Balancing Riding and Finals.

Hello again. I am back from a fun and exciting winter break in Minnesota and stoked to ride at Steamboat once again. But before I blog about the happenings of winter break, I wanted to tell you about the crazy last week of school here at Colorado Mountain College before everyone left.


As awesome as it was that the Steamboat resort was open before everyone went home for the holidays, I have to admit that it probably wasn't the best thing for a bunch of snow deprived students trying to study for finals. I didn't get in as much riding as I wanted to this last week here, but I did really well on my finals, so I SUPPOSE it was worth it.


A lot of my time that final week was spent finishing up a presentation for my Marketing and Media class. In the presentation, we had to pitch our website to a potential advertiser (played by Mike Martin) to try and convince him to put an ad for his company on our site. I never saw the final grade for it, but I did really well in the class so I'd assume my group got a good grade, at least I sure hope we did considering we worked on it for 6 and a half hours on Sunday, and 2 hours on both Monday and Tuesday.

The final test for my Retail and Wholesale was surprisingly easy, but most of the points came from the business plan each student had to write. The paper had to be roughly 15 pages which included a floor plan of the shop you were trying to open, as well as a store logo and a sample advertisement.

I would say my toughest final is a toss up between Macroeconomics and Intro to Business. I had studied for both quite a bit, but still had trouble on quite a few of the questions. In Business class, the questions that gave me the most trouble were the ones regarding a number of podcasts and news articles we had to read/listen to throughout the semester. Fortunetly my grades turned out good so I was happy. College 101 didn't have a final and believe it or not, my professor for Intro to PC Applications e-mailed me and told me I didn't need to take the final because I had done so well in the class so that was very cool.

So that's how my finals shaped up! Overall I had a great time my first semester in Steamboat, minus the whole breaking my collarbone thing of course. It was great to get out riding on a real mountain and I can't wait to see what second semester will bring.

Back in Action: Thanksgiving

Sorry to any loyal followers for not posting anything over Thanksgiving while I was in Park City, Utah but I am back and here to tell you how it went.

To celebrate the very fattening holiday of Thanksgiving, my friends Steve, Kyle, Jaryn, and I went to Park City, Utah Wednesday to Sunday to stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, so it was nice for me to see some family for the holiday since I wasn't able to go home. So after finishing up some homework that I really didn't want to have to do over Thanksgiving break, and shaving the ridiculous neck bread I had sprouted over No Shave November (click to read Bobbie Jo's blog for details on this ridiculous month), we got on our way.

One of the most interesting parts of our adventure was the ride there. We weren't to far into the trip, only a little bit outside of Craig, when Kyle got pulled over for speeding. Luckily, he didn't get a ticket for speeding but he did get a ticket for wearing his seatbelt with the shoulder strap under his armpit, which the rest of us thought was hilarious. However, the most interesting part of this little police encounter was when the officer asked Kyle to step out of the car. After talking to him for a bit, they both came back and the officer asked us to all get out so he could search the car. While he was searching the car, we all asked Kyle what he was talking to him about, to which Kyle replied with a laugh, "He asked if we had meth." We were all very taken aback by this, but don't worry everyone, we most definetly did not have meth or any kind of drugs. So after that little setback, we were on our way again.

The next exciting part of the ride was when we were getting close to Park City. Steve was now driving and it was getting a little late and we were getting pretty hungary. At this point, we were all riding pretty quiet until Steve shattered the silence with, "Woah, a Sonic!" That's right, a Sonic fast food restaurant. Being from Minnesota, and the other guys all from the East Coast, not one of us have ever seen of much less been to a Sonic before. All of us have seen TV commercials for it, but have never been there. Needless to say, we have now. All of us ordered something different to get a full feel of the incredible menu they offer and I must say, my blue coconut limeade was phenominal.

So now that we were all full and satisfied, we finally arrived at my aunt and uncle's house, which by the way, is an awesome log cabin style home in a neighborhood entirely on the side of a mountain. After apologizing for/explaining why we arrived a little later than scheduled, we set up shop in the basement, which they are remodeling in order to rent out, and got ready for a poaching mission to Deer Valley the next day.

Something I feel I should mention at this point of the blog is that Steve had been feeling a little sick for a couple days now. To be continued.

So Thursday rolled around and we headed up to Deer Valley to try to get some turns and just ride. Getting there proved to be more difficult than we anticipated, as we got lost for awhile until we decided it would be a good idea to call for a little recap of the directions. After finally finding our way up to Empire lodge, which is roughly mid-mountain, we began looking for the way to get up to the top until we saw it. There was a bunch of local skiers and riders sessioning a flat down box they had set up. This was very exciting.

