keeping up to date with my blog as well as sorting out things post Japan. That’s right its the beginning of the end over here, we have had many departures over the last couple of weeks Dazza Wong, Jonny Whipp, Tony Hill, Jemima Twist, Kay Descaspar, Kave etc... a big crew have left and as a result the number of people in the house is less, so its quieter, less busy but definitely indicates that things are winding down. Definately sad times but you have to keep moving on .
Work has been pretty patchy things but where there is no work there is a mountain to snowboard. The most memorable lessons over the last couple of weeks was teaching a little 7 year old called Lucas, he could ripstick already so it was soo easy teaching him how to snowboard. He was such a good kid everything I taught he picked up so quickly. The other incredible thing about this kid was his hair – it was as long as mine – such a cool little dude!!!
The riding has been a lot of fun recently! Mo has arrived in town so we have been doing a few progression sessions and a lot of riding together its been good. I am feeling like over the last year a lot has come of my riding, I don’t think I am amazing or good in any sort of way but I feel like I have progressed and I am pretty happy with that.
I have had a lot on my mind recently I met someone I really liked and they left and I’ve been struggling to move on from it – they were only here for a week and we only spent a short amount of time together but it was nice, I don’t really want to go into it, but its something on my mind a lot – along with the fact that my journey is coming to an end. I need to get thinking about whats going to happen post Canada but I havent managed to come up with any answers- I am keeping all options open and going to have a bit of alone time in Canada to have a long hard think about it all.
I need to basically get my mind off these things as they are definitely affecting my mood, but I should really focus on enjoy the last few weeks of being here! My life is incredible out here and I need to appreciate what I have and what I am doing, instead of worry about things that haven’t...Let me fill you in on the wonderfulness of it all over the last couple of weeks.
We have been having a lot of going out leaving drinks recently, Key left on the 28th Feb and Tony today. Definately feels weird people leaving especially close friends like Chloe, Tony, Tom and Key leaving. But I am sure one day in the future I will get to see them all again! That’s the thing with winters, they always come to an end and people go their separate ways and you wont have that same crew together in one place again. Its pretty sad but its something I am sure after a lot of winters you accept, this is my fourth now so you would think I would be used to it and can get over it but its definitely still quite saddening.
We’ve had Becs 23rd birthday in the Ice Cage! She organised a really good party with a 2 hr Nomi Hodai (all you can drink) from 9pm to 11pm! I had work the next day so I have to stay relatively controlled with my drinking. I made sure I got my money’s worth but also didnt want to get to crazy. It was super fun the whole crew out and about celebrating and the venue was really cool. We were drinking drinks out of cups of ice and just having good times. The party moved onto Tamashi’s but I retired and left Blind Bec to her fun night! She was loving life and it was good to see.
The next adventure was the Toyota big air 2011 competition. Tony, Mo, Bec, Bjoern, Aimee, Lara, Andy & I as well as others decided to get on the bus and head down! Memories include the incredible food stands and stuffing my face with loads of Japanese treats when we arrived at the open air big air venue. The Japanese commentary was pretty awesome every time a entrant was from Japan there would be a massive introduction just to get the crowd going. The sad thing was by the Semi’s there was no Japanese Competitors left. There were some huge tricks being thrown down. Between heats there was always really tedious long intervals to cover the time the competitors were making it up the in ramp for the jump. We had to bear listening to Kreva a Japanese hip hop sensation for an hour and he was literally terrible. We were freezing and the intervals were getting longer and longer and we were getting crankier and crankier! It finally got to the final and it was Seb Toutant Vs Chas Gouldmond. Chas took it with a landed 12, for his final lap he tried a 14 and just missed it – pretty impressive backside spinning.
The only other real experiences have been a couple more hikes up the peak of Niseko and dropping into the Annapuri bowls, both times with Mo and one time with Tony and Bec. The time with Tony, Bec and Mo was the one that will stick in my mind. The journey, the event the end was all amazing. Just a very humbling experience. Makes you realise how amazing life can be, how lucky you are and made me realise why I was in Japan. The run down was steep and soft and so much fun! Exhileration beyond believe!
Today I have had no work despite being on rosta so after hiking the peak with Mo – equally as epic, we went for Mo’s first onsen experience at the Alpen Hotel and then to the Gentem stick shop! Gentem sticks are Japanese handmade bamboo snowboards made out of the greenest purest materials out of Niseko Hokkaido. They epitomise the pureness of Japanese powder riding in a snowboard. They look incredible and I want one – however the price tag is a little out of my range at the moment. Maybe one day when I am a millionaire.
That brings me up to me still in the lounge on the couch now listening to Roy Davis Jr – Gabriel (nothing like an old school garage tune to remind me of the youth)!
Much love people
Sooo a couple of weeks have passed and here is another instalment of my life and whats going on in Japan and how I am doing! I am currently listening to a bit of arctic monkeys in the lounge just thinking about the huge amount of spare time I am have been having on my hands and how I really need to get my arse in gear with keeping up to date with my blog as well as sorting out things post Japan. That’s right its the beginning of the end over here, we have had many departures over the last couple of weeks Dazza Wong, Jonny Whipp, Tony Hill, Jemima Twist, Kay Descaspar, Kave etc... a big crew have left and as a result the number of people in the house is less, so its quieter, less busy but definitely indicates that things are winding down. Definately sad times but you have to keep moving on .
Work has been pretty patchy things but where there is no work there is a mountain to snowboard. The most memorable lessons over the last couple of weeks was teaching a little 7 year old called Lucas, he could ripstick already so it was soo easy teaching him how to snowboard. He was such a good kid everything I taught he picked up so quickly. The other incredible thing about this kid was his hair – it was as long as mine – such a cool little dude!!!
The riding has been a lot of fun recently! Mo has arrived in town so we have been doing a few progression sessions and a lot of riding together its been good. I am feeling like over the last year a lot has come of my riding, I don’t think I am amazing or good in any sort of way but I feel like I have progressed and I am pretty happy with that.
