so i'm just waiting for my flight to reno.

 

leave at 4:50 - get in to reno at 7:30 - stay at the sands casino for the night.

 

then it's a full week of snowboarding at northstar@tahoe.  that'll be just such a sweet way to finish off the season.  entry in nationals included a 6-day lift ticket, so of course i'll use that to the max and then some...  slalom race is on friday, apr 6.  totally appointed.

 

more to come.

so today was another brilliant day on the slopes.  i actually wasn't going to come up here this weekend, but my buddy jonathan's brother, scott snow, is racing the junior olympics up here in mammoth, so i had to come up and support the hardqoreness.  he's racing well, finishing in the 20's out of 90 or so competitors, and he's only 13 in the 13-14 division.  he'll win next year.

 

but scott's putting all that high school peer pressure on me - "what, you've never done a 360 off a jump before?  it's easy - if you can spin a 180 standing still then you can totally do a 360 off a jump."  "uhhhhh, you've got to be crazy, scott.  i'm not exactly the best jumper..."  "oh, you can do it."

 

so yeah, now i've got to get the courage up to do a 360.  i make a halfway effort and pull a 180, but just sit down right away.  "oh, that's cool, jeremy - nobody makes a 360 on their first try."  "..."

 

360's.  not sure i'll keep on trying those - maybe i will - but i really think i better learn how to ride goofy foot first, and that's just not easy at all.  anyway, yeah, whatever.  scott also got me to step up to the big jumps - the ones where you start to catch some serious big air.  and i've got to say - that is absolutely terrifying flying when you're getting big air.  it's just something you have to get used to, and it'll definitely help out the boardercross racing, but wow - pushing the limits for sure.

so i'm supposed to write about 6 weird things about myself, but no way - just too tired.  midnite jut followed by full day of boarding followed by hot tubbin and lasagna.  yeah, sleepy time so i can do it all over again tomorrow - sans the midnite jut.  word.

dude, i just made record time, as in land speed jutqoreness thereof, up to mammoth.  rolled out of SD at 00:39, got in to MM at 06:07.  394 miles in 5 1/2 hours with a stop halfway.  pretty good, considering 2/3 of the trip is not on the interstate.  that, and it sure is nice to get through LA at 2 in the morning...

 

so here's a great quote from the brief i gave yesterday - the one that held me up from leaving SD.  we're discussing risk levels and how we would rate the project that i'm managing.

 

CAPT Pope : so this is a pretty low risk project, right?

cap'n hq : well, yes, but i can't be entirely sure we'll get the desired results until we actually test the system over-the-air.

CAPT : but we've got the OEM designing the enhancement, so we shouldn't have the typical integration issues

cap'n : that's absolutely true - they know the system better than anyone else

CAPT : so everything should work then?

cap'n : Yep, everything should work perfectly fine - it's just the unknowns that always trip you up...

 

that was my Yogi Berra moment for the day.  Everyone just dropped their jaws and shook their heads.  It was awesome.

so it's midnite, and i'm about to hit the rode for mammoth.  was supposed to leave thursday around 2 or 3 in the afternoon and take 6.5 to 7.5 hours to get up there.  work said otherwise - i was giving a brief to our main boss man (CAPT Pope) from 2 yesterday, and that meeting ran over til after 4.  the meeting went really well, and everyone like my brief, but no point in even trying to fight traffic, so midnite jut here we come.  just got a good nap in, so i'm rared to take it jutqore to the promised land!

Day 2 of the CA State Games:

 

GS

 

Giant Slalom is supposed to be a more spread out - and therefore faster - course than Slalom.  Well, the course was definitely longer than the SL course, but it really didn't seem any faster.  Plus the surface was just so so icy.  I mean, I guess that's just how the alpine courses are - icy.  But wow, who really likes ice?  Anyway, time for the 1st run down the course.  I start out at what I think is a quick speed, and start bombing down the course.  I'm really trying to initiate the turns early so that I just barely come around the gates.  Anyway, I'm about 1/3 of the way down the course, making a turn, and then I realize that I'm heading straight at the gate - not in a tight arc around it.

 

Oh, no...

 

No time to change my angle and I just slam right through the gate (it's only a triangular flag, so there's no damage or anything).  I slide on my butt past 2 more gates until I can finally stop.  Now, if you miss a gate in SL or GS you get DQ'ed.  Usually the races are the combined times of 2 runs, but at the Cal Games it was the best time from the 2 runs that was your final score.  So, normally I would have had to have hiked back up and gone around the gates to keep from being DQ'ed, but since it was best of 2 I could simply miss the gates, go down the rest of the course, and have that score thrown out.  Of course, that meant that I had to nail the 2nd run correctly.  Yeah, no pressure there, especially after I crashed from being just a little aggressive.

 

2nd run, and I do what I think is a conservative run, but the entire time, I'm still skidding on the ice after every turn, and that's just so no good.  I still took some turns where I almost nailed the gate stake, but I made it down ok.  I ended up winning my age category, as I was the only competitor, but it was certainly no record time.  Mine was around 53 seconds - plenty of other people were around 50 seconds - and the guys tricked out in actual alpine race gear were around 42 seconds.  Yeah, lots to work on, to be sure.

day 1 of the CA state games :

 

SL and BX today.

