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