I have had a lot on my mind recently I met someone I really liked and they left and I’ve been struggling to move on from it – they were only here for a week and we only spent a short amount of time together but it was nice, I don’t really want to go into it, but its something on my mind a lot – along with the fact that my journey is coming to an end. I need to get thinking about whats going to happen post Canada but I havent managed to come up with any answers- I am keeping all options open and going to have a bit of alone time in Canada to have a long hard think about it all.
I need to basically get my mind off these things as they are definitely affecting my mood, but I should really focus on enjoy the last few weeks of being here! My life is incredible out here and I need to appreciate what I have and what I am doing, instead of worry about things that haven’t...Let me fill you in on the wonderfulness of it all over the last couple of weeks.
We have been having a lot of going out leaving drinks recently, Key left on the 28th Feb and Tony today. Definately feels weird people leaving especially close friends like Chloe, Tony, Tom and Key leaving. But I am sure one day in the future I will get to see them all again! That’s the thing with winters, they always come to an end and people go their separate ways and you wont have that same crew together in one place again. Its pretty sad but its something I am sure after a lot of winters you accept, this is my fourth now so you would think I would be used to it and can get over it but its definitely still quite saddening.
We’ve had Becs 23rd birthday in the Ice Cage! She organised a really good party with a 2 hr Nomi Hodai (all you can drink) from 9pm to 11pm! I had work the next day so I have to stay relatively controlled with my drinking. I made sure I got my money’s worth but also didnt want to get to crazy. It was super fun the whole crew out and about celebrating and the venue was really cool. We were drinking drinks out of cups of ice and just having good times. The party moved onto Tamashi’s but I retired and left Blind Bec to her fun night! She was loving life and it was good to see.
The next adventure was the Toyota big air 2011 competition. Tony, Mo, Bec, Bjoern, Aimee, Lara, Andy & I as well as others decided to get on the bus and head down! Memories include the incredible food stands and stuffing my face with loads of Japanese treats when we arrived at the open air big air venue. The Japanese commentary was pretty awesome every time a entrant was from Japan there would be a massive introduction just to get the crowd going. The sad thing was by the Semi’s there was no Japanese Competitors left. There were some huge tricks being thrown down. Between heats there was always really tedious long intervals to cover the time the competitors were making it up the in ramp for the jump. We had to bear listening to Kreva a Japanese hip hop sensation for an hour and he was literally terrible. We were freezing and the intervals were getting longer and longer and we were getting crankier and crankier! It finally got to the final and it was Seb Toutant Vs Chas Gouldmond. Chas took it with a landed 12, for his final lap he tried a 14 and just missed it – pretty impressive backside spinning.
The only other real experiences have been a couple more hikes up the peak of Niseko and dropping into the Annapuri bowls, both times with Mo and one time with Tony and Bec. The time with Tony, Bec and Mo was the one that will stick in my mind. The journey, the event the end was all amazing. Just a very humbling experience. Makes you realise how amazing life can be, how lucky you are and made me realise why I was in Japan. The run down was steep and soft and so much fun! Exhileration beyond believe!
Today I have had no work despite being on rosta so after hiking the peak with Mo – equally as epic, we went for Mo’s first onsen experience at the Alpen Hotel and then to the Gentem stick shop! Gentem sticks are Japanese handmade bamboo snowboards made out of the greenest purest materials out of Niseko Hokkaido. They epitomise the pureness of Japanese powder riding in a snowboard. They look incredible and I want one – however the price tag is a little out of my range at the moment. Maybe one day when I am a millionaire.
That brings me up to me still in the lounge on the couch now listening to Roy Davis Jr – Gabriel (nothing like an old school garage tune to remind me of the youth)!
Much love people
Saturday, 19 February 2011
HAIII DOZZZOOOO
19/02/2010
So so so here I am back again from the land of Ninja’s, Sushi, Samurai’s and deep pow to report on how my epic journey is going. I normally blog in a formation discussing events and socialising, riding, teaching and any other business...but im in a crazy freestyle kinda mood so this can go anywhere! Excited? I am !
So lets talk about the instructing! Its been going well the hours haven’t been mega – we were promised it would be flat out during the Chinese new year (first couple of weeks) of Feb, but it wasn’t overwhealming – I could have worked harder for sure. I am really enjoying teaching the higher end lessons, as I use them as practise time for my exams I have in April in Canada. Its scary how quickly this winter is going and how fast my year out of normality to persue a dream is ending. The goal for the year was to get my CASI 3 and in April the whole focus for the year will come to a pin head and I need to make sure I pass. At the beginning of the winter here in Japan I made an epic CASI Level 3 training manual and I have to read and consolidate everything in that manual so its in my head. As well as this I need to make sure my snowboarding is upto scratch. I feel like I am progressing but lack consistency!
Things in the house where I am living are going ok, when you get 27 people of different ages and backgrounds coming into a house its obviously going to be a bit busy. The house gets messy a lot and that causes a little drama here and there, and occasionally there are personality clashes for sure. I find personally if it gets too much I am getting better at getting away that I was earlier in the season for sure. I find that I am stupid sometimes and let the house and things get to me a little to much and care a lot about what other people do and think. To be fair I don’t really care too much about what people who I don’t care about think – but there have been times where I have let people get to me.
Some amazing news is Moshan Hussain my brother from another mother is visiting for 15 nights and is going to be living with me in the Staff Housing!! Amazing news – basically I approached my manager about this and he said no initially, but after I got a petition signed from the house to agree to him stay – he couldn’t really say no – great news!! He will be moving in with me in my room for 11 days and spend his first 4 sharing in another room. My roomie Kay is leaving at the end of Feb and Tom and Chloe have already left Tom had to go to Uni and Chloe blew her knee off a kicker so had to go home to get it fixed. She did the holy triad MCL,ACL and Meniscus! Sad times!
Riding has been going well – the weather has been a bit inconsistent and the snow hasn’t been as epic as previous winters but I cannot complain with the state the Europe is in at the moment! Been trying to focus on my riding standard for CASI 3 and self analyse through riding and feeling! Its going ok but I certainly don’t think I am there! I will get there! My freestyle riding hasn’t really progressed much but I am trying new things and sometimes they work – sometimes they don’t consistency is key and I just don’t think I have it. I also feel a little bit straight stiff and untidy – needs a lot of work.
