Thanks

I am thankful everyday. Been reading riverbendblog.blogspot.com lately and it reminds me how truly fragile and precarious life is. This Iraqi woman calls it as she sees it and it is not pretty. Its too easy to forget that there is a war going on right now. Her country is being occupied by my country. I ride snowboards down mountains with children.

Simple

This is a Marmot. It has a nice sunny place to enjoy the views of Gothic Mountain in the background. Didn't mind me snapping some shots. If only everyone could enjoy the simple things in life like this critter.

Kobe-King of Bears Everywhere

This shot was taken at the Roger Williams Zoo in RI. I love the look on the kids face in the corner. I think the bear liked it too because he kept diving down to watch all the people. Zoo's are not my idea of an ethically sound institution, or a great time, but I had my nieces and nephew with me so it was pretty cool.

Spring Forward

Spring doesn't mean the same thing in Crested Butte as it does where I grew up in New England. Storms are a big part of the rebirth that comes with spring. Here in the West Elk Mountains, spring generally means snow and mud. The net snowpack in town is on the decline, but it continues to snow almost daily. The resort has received a couple feet of fresh snow this week making for unbelievable conditions to ride in. The slush and mud that covers the streets and alleyways in town continue to grow during the day and freeze into treacherous configurations at night. In New England the snow would dissappear and be replaced quickly with sprouts of green. Here in CB, the rebirth will have to wait. The window in my office bathroom is completely buried under snow. The snow will recede to higher elevations, but the northern aspects of most buildings in town will hold snow until June. As much as I look forward to lounging on the lawn, I don't expect to see it for another month and a half. My neighbor had to give me a push out of the snowy driveway yesterday. Today it is sunny and cold - gonna be a great day to ride snowboards amongst the crazed spring break crowds.

The days will get an hour longer, and then some, starting tonight. My beloved skatepark is buried and needs to be dug out, but snowboarding continues to be the dominant force in my life right now. Next weekend the USASA National Championships begin at Copper Mountain, CO. The kids I coach have been working all season to qualify for the event, and we are going in with a ton of momentum. As urgent as spring is to make its presence known, winter still has us under her spell.

The 2004/2005 winter has been one of the best I have known as a slightly fanatical snowboarder. Storm after storm has smothered our little town in deep snow. Arching down the mountain with snow billowing over my body has been commonplace this winter - something I don't take for granted. When nature permits, I can fly. That is something many people seek metaphorically or through artificial means, but on a topographically amazing mountain like Mt. Crested Butte slathered with deep, light snow the phenomenon is as real as it gets. Of course there are gravity, rocks, and deep soreness to keep you in check, but that's all part of the magic.

I'll spring forward when I'm damn well ready.

What does it mean to be tired?

I mean really, really tired. Ellen MacArthur must have been drawn mighty thin after sailing around the world in 71 and a half days - alone. Just finished reading Generation Kill, about Recon Marines invading Iraq. Those dudes were awake for days at a time, which would drain most mortals in itself, but they were also being attacked and being shuffled around by seemingly clueless and reckless leaders. There is a tired that dictates you need sleep every day to operate your biological machinery. There is another tired that shut eye doesn't really touch on.

Being emotionally tired is a weight that is very difficult to lift. I feel for parents who have the moral commitment to raise children in a responsible way. Businesses that run ethically responsible practices have my respect as well. I am a teacher and coach who can leave the kids behind at the end of each day - save for when we are on the road. A combination of responsibility towards the staff and the kids has had me pretty whooped as of late. In an effort to bring my best to the table I have taken on some IT responsibilities. Basically, I have become the point person for the website, then, by default, taken responsibility for the whole network at the school. The responsibility would be easier to swallow if I knew more about the IT world. Unfortunately, what I know is how to be critical and identify what we need - not how to get there. So I pushed to hire a bright local crew to take over the maintenance and hosting of our network and site. With this done, I was excited to be moving into a new realm of technology at the school. The reality, however, is that there is never an easy fix to a complex problem. More money, more time, more layers of issues that need to be identified and resolved. So staff comes to me with their problems and I am trying to give them straight answers that I don't have. The new crew that is in place to work on our system constantly promise "tonight" or "in a couple hours," but have not delivered. The pull between staff needs and trying to prod the tech guys to get it done has added a weight I have not expected. Taking on this workload is a good reminder that strength of will and commitment are paramount to seeing things through.

Back to the parents. Trying to keep a kid from getting involved in drugs or alcohol is something nearly every family will have to deal with. Having seen kids suspended, and expelled for getting involved in these activities this year and in the previous years here has been another vacuum of emotion. I don't know how much greater the pressure to be part of the crowd is today, but I have been watching kids fold to it for years. I try to tell myself every year that some of the kids will identify the fact that they have an advantage and opportunity that 99% of the kids in this country do not - they get to ski and snowboard six days a week and travel all over the country to do what they love. It's this advantage that I think will be a lever for getting the best behavior from the kids, but inevitably fails every year. Its tiring. For this reason I am ever respectful of the parents who never back away from their responsibility to raise their children well. It's also from the parents commitment that I draw strength when I feel the wave of emotional strain coming over me.

Imagine being a parent with a kid in the Marines. Incompetant commands coming from the security of the whitehouse straight down through the ranks to the grunts trying to keep their weapons from jamming in the field. Some days I may be tired, but I know that it is just a yawn compared to the weight of a parent with children who are on the verge of danger - because of their decisions or others around them. Keeping that in perspective is a weight I can carry indefinitely.

