I find posting once every two years is best. One it takes me that long to be creative enough to entertain you monkies (I mean that lovingly) and two... I'm lazy.
Anyway, so the day starts off balls ass cold. What is balls ass cold you ask? Well, balls ass cold is somewhere below "Holy Jewish Christ it's cold!" and just slightly above "Dude, I can't feel my nuts!". Tim and Dan can fill you in more on how cold it was, since they decided to sleep in their car... on the mountain... at 5am... with the heat off. Yeah, them Maryland boys ain't all there.
So as I was saying, it was balls ass cold, and we decide to warm up with a nice easy run. Now this run, had this stuff called packed powder on it. I'm not sure what it really was because it was light and fluffy and responsive and easy to ride. Where I'm from, packed powder is the frozen painfull shi*t you get the day after all the man made snow froze. I have to say, I like Vermont's version a lot better. Anyway, we're on this run, and there's this little roller of a jump at the start. Now, everyone is hitting this thing and landing with ease. I says to myself "SELF! that looks fun and easy so I'm gonna try it!". Sadly, what my mind failed to take into account was that the ones who went over it where Dan, Tim, and a few others who have been riding a hell of a lot longer than me and therefore, can actually ride really well. So just because they make something look easy, it may not actually be so... easy. Apparently, I left this part of my brain back in VA. So I tuck and make a straight line for this thing hit the top and leap. It's at this point that I realize I have no earthly clue what in the blue flying catholic %$&* to do whilst airborne. This becomes even more obvious when I land with all the grace of a drowned bubonic rat. But this isn't Liberty, so the landing area wasn't made of rock. Unfazed, I get up and ride down.
From there we wait and get on the tram. The tram by the way is the slowest means known to man to get people up a mountain. Seriously. Anyway, we get to the top of this beast and I'm looking around at the kind of terrain I've never ever ridden before. I can't wait to ride down this bitch! So I strap and and get ready to roll. It's at this point that I realize one of the straps on my binding has snapped in half making my foot wobble around in my binding like a drunken irishman on st patty's day. Getting down is going to be a bit of a challenge. The only thing I can do at this point is ride down and pray for a repair at the base. So Carmen and I take off for the base.
I will point out that the ride down was pretty awesome. Especially for a mid atlantic rider. Lots of terrain, snow, and no ice. Again, NO ICE. Hah! Anyway, I'm almost all the way down I start to get cocky again. Yes I know, not exactly a bright move when im working with half a binding on my back foot. Like I said, I left that part of my brain at home. There are these nice rollers/hills/whatever the hell you call them, that were just screaming for me to get some speed and jump at the top. Soo, I jump em. And amazingly, I land the first one. Excited, I tuck and get ready for the next one. Up I go and again I land without bailing. At this point I'm flying down the hill and there's one more coming. I figure go for 3!! Haha, yeah bad idea. I tuck and throw everything I have into my legs to jump the last one sending me into a low orbit. I try to land but my balance is off and I come crashing down right on my head. That's when the lights go out. But only for a second or two. Thank god for brain buckets. But this has certainly put my ego in check for the rest of the trip... Kinda
Finally at the bottom, a little woozy, I go into the shop in the hopes that they sell flows. In the middle of burton country (yeah). They don't in fact, no one does... anywhere. I'm stuck buying the only large size bindings they have. a $70 pair of Burton Freestyles aka $70 of pure unholy suck. But whatever, I meet up with everyone and again head up the tram. We're headed for something called the ugly tree. I don't know which of the 80 billion trees was the ugly one but I'll get to that shortly. So we're riding to this thing and I'm trying to get used to the new bindings. I'm kind of getting the hang of it and let myself get some decent speed on the way to this glade run. That's when I catch an edge and come down on what is becoming my prefered landing cushion... my head. Honestly, I'm pretty sure there's some important SQL knowledge that i've forever lost up that hill somewhere. I can still tie my own shoes though so I'm good. However, I've managed to shatter my goggle lenses in this fall. Yeah I don't know how I managed that either. See below for pics
Now for the trees. Keep in mind that I've never even really been on a black before. Sure I rode a handfull of them at 7 springs for one day ut those are about as challenging as picking my nose. This is a run through trees n shi*t... TREES! But I'm with a bunch of people who know what they're doing so I'll be all right... Kinda. They head on through these trees and in a matter of 3.4 seconds, I've lost all of them. I can't see them, I can't hear them, they're just gone lol. Now these new bindings aren't responding very well to my "oh shi*t turn now!" commands. So I'm spending most of my time on my ass, and my back, etc etc. It takes a retarded amount of time to finally work my way out of the trees. Once I do, I find that I'm all kinds of alone. So I spend the rest of the day exploring this huge mountain. Next time, I'll bring a radio that works!
Friday was a different day. After some inventive binding "repair", I'm back on my flows. And I brought some spare lenses for my goggles so I'm back to working condition again. Time to make another run through some trees!
I've learned a few lessons about riding through trees with this group. 1) Never follow rob because he loves his superman impression. But unlike superman, he doesn't stay airborne. 2) Follow Zach (cifex), because he takes lines through trees that people can actually survive. 3) Never ever ever follow Tim through the trees, unless you brought your
golf clubs, and a shovel, oh and a tent. More on that below
At this point I'm doing a decent job keeping up with these folks. Again they've been doing this a hell of a lot longer than me and I sure as hell would never attempt these runs on my own. This is one of the things I liked best about this trip. Hitting terrain that i never thought I could do and pushing myself damn hard to keep up.
Anyway, I follow Zach as best I can through these trees. I gotta admit, riding through trees is a huge rush. I've never done anything like it before. It's better than snorting blow off a hooker's ass! After a few hundred falls, and crashes into trees, I pop out onto the trail where everyone is waiting. Somehow, I've managed to beat Tim out of the woods. Which is odd because it took me just under a decade to get out. Then I found out why.
Apparently, Tim decided he wanted to go golfing. f*ck this riding shiz, boy wanted to break out his clubs and hit the back nine! Soo, he headed for the
golf course. Which is obviously well out of boundes. For some reason Tim thinks this is a really good idea anyway. Even though he didn't bring his gold clubs... and there's snow on the ground. It's the little details that count. By the time he figures this out, he's waist deep in powder in the middle of a ravine on the opposite side of Vermont. So while we wait for the gallant golfer to carry his lanky ass back to the rest of us, we decide to keep ourselves entertained.
Dan works on his backflip (not quite as funny as Andrea's backflip but with much less ankle twistage).
Waiting for Tim
Several others play jump the tree stump.. thingy.
All the while shouting for Tim so he could get a bead on where vermont was again. (I think he cried). Dan was a bit upset that he was the only one shouting but that was because we were all laughing too god damn hard and the filth flowing from his pie hole like a raunchy poet. If Danimal was a religion, I'd f*cking worship it. Apologies to all the random folk riding by that heard what was said. But it was epic funny!
I'd write more but I think this post if long enough already. Needless to say I had the time of my life. I broke bindings, a helmet, goggle lenses, my ass, bought 2 pairs of bindings, got a horrid chest cold (btw, you can get a great buzz off of 5 advil, 3 strong swigs of robotussin, a cup of thera flu, and 4 sudafed caplets.), bit out a chunk of my mouth, spit blood in front of some random skier (that was pretty funny) and was molested by more than one tree (It wasn't gay because I didn't push back) But at least I didn't slip getting out of the hottub and bust my ass like a certain porch flying canadian