In terms of what I have been upto there have been a few notable events. Mike one of our housemates has been having a regular gig at a local bar called Half Note and one of his more memorable gigs was during Australia day! We had a great evening and fun and frolicks were shared by all! Its always nice when the crew get together for a night out!
We hiked the peak of Niseko one day on a clear day and rode the back bowls toward Annapuri – I did this with Pistol Pete, Jemima, Bjoern and Tom Summerville – it was an awesome memorable day – it was sunny there was some spring style fresh snow and the back bowls were super nice and steep – it was the first nice steep run I have done since New Zealand! It was such a nice feeling shredding powder on steeps and the natural gulleys were so much fun. To top it all off there was a fun rail at the bottom of annapuri and Tom, Pete and I sessioned it and had a lot of fun for sure!!
My Birthday was another incredibly epic night we decided to arrange a NomiHodai – all you can drunk at a Karaoke bar in Kutchan. The all you can drink started from 9pm and finished at 3pm – the theme was tight and bright superheros and we had some incredible costumes. I went for a last minute shop and purchased some small female velor trackpants in a hot pink with a green cape. I looked incredible – Tony was on incredible form on the vocals saranading everything in sight. The night was soo much fun – everyone got soo drunk and just sang and were super merry! Best memories from the night – Tammy fondling the random dog, having the entire bar to ourselves, Tom and Bjoern suddenly deciding to take up smoking, Tony loving the microphone and everyone in a generally blind state of mind – good times!
I rode a different side of the mountain on a day off with Claire, Jake, Tony, Bec and Bjoern – its called Moiwa and its a sick little hill – reminded me of Salmo in Canada – 2 lifts accessing loads of fun off piste terrain, trees drops and generally good freeriding. Tony came and saved my day as I was having a little bit of a moment and we hit an awesome 12 ft cornice, it was loads of fun though my knee was sore it had to be done! Definately got mad love for that ginger ninja and despite the fact he doesn’t think so his riding is coming along nicely and with each day on his board he is getting better and better – its awesome to see. Out of everyone here I probably give him the most crap and he puts up with me and is an epic dude – just thought I would give him a shout out and props for always being there when I need a brother!
We went to the Sapporo Ice Festival and it was weird being back in a city! Reminded me of what I was escaping from! The ice festival itself was pretty awesome – the things these Japanese people carve out of ice is pretty epic! I managed to find some bargain basement snowboard boots which will do nicely! 32 TM 2’s for £80!! My current boots are dead! I was so lucky to find something so cheap – luck favours the brave and good things happen to good people –stoked! Highlights include the lion king snow carvings and the epic food we ate – excluding the McDonalds.
Finally just recently I went skidooing for winning employee of the month andit was soooo good! I was soo lucky we got 90 minutes shredding around in fresh snow and there was a ½ freeriding section where they let us do what we want in an open paddock of fresh powder! IT was insane! Such a thrill – such a good time! Life was certainly good at that point in my life for sure!!
Thats it thats all for now folks – I will keep you posted in the near future maybe closer to me leaving to catch up and later you know about my emo state of mind at the thought of leaving Japan, Niseko and NBS – much love!
So so so here I am back again from the land of Ninja’s, Sushi, Samurai’s and deep pow to report on how my epic journey is going. I normally blog in a formation discussing events and socialising, riding, teaching and any other business...but im in a crazy freestyle kinda mood so this can go anywhere! Excited? I am !
So lets talk about the instructing! Its been going well the hours haven’t been mega – we were promised it would be flat out during the Chinese new year (first couple of weeks) of Feb, but it wasn’t overwhealming – I could have worked harder for sure. I am really enjoying teaching the higher end lessons, as I use them as practise time for my exams I have in April in Canada. Its scary how quickly this winter is going and how fast my year out of normality to persue a dream is ending. The goal for the year was to get my CASI 3 and in April the whole focus for the year will come to a pin head and I need to make sure I pass. At the beginning of the winter here in Japan I made an epic CASI Level 3 training manual and I have to read and consolidate everything in that manual so its in my head. As well as this I need to make sure my snowboarding is upto scratch. I feel like I am progressing but lack consistency!
Things in the house where I am living are going ok, when you get 27 people of different ages and backgrounds coming into a house its obviously going to be a bit busy. The house gets messy a lot and that causes a little drama here and there, and occasionally there are personality clashes for sure. I find personally if it gets too much I am getting better at getting away that I was earlier in the season for sure. I find that I am stupid sometimes and let the house and things get to me a little to much and care a lot about what other people do and think. To be fair I don’t really care too much about what people who I don’t care about think – but there have been times where I have let people get to me.
Some amazing news is Moshan Hussain my brother from another mother is visiting for 15 nights and is going to be living with me in the Staff Housing!! Amazing news – basically I approached my manager about this and he said no initially, but after I got a petition signed from the house to agree to him stay – he couldn’t really say no – great news!! He will be moving in with me in my room for 11 days and spend his first 4 sharing in another room. My roomie Kay is leaving at the end of Feb and Tom and Chloe have already left Tom had to go to Uni and Chloe blew her knee off a kicker so had to go home to get it fixed. She did the holy triad MCL,ACL and Meniscus! Sad times!
Riding has been going well – the weather has been a bit inconsistent and the snow hasn’t been as epic as previous winters but I cannot complain with the state the Europe is in at the moment! Been trying to focus on my riding standard for CASI 3 and self analyse through riding and feeling! Its going ok but I certainly don’t think I am there! I will get there! My freestyle riding hasn’t really progressed much but I am trying new things and sometimes they work – sometimes they don’t consistency is key and I just don’t think I have it. I also feel a little bit straight stiff and untidy – needs a lot of work.
In terms of what I have been upto there have been a few notable events. Mike one of our housemates has been having a regular gig at a local bar called Half Note and one of his more memorable gigs was during Australia day! We had a great evening and fun and frolicks were shared by all! Its always nice when the crew get together for a night out!