 

rode around all morning, just doing jumps and some easy cruising.  it came time to do the SL, but nobody was at the course, so I took another run down the mountain.  get back to the SL course, and all of a sudden i'm late.  need to take my first run.  i take it really conservatively - not entirely on purpose - i simply had no idea what the course was.  anyway, that was slow, so i took the lift back up for my second run.  best time out of the 2 runs was the score, so i really needed to take it a bit quicker this time.  came out of the start - took the first turn - and i could tell this was going to be a good run.  took the 2nd turn - feeling fast.  3rd turn - just kill it.  4th turn - and i start skidding on the ice.  skidding so much that i had to sit down to avoid missing the gate.  nuts - there goes that time...  get back up and get back to speed.  finishout the run as fast as i can and that's that.  3rd place of 3 racers.

 

got over to the BX course as quick as i could and found out that i was too late to take a practice run on the course.  oh, wow.  my heat gets called - i'm feeling pretty no good - i mean - going down the course on its own at a fast speed without seeing it is hard enough.  but add in other guys that know the course?  forget it.  whatever.  heat comes up - 3 guys + me.  pull the start - i'm slowest out of the gate - i crash in the first turn. wow, need to work on riding those berms...  get back up and finish the course.  not too bad - time for the 2nd run.  so here we go - 2nd run.  i start slow again, and see the other 3 stacking up in the 1st turn.  they make it through, but 2 of the guys clash in turn 3 and one goes down.  perfect, i'm thinking - now i can cruise by.  but then he crawls up in the turn just as i'm coming by - oh, snap!  i'm able to go high in the turn and get by him just as he's getting up.  ok, now if i can just keep him at my back, then i'll finally actually beat someone at BX!  and then he passes me in the next turn.  huh.  finish out the course and that's that.  no injuries, so that's a success.

 

tomorrow is GS - that should be fun

So my team manager called me the other day:

 

general : hey, you're not quitting bike racing are you?

cap'n : naw, naw...  i'm not quitting - just taking some time off, i guess

general : is your knee still bothering you?

cap'n : oh, not as much anymore - it's still a little swollen, but i've got full mobility.  it's healing

general : been riding much?

cap'n : not a whole lot - been mostly snowboarding, actually

general : well, that's prolly good.  it's nice to have a change and just do something completely different now and then.

cap'n : yeah, it's really nice to just take a break.  i'll prolly start racing toward the end of april or the beginning of may.

general : that's cool.  so i'm out of town in colorado next week, but then i'll be back.  wanna go for a ride when i get back?

cap'n : sure, sounds good.

so i got an email yesterday from USASA - the USA Snowboarding Association - that's the organization I race under.  Apparently I qualified for Nationals in the SL event.  yeah, qualified 18th out of 20 spots for the 23-29 age group.  now there were only 32 people competing in that category nationwide, but it's still pretty ridiculous.  yeah, so nationals are at Northstar at Tahoe from April 1-6.  SL for my group is on the 6th...

 

http://usasa.org/action.lasso

 

so i guess i'm going to nationals.  i mean, was it ever really a question?

 

now if only I can somehow weasel a spot in to the GS and BX too...

(ranked 59th out of 92 in BX - only 25 qualifying spots, though)

(never done a GS before - but I'll try that out this weekend...)

hmmm, so with all that's gone on - where to start?

how about a quick overview, then I'll fill in the blanks later...

 

feb 1 - getting ready for my first SBX...

feb 2 - getting ready for my first SBX...

feb 3 - got blown away by my first SBX.

feb 4 - was supposed to bike race, but was pretty banged up from the SBX.

 

feb 10 - recovering...

feb 11 - recovering...

 

feb 18 - time to get back to snowboarding

feb 19 - time to celebrate the presidents - and snowboard

 

feb 23 - snow

feb 24 - snow

feb 25 - my very first Slalom (SL) race.  DFL..

 

mar 1 - flew out to DC to visit the JJJ... and snowboard

mar 2 - boarding in Snowshoe, West Virginia

mar 3 - my second SL race - a little bit better than the first

mar 4 - was supposed to be an SBX, but got cancelled.  :-(

 

mar 9 - snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain in central CA - pretty sweet

mar 10 - more boarding

mar 11 - second SBX race.  slightly better than the first - no injuries - but still crashed each time.

 

mar 16 - gonna be back at Mammoth again...

mar 17 - CA State Games (grass-roots pretend Olympic type thing) - SL and SBX

mar 18 - more CA Games - GS (Giant Slalom)

OK, so it's been a little bit, but you know what?  My computer broke about 2 weeks ago.  Just flat out broke.  Had to get a new one.  And so here we are.  Back to the Internet.  Hooray.

 

But the 2 weeks of non-blogging before that?  Well, that was just total business and laziness rolled into one.  I'll try to do better...

 

But not tonight - tonight I'm going to bed.