The Lonliest Highway in America

Highway 50 is supposed to be the Lonliest Highway in America, but I would say that Highway 6 in Nevada puts it to shame. The drive from Mammoth, CA to Ely, NV is a long and quiet one. We went an hour-plus without seeing a soul. When a car would pass we would curse it for blinding us, then dip back into the darkness. The Great Basin is so vast. Dry valley bottoms stretch endlessly, interupted by islands of mountains sprinkled with snow. I remember the mountains and snow from the drive west, but driving east we had no light, no moon, so all I could see was the dry roadside whizzing by. Yellow lines to the left, white on the right, asphalt peeling through the high beams. Jack rabbits would occasionally sprint across the path, narrowly avoiding an 80 mph Subaru massage. My co-pilot, Little E, was engrossed in games on his iPod while I scanned the narrow scope of my vision. Jacked on caffeine and suger but totally pooped from riding so hard in CA for the past three days made for a electric, slow motion mind frame. Sing alongs with good music mixes and the instantaniousness of reacting to a bend in the road or a bush that looked too much like a deer grazing on the side of the road kept me conscious and awake.

At one point we pulled off on the side of the highway for a pee break. So quiet. So many stars. Crested Butte is isolated and relatively free of light and sound polution, but standing in a desert in the great basin late at night really puts things in perspective. We left Tonopah a couple hours ago and won't reach Ely for another hour and a half and there is not a street light, mailbox, or Kinkos even remotely close by. The way the stars hang overhead in the high altitude desert is like nothing I have ever seen - so dense and tangible, like you could run your hands through them. I shivered with a combination of delight and the cool desert air.

We travelled more than 2000 miles on this trip. Through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Wastach Range in Utah, across the great basin and into the Sierra's in California - and back. Spring break 2005. We rode Copper Mountain, Park City, Brighton, Snowbird, Snowbasin, Mammoth, and June Mountains. Powder, parks, and freeriding. The snowboarding was exceptional, but only a part of the overall mission. Driving through tiny towns surrounded by ocean sized nothingness dotted with sage, and seeing that people squeeze out an existence there, gave the trip deeper dimension. Wrestling matches, tight quarters, meals, picking on each other, sharing, conversation, music, and miles upon miles of highway fill out the experience. Christian and I got hugs and handshakes from just about all the kids on the trip when we disbanded last night - a very nice topper to ten days on the road.

I thought about trying to write more detail about riding at the resorts, but there is a language barrier that many people can't understand when it comes down to the specifics that made each member of our crew a shining star. Personal progression in a foreign setting made the experience more exciting. We had digital still and video cameras rolling every day. Wading through the content is going to take days, but it will get processed into the Macs in the snowboard office and used for creating marketing content, personalized and team videos, and whatever else we can utilize it for. I will try to get some photos onto this site for whoever might want to check it out. An image will never replace the feeling of vertigo I still get standing on a knife ridge staring down an impossibly steep chute before dropping in. And there were a lot of those moments on this trip. Getting pushed to the limits of my abilities in the steeps by Christian and in the freestyle arena by the kids and hoping that I am a part of driving all of them to ride harder is another important aspect of this trip. Trying to become more than I am and pushing the kids to open up to become more than they are. Experience...

Salt Lake Strip Mall

The great Wasatch mountains of Utah are an amazing place. The resort riding we have done since leaving CB has been excellent. Park City offered X Games style parks and pipe, Snowbird had the parks and the amazing big mountain scene - a short hike would get us onto some amazing terrain covered in powder fields and off-piste freeriding. Brighton, today, was rail riding goodness in the morning followed by some mad backcountry-access gate goodness. I followed Christian out this ridge to a line that involved dropping into a quick traverse across the top of a couple hundered foot rock-dotted chute, over a snow spine onto a precariously purched snow apron, around a huge boulder where I had to hug the rocks and snow to scoot into a position to drop into my line. The justice came in the form of a steep spine of snow where each turn sent slough sliding in either direction while I continued turning down the soft structure. After a final slash turn on the spine I gunned it into a wide open powder field and arched turns until the slope flattened out. I looked back up to the top of the ridge and Christian was silhoutted against the sky with his arms raised over his head in celebration. My heart was pounding like a speed metal drummer.

Funny that all this takes place about a half hour from downtown Salt Lake City - one of my least favorite cities. The majesty of the mountains and the magical quality of the snow is conversly matched by the murky air and never ending strip mall that is the city. We ride hard on this rugged, steep, and amazing natural terrain during the day, then return to the highway that greets us at the bottom of the canyons and sucks us back into the neon buy-everything culture of the city. Crested Butte has no stop lights, no fast food, and the speed limit is 15 mph. I am grateful to be able to be on the road and to experience this, but I am also grateful that I live in a place where life is simpler.

The kids are all maniacs. They are both frustrating to try to direct and very fun to be around. They are very loving, but also super-mean to each other. The smelliness came to a boil today when Little E ate a burger that set his gastrointestinal system into chaos. The drives around town are much chillier because we have to have the windows open at all times. They ride really well during the day, crash for a while until we are about through with dinner, then they get dialed into hyper-spaz mode. Tonight I had to pry them from the dinner table because they were so fired up about slurping Jello through straws. Once they got into the parking lot, with make shift to go Jello, they started running the progress in reverse - spitting Jello through straws at each other. Madness.

We are trying to plan for the next few days and it looks like we are bound for Clifornia tomorrow night after riding at Snowbasin. 500 miles to the next mission. Damn I hope E's digestive issues get resolved.