We hiked the peak of Niseko one day on a clear day and rode the back bowls toward Annapuri – I did this with Pistol Pete, Jemima, Bjoern and Tom Summerville – it was an awesome memorable day – it was sunny there was some spring style fresh snow and the back bowls were super nice and steep – it was the first nice steep run I have done since New Zealand! It was such a nice feeling shredding powder on steeps and the natural gulleys were so much fun. To top it all off there was a fun rail at the bottom of annapuri and Tom, Pete and I sessioned it and had a lot of fun for sure!!
My Birthday was another incredibly epic night we decided to arrange a NomiHodai – all you can drunk at a Karaoke bar in Kutchan. The all you can drink started from 9pm and finished at 3pm – the theme was tight and bright superheros and we had some incredible costumes. I went for a last minute shop and purchased some small female velor trackpants in a hot pink with a green cape. I looked incredible – Tony was on incredible form on the vocals saranading everything in sight. The night was soo much fun – everyone got soo drunk and just sang and were super merry! Best memories from the night – Tammy fondling the random dog, having the entire bar to ourselves, Tom and Bjoern suddenly deciding to take up smoking, Tony loving the microphone and everyone in a generally blind state of mind – good times!
I rode a different side of the mountain on a day off with Claire, Jake, Tony, Bec and Bjoern – its called Moiwa and its a sick little hill – reminded me of Salmo in Canada – 2 lifts accessing loads of fun off piste terrain, trees drops and generally good freeriding. Tony came and saved my day as I was having a little bit of a moment and we hit an awesome 12 ft cornice, it was loads of fun though my knee was sore it had to be done! Definately got mad love for that ginger ninja and despite the fact he doesn’t think so his riding is coming along nicely and with each day on his board he is getting better and better – its awesome to see. Out of everyone here I probably give him the most crap and he puts up with me and is an epic dude – just thought I would give him a shout out and props for always being there when I need a brother!
We went to the Sapporo Ice Festival and it was weird being back in a city! Reminded me of what I was escaping from! The ice festival itself was pretty awesome – the things these Japanese people carve out of ice is pretty epic! I managed to find some bargain basement snowboard boots which will do nicely! 32 TM 2’s for £80!! My current boots are dead! I was so lucky to find something so cheap – luck favours the brave and good things happen to good people –stoked! Highlights include the lion king snow carvings and the epic food we ate – excluding the McDonalds.
Finally just recently I went skidooing for winning employee of the month andit was soooo good! I was soo lucky we got 90 minutes shredding around in fresh snow and there was a ½ freeriding section where they let us do what we want in an open paddock of fresh powder! IT was insane! Such a thrill – such a good time! Life was certainly good at that point in my life for sure!!
Thats it thats all for now folks – I will keep you posted in the near future maybe closer to me leaving to catch up and later you know about my emo state of mind at the thought of leaving Japan, Niseko and NBS – much love!
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
It keeps getting better and better - I love Japan
25/01/2010
Jeez I really am leaving a long time between blogs aren’t I! Getting slack but at least I get to tell you about the most important things that have been going on as opposed to doing blogs every couple of days and they are just monotonous. I don’t wanna talk about what I had for breakfast etc...!!
So Last blog was on Friday the 7th Jan – jeez that was a long time ago – trying to remember everything is going to be difficult. I think there had been a lot of work and only a little play in the powder, but more recently with our days off and various trips there has been a lot more to report on the riding front.
Work has been busy lots of guests to teach, I have been getting a few private requests lessons where people have wanted me to follow up with another lesson with them which has been great. I had a 4 hr private request with a really nice guy called James, Initially I taugh his girlfriend and then he had me twice for lessons and really enjoyed them – his riding improved so much with everything I taught him and the 4 hr request was just soo good because we could cover a lot of ground and get even more snowboarding done. His appreciation factor was so high and it was soo nice to teach someone like that.
I am finding the instructing to be a mixed bag, on the whole I love it but certain lessons are really tedious – teaching low level young children is really hard and you cannot get kids starting and stopping and moving as quickly on a board as ski’s therefore there is a lot of time where kids aren’t really going anywhere and they hate the learning process. Being imaginative and making it fun for the kids is key without really telling them they are learning anything. I find I am really struggling with these kind of lessons. Its something I know is an issue with my teaching I just need to address it for sure.
I managed to get employee of the month at the latest staff meeting which is something I couldn’t really believe – I am not sure if I had already mentioned this but I wont a ski-dooing trip out of it and the stoke factor on that was pretty high! I couldn’t believe it really I was just doing what I normally do!
The school is still great and most of the time I get a long with the people I live and work with – there is the occasional moment when there is a drama or 2 in the house that affects the mood. Living and working with each other means we spend a lot of time with each other – it can get a bit much but you just need to learn to separate yourself from situations which irriate you and hide for a bit until you are ready to be released into the wild that is Garmisch! On the whole I havent had massive issues with anyone, and if there is something bothering me with one or 2 of the people I am closer to in the house then I will let them know and talk it out. Its all good tho!
Our first days off were the 10th and 11th of Jan and they were both pretty epic clear sky powder days. I have memories of riding with Kay my roommate and Rach Hall – aka triple threat (because she is sick at skiing boarding and tele skiing) and I felt like I was riding like a pro – though I clearly wasn’t. It was more because I was with 2 sick skiers pushing me to my limit and talking my down lines I wouldn’t have found myself. It was epic! Another memory from our days off was riding Super ridge with Kate, Bec Farrar and Tom Summerville Super ridge is a ridge face filled with trees which you traverse into and drop back into to get back into Hirafu onto a run called Super. We were pretty familiar with this ridge, however Kate took us down some new lines we hadn’t been down and they were so fresh and so clean – it was immense – SO epic! We then moved onto Miharashi which is a field of powdery goodness next to the Hirafu Gondola – we did a lot of filming as the sun was out and there were some amazing natural features to hit and have fun with. Strawberry fields is another fun powder area with so many drops, hits and jumps as well as trees. Going in there with Kay and Tony one day and with Kay and Bec another day we found so many fun things to do and film. Kay really does have an amazing eye for natural features and goes pretty huge. Riding with him gets you stoked for sure!
