Snowboarding

k so i had my first GOOD day on a carving board. learned about driving with the inside knee on the heelside turns, trusting the board, and got way more comfy on it. We took the camera up, but it ran outa batteries, so we took it back to the shop to drop it off. I got to talking to BJ at the shop about Palmer boards, and he sent me out with a demo softboot setup.

Dave wanted to hit the park on his hardboots, so off we go to jonsey's for some jibbin. I hit the first box a lil too fast. speedcheck for the second got me dead on. i remember thinking "gee this park's different than it was last time i was here". with that i decided that the logical next step in a park i didn't know was to do a backside rotation. what a fuckin brain doctor i am, eh?

so i boost over the third booter and start my rotation... and look down to spot my indy grab, when i see the rest of the booter trail off behind me. What was once a 12 foot kicker is now a 4 foot kicker. I've just overshot the landing on the 6 foot high jump by 8 feet easy, leaving me 10 feet in the air off the flat bottom. Needless to say i landed less than gracefully.

My whole right side slammed into the ground due to me over rotating since i didn't hit a transition. hips, shoulder, arms and finally head smashed into the snow. I saw a great lil flash of light when my head hit (thank GOD for my helmet) and lied there for a minute. busted. beaten. unable to move. ready to pass out.

when i finally got up, i got my bearings, got dave and headed for the car. Both my wrists were killing me, and my shoulder was starting to go numb. i was woosy. When we hit the bottom i had to have dave undo my bindings because i couldn't work my wrists or my shoulder.

A short ride to Holy Cross hospital revealed that i hadn't broken one thing! both wrists are merely sprained and the shoulder is mildly separated! a couple weeks on the couch with the remote and some lortab and i'll be fine

somebody out there is looking out for me... and i do very much appreciate it.

So i went out riding with Dave yesterday and met Bill from MAX'S for the first time. he's an awesome guy. totally knows his shit about carving and pretty much everything else we talked about on the chairs and in the shop. Dave damn near took his arm off falling on the edge grinder in the shop.

We got to PCMR at like 9am. Bill got in about 9:45. We were on the chair by like 11. I was kinda irritated at first, then i realized i probably wouldn't be riding for long since i'm out of shape and not used to the specifics of carving. BOY was i right. By 12:15 i was absolutely juiced. And i couldn't for the life of me comit to a turn. I'm a big coward.

But godamn was it fun to watch the boys lay down serious ruts. Dave's board was nice and quick to turn in at even slowish speeds, so he spent all morning in tight, closely linked turns. Bill was having some boot difuculty so he kept telling me how much he sucked, but he sure seemed to be killing it to me

I know i'm not very good at this, but godamn if i'm not totally hooked. I'm gonna try to go up tomorrow if i can get a decent nite's sleep in. All depends if i manage to get out to this party tonite with Katie, this girl i met at the W lounge a week ago with brad and jem. I'd love to see some Breaks, but i'd also love to carve. ah the dilemas that are my life.

Ok so i just got back from Dave Tille's and the man has just hooked me up with the PHATEST Deeluxe carving boots, and a loaner board and bindings. We're going up friday and i'm officially going to be a rut digger! prolly a good thing considering im the co-owner of a hardboot website, eh?

The new HardBooter Digicam should be here this week, so we'll go goof with it and take some rut layin pics for the gallery. The site's comin together pretty well, im psyched to see where it goes.