After a great session, we picked up a couple small things for dinner appetizers, and headed back in excited anticipation for Thanksgiving. Just so you get an idea of the excitement we had, my uncle is head chef at Deer Valley resort so yea, pretty excited for Thanksgiving dinner. Also, they were having about 20 friends over, most of whom were bringing some sort of food or desert to only make the dinner better. When we got back, there was already some guests there so we cleaned up and joined in. We had bought pickles and olives to add to the appetizers, which consisted of a shrimp dish that I'm not sure what it was seasoned with but it was excellent, and various flavors of cheese and crackers.

There's no way I'll be able to explain and describe all the incredible food that was there, so I'll just say that you have not had turkey until you've had my uncles turkey. Period. On top of that, the array of pies was incredible (I didn't even know there was such a thing as egg-nog pie), unfortunetly that night I couldn't even enjoy as much as I wanted to since I was so full from the amazing dinner. After just chilling for awhile, trying to calm my extremely full stomach, we spent the rest of the evening getting dominated by my cousin in Boggle and playing an intense game of Risk full of aliances and back stabbing.

Getting back to poor old Steve, a ridiculous amount of food didn't exactly help his growing illness. As we found out the next morning, he had spent the whole night throwing up and wouldn't be able to join us for another session at Deer Valley. However, on the up side for me at least, this session was even better than the previous one. There was still a few people there even Park City resort had opened that day, and after Jaryn and I got the tricks we were trying to stick, we headed back to check on Steve. Unfortunetly, we found him where we left him, looking half dead on the couch (no offense Steve). That night, Jaryn went to hang out with a friend from back home who now lives in Park City, so Kyle and I decided to check out some stuff around town, since, even though I've been there before, neither of us were that familiar with Park City.

The next day Steve was feeling a bit better, so we headed to Park City resort. We decided to go with the half day pass which was about half the cost of the whole day resort and it was worth it considering we were all exhausted after a day of riding. Unfortunetly, Park City's terrain park was not as nice to us as the Deer Valley session, so when we had taken enough abuse, we headed back.

That night is when the sickness took a turn for the worse. After my aunt and uncle made another fantastic meal of blue cheese burgers with chips and salsa, we decided to play another game of risk. After awhile into, I realized my stomach was hurting pretty bad and not just from being crazy full. I won't go into details but needless to say, that night got pretty rough for both Jaryn and I. And lucky for us, we had a 6 hour car ride ahead of us the next day. And we found out that my uncle too got the sickness, as well as I just find out today that one of my cousins got it too, so we felt pretty bad about that.

So now, after the rough ride in the car of 6 hours of trying to keep everything in my stomach, we are back at here at Colorado Mountain College and finally feeling better. Today was the first day my stomach didn't hurt all day so it's looking good. Even though we all had a great time in Park City, I have to admit it probably would've been a bit better without the whole being sick thing. But now we're feeling better, Steamboat's resort is open, and we can't wait to see friends and family over Christmas break. Peace.

Good Deeds.

Hello again everyone. I wanted to talk about an awesome thing that some friends and I recently discovered and that a lot of Colorado Mountain College students have been doing.

Here in Steamboat Springs, there is an animal shelter for stray pets found around Steamboat. At the animal shelter, they help the animals get healthy, since they were very malnourished living on the streets, and then put them up for adoption. The great thing this animal shelter does, is let people come and take the dogs for walks. You don't even have to be interested in adopting, you can just take them out for the fun of it.

I have some mad alergies to dogs, so I've never had one growing up, but I've always wanted one. This is an awesome way for me to play with dogs without having to worry about all their allergens getting on my bed and things in my room. I can take on out for the day and walk it around and then drop it back off before I head back to the dorms. Also, four legged pets aren't allowed in the dorms, so if you're a dog lover like my friend Corey, it's a great way to still have fun with them, even though you can't actually keep it in the dorms.

The first time my friends took out a dog, I was unfortunetly in class, but when I got out, I got to meet one of the coolest dogs ever, Amber. She was found on the streets like most of the animals at the shelter, and was still really skinny. She is a retriever hound mix and about 10 months old, although she was really big already. When I got out of class, Corey and Chelsy were out behind the dorms building playing with her. After hanging out there with Amber for awhile, I went to the animal shelter with them to drop her off. They said that at first she was really scared to jump in and out of the car, but by the time we dropped her, she was already a champ at it.

After that first experience with Amber we decided to check out the other dogs on the animal shelter's website. Hopefully that link works for you, but the website is a great place to go check out all the animals before you go there, and you can even request to walk a certain dog you saw on the site.

The next time, a few days ago, just Corey and I went to animal shelter to try and get Amber again. When we got there, she was already being walked, so we got her sister Ashley. However, when we were walking out with Ashley, our friend Ryan was walking in with Amber, and they let us take her out too. We decided to walk them next to the river, just down the street from the animal shelter. If you're familiar with the Steamboat area, we started walking them at the park near the new library, just off Lincoln. On the walk, we ran into a lady biking who recognized Amber and Ashley from when she walked them, and thought it was really cool how we were doing that. Later we ran into some friends who wanted to see them and some girls who thought it was great that we were helping the animal shelter dogs.