More recently I went to another resort called Rusutsu with a crew of about 16 other instructors to cater for a medical conference which had about 300 attendees. SkiJapan the parent company of NBS provides the instructors and an itinerary for the conference. We just instructed and I can honestly say going to Rusutsu has been probably the highlight of my winter. We spent 8 days there in total and I had 2 days off – both Satudays. I taught some of the best lessons there and snowboarded some amazing terrain. We all stayed in a house next to a convenience store which was handy. I shared a room with 2 good friends from Garmish – Tom Summerville who I brought over from NZ with me and Bec Farrar – aka Drumstick aka G fruit. It was a real nice chilled setup working 4 hrs a day from 10:30 to 15:30. We had a chance to ride every morning before work and for an hour or so after work. The night skiing wasn’t that great so we would ride after work just until the main lifts shut and then chilled out at home. Its funny as a resort there are more better things about resort than bad ones. The mountain is organised into 3 peaks the highest of which is around 1000 metres. The west mountain was closest to where we lived and was where the night skiing was. There were 2 lifts available on the west mountain at night, we did one night of skiing on those lifts and it was real fun, however the terrain was mellow and wasn’t as epic as the night skiing we have here in Niseko. Also the lift pass system was a bit pre historic – we had to show a liftie our pass with no electronic gates – no biggie though!
The lift system seems so well organised with hooded chairs and gondolas. There was a gondola on each peak and several chairs to help u access all of the available terrain on the mountain. Because of this organisation it meant there was so much off trail skiing available in trees between runs. On a good powder day you would have several options on runs to take and it wasn’t a super commercial busy hill like Niseko is which meant fresh snow was preserved for longer without being massively tracked out.
I was really lucky with the lessons I got, I taught snowboarding the whole week and had a high level group in the morning where the class size varied depending on who booked up on a particular day. There was only ever a max of 3, I had a girl called Claire who was a green runner when we started the week, and by then end of the week she was freeriding through trees relatively comfortably. She was super keen to progress and it was good to see her get better and better after each day of teaching her. I then had a couple of kids called Scottie and Jon 14 and 10 respectively. They could already rip but it was more about working with their technique. Later on when the group lessons finished on Thursday Jons dad booked me for a private with him Scott and Jon. It was probably the best lesson I have taught because we had a fresh powder morning and I was literally a tag along as they took me to their favourite powder spots. We were ripping fresh powder all morning and I get them small tips and pointers along the way. Jons dad Reynold had spent some time in Red where I did a season and you could see he loved the tree riding because thats all we did. Having spent some time in Red you have to love trees as they have the best in the world over there. They were kind enough to buy me lunch and then I headed to my afternoon private lesson.
For the whole week in the afternoons I had private lessons with a man called John Laidlaw, and what made this guy amazing was how humble he was with his snowboard ability. On our first run his technique was awesome! So we just worked on terrain building him for the whole week and advanced snowboarding techniques. It was thoroughly enjoyable teaching high end lessons and being able to apply my level 3 training to some practical teaching situations. He was only booked in for 2 afternoon privates, but decided after the 2 lessons we had to book me out for the rest of the week! On our last lesson, I got a bit lost in the trees and we ended up going a little too far into a valley enjoying the powder! It was terrible we had to hike out for 20-30 mins, and I thought he was going to hit the roof but he actually really enjoyed the serenity of the hike and it added to his experience. He was kind enough to give me a 10k tip at the end of the week which was amazing.
I was lucky enough to have 2 days off on the Saturdays around the week we were working and they were both so much fun. The first Saturday was an intro to the mountain where we did some terrain training and then just literally freerode through fresh powder all day because it was a sunny day. I took some turns with Chook our manager and we honestly had so much fun. Tom and I were riding with Brendan in the afternoon. Brendan is a fully certified ski instructor from NZ who works out of the Remarkables or Coronet peak in NZ (i forget). Anyone he is a machine and finds some of the best snow on the mountain – we called him line finder 3000! Good times.
Bec was lucky enough to have a 3rd day off on the Friday before our 2nd Saturday. She, James and I had to shovel for 2 hrs one evening to get our lift passes for the 2nd Saturday because technically it was a day off and we had finished teaching. Therefore we had to buy our own passes however we were offered them free for some shovelling work. We did that and it was actually quite fun though it was hard work!
Bjoern, Bec, James and I went out on our 2nd Saturday of riding rusutsu and we had some fresh snow and a shiny sunny day! It was so much fun doing laps in the trees with everyone around just having fun flying off natural hits and landing in lovely soft powder. We tried to get lots and lots of footage – sadly the ones of me were terrible, though I was pushing myself to do hits which were a lot bigger than I would normally hit on my own. I was happy with my landings it was just my aerial time was massively unattractive - this is something I definitely need to work on for sure!!
Rusutsu doesn’t have much to offer in the way of nightlife. There are a couple of hotels one called the Tower which is a pretty standard posh hotel with a fancy restaurant or 2 and an overpriced hotel shop. Rusutsu hotel was where it was at! The place was like a carnival! We took a walk through to find some rather alternative interior design (fear and loathing in las vegas esq). There was a talking tree which was pretty trippy, a merry go round – (really bizarre) and a huge games area. In the summer there is a theme park in the resort also, its covered with snow in the winter and is closed down as mountain is open, but it was surreal to see as we were ripping down from the west mountain of the resort a huge roller coaster line just covered with snow. The run out back toward the gondola is actually through the theme park and its just crazy surreal – I loved it! On the walk Bec and I did around the hotel we found the gym where Bec proceeded to do a ridiculous night workout in her puffy – funny times! We scoped out a few of the shops and took the monorail across between the hotels. Yes there is actually a monorail in this resort – its insane!
In the evenings we found ourselves either chilling out, watching movies or watching ridiculous comedy! It was fun bonding time with Tom and Bec and we had laughs for sure. We did venture out for dinner one evening – there was a bit of a debarcle with our tempura order, but I wont go into that! We had a karaoke machine and lets just say certain people shouldn’t sing in public.
We (i say we but it was actually James Winfields idea) decided to get an ipod with speakers and run into Seiko Mart – our convenience store next door – and have a rave – I posted a video on facebook – it was ridiculously hilarious! Good times!
Since being back from Rusutsu I have had a day of work teaching kids and then 2 days off!
The first of my days off was spent CAT skiing with Kay and Niseko photography – Immense day – the sun was shining all day and we got some incredible scenic shots. We did 1 lap which took us all morning – we were dropped off at a face of a hill which hadn’t been touched and there was 800 metres of slope to play with and hike. Because we were with a photo crew we had to hike a lot of different features and hit them. So the morning was literally about the shot – I wasn’t that keen on getting footage of myself, so I told the camera crew not to set up for me – but to set up for others and I would follow up. I looked at the pictures today and there are about 3 good shots of me which I am stoked about and about 100 other amazing scenic shots and action shots. The features were amazing! I was really loving the hiking working for each hit – it was hard work but the serenity and the quietness of not being on a hill with anyone else but the crew that you were with was awesome. Not only that but the day we had was incredible – sun all day clear skies and from the top there were some incredible skyline views. I cant wait to get the pictures! We did 2 top to bottom laps in the afternoon just for fun – and they were just absolutely incredible. One of the best and most varied days on my board!!
Today I rode hard pack groomers in the morning training for my exam in April and in the afternoon rode park. I took a real hard fall today off a 35-40ft jump! I luckily got back up and carried on the day in the park and given it was my first time in a long time in the park things were working for me and got some old tricks back and a couple of newbies which I was super happy with!! Another fun day with all the crew.
I think thats all I have to report right now – peace and love people
Jeez I really am leaving a long time between blogs aren’t I! Getting slack but at least I get to tell you about the most important things that have been going on as opposed to doing blogs every couple of days and they are just monotonous. I don’t wanna talk about what I had for breakfast etc...!!
So Last blog was on Friday the 7th Jan – jeez that was a long time ago – trying to remember everything is going to be difficult. I think there had been a lot of work and only a little play in the powder, but more recently with our days off and various trips there has been a lot more to report on the riding front.
Work has been busy lots of guests to teach, I have been getting a few private requests lessons where people have wanted me to follow up with another lesson with them which has been great. I had a 4 hr private request with a really nice guy called James, Initially I taugh his girlfriend and then he had me twice for lessons and really enjoyed them – his riding improved so much with everything I taught him and the 4 hr request was just soo good because we could cover a lot of ground and get even more snowboarding done. His appreciation factor was so high and it was soo nice to teach someone like that.
I am finding the instructing to be a mixed bag, on the whole I love it but certain lessons are really tedious – teaching low level young children is really hard and you cannot get kids starting and stopping and moving as quickly on a board as ski’s therefore there is a lot of time where kids aren’t really going anywhere and they hate the learning process. Being imaginative and making it fun for the kids is key without really telling them they are learning anything. I find I am really struggling with these kind of lessons. Its something I know is an issue with my teaching I just need to address it for sure.
I managed to get employee of the month at the latest staff meeting which is something I couldn’t really believe – I am not sure if I had already mentioned this but I wont a ski-dooing trip out of it and the stoke factor on that was pretty high! I couldn’t believe it really I was just doing what I normally do!
The school is still great and most of the time I get a long with the people I live and work with – there is the occasional moment when there is a drama or 2 in the house that affects the mood. Living and working with each other means we spend a lot of time with each other – it can get a bit much but you just need to learn to separate yourself from situations which irriate you and hide for a bit until you are ready to be released into the wild that is Garmisch! On the whole I havent had massive issues with anyone, and if there is something bothering me with one or 2 of the people I am closer to in the house then I will let them know and talk it out. Its all good tho!
Our first days off were the 10th and 11th of Jan and they were both pretty epic clear sky powder days. I have memories of riding with Kay my roommate and Rach Hall – aka triple threat (because she is sick at skiing boarding and tele skiing) and I felt like I was riding like a pro – though I clearly wasn’t. It was more because I was with 2 sick skiers pushing me to my limit and talking my down lines I wouldn’t have found myself. It was epic! Another memory from our days off was riding Super ridge with Kate, Bec Farrar and Tom Summerville Super ridge is a ridge face filled with trees which you traverse into and drop back into to get back into Hirafu onto a run called Super. We were pretty familiar with this ridge, however Kate took us down some new lines we hadn’t been down and they were so fresh and so clean – it was immense – SO epic! We then moved onto Miharashi which is a field of powdery goodness next to the Hirafu Gondola – we did a lot of filming as the sun was out and there were some amazing natural features to hit and have fun with. Strawberry fields is another fun powder area with so many drops, hits and jumps as well as trees. Going in there with Kay and Tony one day and with Kay and Bec another day we found so many fun things to do and film. Kay really does have an amazing eye for natural features and goes pretty huge. Riding with him gets you stoked for sure!
More recently I went to another resort called Rusutsu with a crew of about 16 other instructors to cater for a medical conference which had about 300 attendees. SkiJapan the parent company of NBS provides the instructors and an itinerary for the conference. We just instructed and I can honestly say going to Rusutsu has been probably the highlight of my winter. We spent 8 days there in total and I had 2 days off – both Satudays. I taught some of the best lessons there and snowboarded some amazing terrain. We all stayed in a house next to a convenience store which was handy. I shared a room with 2 good friends from Garmish – Tom Summerville who I brought over from NZ with me and Bec Farrar – aka Drumstick aka G fruit. It was a real nice chilled setup working 4 hrs a day from 10:30 to 15:30. We had a chance to ride every morning before work and for an hour or so after work. The night skiing wasn’t that great so we would ride after work just until the main lifts shut and then chilled out at home. Its funny as a resort there are more better things about resort than bad ones. The mountain is organised into 3 peaks the highest of which is around 1000 metres. The west mountain was closest to where we lived and was where the night skiing was. There were 2 lifts available on the west mountain at night, we did one night of skiing on those lifts and it was real fun, however the terrain was mellow and wasn’t as epic as the night skiing we have here in Niseko. Also the lift pass system was a bit pre historic – we had to show a liftie our pass with no electronic gates – no biggie though!
The lift system seems so well organised with hooded chairs and gondolas. There was a gondola on each peak and several chairs to help u access all of the available terrain on the mountain. Because of this organisation it meant there was so much off trail skiing available in trees between runs. On a good powder day you would have several options on runs to take and it wasn’t a super commercial busy hill like Niseko is which meant fresh snow was preserved for longer without being massively tracked out.
I was really lucky with the lessons I got, I taught snowboarding the whole week and had a high level group in the morning where the class size varied depending on who booked up on a particular day. There was only ever a max of 3, I had a girl called Claire who was a green runner when we started the week, and by then end of the week she was freeriding through trees relatively comfortably. She was super keen to progress and it was good to see her get better and better after each day of teaching her. I then had a couple of kids called Scottie and Jon 14 and 10 respectively. They could already rip but it was more about working with their technique. Later on when the group lessons finished on Thursday Jons dad booked me for a private with him Scott and Jon. It was probably the best lesson I have taught because we had a fresh powder morning and I was literally a tag along as they took me to their favourite powder spots. We were ripping fresh powder all morning and I get them small tips and pointers along the way. Jons dad Reynold had spent some time in Red where I did a season and you could see he loved the tree riding because thats all we did. Having spent some time in Red you have to love trees as they have the best in the world over there. They were kind enough to buy me lunch and then I headed to my afternoon private lesson.
For the whole week in the afternoons I had private lessons with a man called John Laidlaw, and what made this guy amazing was how humble he was with his snowboard ability. On our first run his technique was awesome! So we just worked on terrain building him for the whole week and advanced snowboarding techniques. It was thoroughly enjoyable teaching high end lessons and being able to apply my level 3 training to some practical teaching situations. He was only booked in for 2 afternoon privates, but decided after the 2 lessons we had to book me out for the rest of the week! On our last lesson, I got a bit lost in the trees and we ended up going a little too far into a valley enjoying the powder! It was terrible we had to hike out for 20-30 mins, and I thought he was going to hit the roof but he actually really enjoyed the serenity of the hike and it added to his experience. He was kind enough to give me a 10k tip at the end of the week which was amazing.
I was lucky enough to have 2 days off on the Saturdays around the week we were working and they were both so much fun. The first Saturday was an intro to the mountain where we did some terrain training and then just literally freerode through fresh powder all day because it was a sunny day. I took some turns with Chook our manager and we honestly had so much fun. Tom and I were riding with Brendan in the afternoon. Brendan is a fully certified ski instructor from NZ who works out of the Remarkables or Coronet peak in NZ (i forget). Anyone he is a machine and finds some of the best snow on the mountain – we called him line finder 3000! Good times.
Bec was lucky enough to have a 3rd day off on the Friday before our 2nd Saturday. She, James and I had to shovel for 2 hrs one evening to get our lift passes for the 2nd Saturday because technically it was a day off and we had finished teaching. Therefore we had to buy our own passes however we were offered them free for some shovelling work. We did that and it was actually quite fun though it was hard work!
Bjoern, Bec, James and I went out on our 2nd Saturday of riding rusutsu and we had some fresh snow and a shiny sunny day! It was so much fun doing laps in the trees with everyone around just having fun flying off natural hits and landing in lovely soft powder. We tried to get lots and lots of footage – sadly the ones of me were terrible, though I was pushing myself to do hits which were a lot bigger than I would normally hit on my own. I was happy with my landings it was just my aerial time was massively unattractive - this is something I definitely need to work on for sure!!
Rusutsu doesn’t have much to offer in the way of nightlife. There are a couple of hotels one called the Tower which is a pretty standard posh hotel with a fancy restaurant or 2 and an overpriced hotel shop. Rusutsu hotel was where it was at! The place was like a carnival! We took a walk through to find some rather alternative interior design (fear and loathing in las vegas esq). There was a talking tree which was pretty trippy, a merry go round – (really bizarre) and a huge games area. In the summer there is a theme park in the resort also, its covered with snow in the winter and is closed down as mountain is open, but it was surreal to see as we were ripping down from the west mountain of the resort a huge roller coaster line just covered with snow. The run out back toward the gondola is actually through the theme park and its just crazy surreal – I loved it! On the walk Bec and I did around the hotel we found the gym where Bec proceeded to do a ridiculous night workout in her puffy – funny times! We scoped out a few of the shops and took the monorail across between the hotels. Yes there is actually a monorail in this resort – its insane!
In the evenings we found ourselves either chilling out, watching movies or watching ridiculous comedy! It was fun bonding time with Tom and Bec and we had laughs for sure. We did venture out for dinner one evening – there was a bit of a debarcle with our tempura order, but I wont go into that! We had a karaoke machine and lets just say certain people shouldn’t sing in public.
We (i say we but it was actually James Winfields idea) decided to get an ipod with speakers and run into Seiko Mart – our convenience store next door – and have a rave – I posted a video on facebook – it was ridiculously hilarious! Good times!
Since being back from Rusutsu I have had a day of work teaching kids and then 2 days off!
The first of my days off was spent CAT skiing with Kay and Niseko photography – Immense day – the sun was shining all day and we got some incredible scenic shots. We did 1 lap which took us all morning – we were dropped off at a face of a hill which hadn’t been touched and there was 800 metres of slope to play with and hike. Because we were with a photo crew we had to hike a lot of different features and hit them. So the morning was literally about the shot – I wasn’t that keen on getting footage of myself, so I told the camera crew not to set up for me – but to set up for others and I would follow up. I looked at the pictures today and there are about 3 good shots of me which I am stoked about and about 100 other amazing scenic shots and action shots. The features were amazing! I was really loving the hiking working for each hit – it was hard work but the serenity and the quietness of not being on a hill with anyone else but the crew that you were with was awesome. Not only that but the day we had was incredible – sun all day clear skies and from the top there were some incredible skyline views. I cant wait to get the pictures! We did 2 top to bottom laps in the afternoon just for fun – and they were just absolutely incredible. One of the best and most varied days on my board!!
Today I rode hard pack groomers in the morning training for my exam in April and in the afternoon rode park. I took a real hard fall today off a 35-40ft jump! I luckily got back up and carried on the day in the park and given it was my first time in a long time in the park things were working for me and got some old tricks back and a couple of newbies which I was super happy with!! Another fun day with all the crew.
I think thats all I have to report right now – peace and love people
Saturday, 8 January 2011
THE POW IS HERE
07/01/2011
Well well well 21 days since my last blog, and things are crazy over here in Japan now. I was on a good vibe in my last blog and besides a few minor things everything here is pretty epic. Things in the house are still great, getting on well with everyone and making solid friendships.
Living with 27 people can get a bit much from time to time and issues arise around cleanliness and lazyiness, this tends to cause a bit of tension and drama, but other than that things are pretty good on the whole. The convenience of living right next to the beginner hill and close to work makes it amazing. There is no real excuse to go out riding, and we have been riding loads.
The way the school runs is we get a phone call when we are on in the morning or when we have a shift and it can run that way well because the full time staff live so close to the hill. Work has been going really well, I have been getting a mix of kids, adults and private lessons and have even got a few request privates. If you get requested for a private lesson you get a commission on the sale price of that lesson as you have effectively sold yourself for a lesson. The thing is sometimes at the end of a lesson I feel a little douchy selling myself but it pays off for sure. My best sale has been a private for 4 hrs, real good coin. I get like 15% of the sale price.
I have been getting a range of abilities on lessons too which has been awesome. I feel super confident taking any kind of level lesson out now and thats what I wanted to get to with my instructing. I find the training I got for my level 3 in new Zealand has really helped and I am applying the theory to practise. To be working full time is also good as in New Zealand the work was sporadic and I didnt teach a whole lot of higher end lessons like I am now. It is really great.
Thats the work, the onto the riding. Initially the snow has been pretty much like northern hemisphere for the most of December few light falls a couple of cheeky small pow days but on the whole it wasn’t the epic pow we thought it was going to be. We were still riding loads, but it was strange how often the sun popped out , but at the same time it lit up the mountain and you could see some amazing views, notably of Mount Yotei! The active volcano mountain opposite hirafu – so enchanting – so amazing. Since the turn of the year the powder has been epic and its been absolutely dumping with fresh snow – this is what we came to Japan for, this is the famous champagne powder – it was incredible. Since the start of Jan (about a week) there has been about 2-3metres of snow and it is absolutely epic. Last night I rode some of the deepest powder I have ever ridden in my life. At the same time, its so deep its easy to mess up. One wrong move and when you go down getting back up and riding again is the hardest thing. Especially when you fall on a flat section. Without momentum its hard to get going and in 80cm of fresh snow you can bury yourself quite easily. I had a scary experience last night where I fell during a flat section at night and all my friends were at the bottom, I had to basically hussle and roll out getting buried further and further. I was panicking and it was soo scary! A run that takes me 2-3 minutes took me 30 mins to get out of. It was emotional.
Socially its been good Christmas Day was so much fun, we had a pot luck where everyone made some food and we shared it around. It was a great evening. New years eve was pretty special too we all drank way too much and went to a bar next to the hill. The fireworks were incredible and it was just a great night.
My knee is doing ok, its just so physically demanding working and riding all the time, I feel my body is getting more and more atuned to it and its a good feeling.
Rode again today and it was insane riding! The powder is incredible
Much love people
Well well well 21 days since my last blog, and things are crazy over here in Japan now. I was on a good vibe in my last blog and besides a few minor things everything here is pretty epic. Things in the house are still great, getting on well with everyone and making solid friendships.
Living with 27 people can get a bit much from time to time and issues arise around cleanliness and lazyiness, this tends to cause a bit of tension and drama, but other than that things are pretty good on the whole. The convenience of living right next to the beginner hill and close to work makes it amazing. There is no real excuse to go out riding, and we have been riding loads.
The way the school runs is we get a phone call when we are on in the morning or when we have a shift and it can run that way well because the full time staff live so close to the hill. Work has been going really well, I have been getting a mix of kids, adults and private lessons and have even got a few request privates. If you get requested for a private lesson you get a commission on the sale price of that lesson as you have effectively sold yourself for a lesson. The thing is sometimes at the end of a lesson I feel a little douchy selling myself but it pays off for sure. My best sale has been a private for 4 hrs, real good coin. I get like 15% of the sale price.
I have been getting a range of abilities on lessons too which has been awesome. I feel super confident taking any kind of level lesson out now and thats what I wanted to get to with my instructing. I find the training I got for my level 3 in new Zealand has really helped and I am applying the theory to practise. To be working full time is also good as in New Zealand the work was sporadic and I didnt teach a whole lot of higher end lessons like I am now. It is really great.
Thats the work, the onto the riding. Initially the snow has been pretty much like northern hemisphere for the most of December few light falls a couple of cheeky small pow days but on the whole it wasn’t the epic pow we thought it was going to be. We were still riding loads, but it was strange how often the sun popped out , but at the same time it lit up the mountain and you could see some amazing views, notably of Mount Yotei! The active volcano mountain opposite hirafu – so enchanting – so amazing. Since the turn of the year the powder has been epic and its been absolutely dumping with fresh snow – this is what we came to Japan for, this is the famous champagne powder – it was incredible. Since the start of Jan (about a week) there has been about 2-3metres of snow and it is absolutely epic. Last night I rode some of the deepest powder I have ever ridden in my life. At the same time, its so deep its easy to mess up. One wrong move and when you go down getting back up and riding again is the hardest thing. Especially when you fall on a flat section. Without momentum its hard to get going and in 80cm of fresh snow you can bury yourself quite easily. I had a scary experience last night where I fell during a flat section at night and all my friends were at the bottom, I had to basically hussle and roll out getting buried further and further. I was panicking and it was soo scary! A run that takes me 2-3 minutes took me 30 mins to get out of. It was emotional.
Socially its been good Christmas Day was so much fun, we had a pot luck where everyone made some food and we shared it around. It was a great evening. New years eve was pretty special too we all drank way too much and went to a bar next to the hill. The fireworks were incredible and it was just a great night.
My knee is doing ok, its just so physically demanding working and riding all the time, I feel my body is getting more and more atuned to it and its a good feeling.
Rode again today and it was insane riding! The powder is incredible
Much love people
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