Walking dogs is a great way to spend an afternoon while helping out some less fortunate animals. Also, if you're part of a club here at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus, walking dogs can be a great way to get community service hours for the group. Since we walked Amber and Ashely, we haven't gone back yet, but I got a feeling we'll be going very soon.

C-Bone Update and Some Early Season Action.

Thursday afternoon was yet another appointment with Dr. Sisk for him to look at my collarbone. I was insanely nervous going into it because it was the day I would find out if I needed surgery on it or not. I was most nervous because I knew it wasn't 100% healed but I was hoping it healed enough on its own to not need surgery. Here's how it went down:

My friend Corey gave me a ride to the hospital with my friends Tyler and Chelsea who came along for moral support (and because they needed to go to Wal-Mart). They dropped me off and I headed up to Dr. Sisk's office which I'm very familiar with by now. After I checked in, I sat in the waiting room, knee bouncing in nervous anticipation for when they call my name. Finally a nurse came out, called me back, and showed me to a room where I had to wait for the x-ray. After only about a minute of waiting, another nurse called me back for the x-ray and I only got more nervous.

"How are you today?" she asked. "I'll be honest I'm pretty nervous right now", I replied. "Why's that?" she asked. "I find out if I need surgery or not today." She simply responded with, "Oh"

After the x-ray, I was brought back to the room for the worst part; waiting for the doctor with the results. After only about 5 minutes or so, Dr. Sisk opened the door with a huge smile on his face. "You see this smile?" he asked me. I could only reply with a relieved laugh. He explained that even though it's taking awhile, my collarbone is healing on it's own and wouldn't require surgery. Almost immedietly I asked, "Can I snowboard?" and he replied with a "Yep... Don't fall on it! But you can go riding." That was all I needed to hear because surgery or not I had a trip to Breckenridge planned with the Freeriders Club here at Alpine Campus. After that, I shook his hand, said thank you, and he left me with "See ya in the lift line."

Unfortunetly, he did tell me that it wouldn't be fully healed for another 2 weeks but I am out of the sling, taking new bone healing calcium pills, and hoping for the best. This does; however, bring me to the next topic of this blog, which is, considering I'm out of the sling and feeling better, my trip to Breck on the Friday after my appointment and then to Copper on Saturday.


Bottom line: the trip to Breck was awesome. There may have only been one run, no features, and it was crazy windy, but it felt great to be snowboarding again. I hung with my buddy Nate and we buttered our way down and around that run. I'd say one of the funnest parts was the makeshift pole jam made out of one of the bamboo poles used to mark the trails. It was bonked and ollied many a time by Nate and I.

Unfortunetly, despite my doctors words of wisdom, I did fall a couple times. Never directly on my shoulder which is good, but it hurt nontheless and I'm almost positive the healing process was regressed a bit but my collarbone still isn't too bad.

The soreness the next day did however affect my riding the next day at Copper. Copper's one run was not very good for buttering on, which I decided not to do anyway on account of my shoulder, but what the worst for me was the fact that they had an AWESOME park set up that I knew I shouldn't hit. They had about a dozen smaller jib features that I would've had the most fun ever on if it weren't for my broken collarbone. I will admit now; however, that my decision to not hit the park was probably a very good one considering I definitely could have re-broken my collarbone, especially since Corey pretty much got a minor concussion off one of the boxes.

But besides my longing to hit the park that I couldn't, it was a fun weekend spent learning I didn't need surgery, riding the snow once again, and hanging out with some good people in an awesome condo in Frisco. I still can't wait til my shoulder is fully healed but until then I'll just have to be patient and think of how much better future riding will be when it is healed.

Pre-Reg for SKB.

What could this blog title possibly mean? Well my friends, it's that time of the semester to start thinking about next semester. Pre-registration is all this week here at CMC, so I thought I'd give you an inside look at what goes on and some classes I've picked out for the Ski and Snowboard Business Program (SKB).

For the fall semester, in regards to ski and snowboard specific classes, I'm currently taking Marketing and Media, where my group designed and marketed a website showing handrails and backcountry spots around Steamboat Springs for skiers and snowboarders to hit. We actually need to start getting some hits to our site so I'm going to throw out a little shameless promotion here. The website is steamboatstash.com and if you're in or coming to the Steamboat Area, it could be very informational for you (I made the videos page, except we don't exactly have any videos up yet).

But now that that's out of the way, the other ski and snowboard specific class I'm taking this semester is Snowsports Retail and Wholesale where we learn what it takes to open and operate and ski and snowboard retail and rental shop. We are currently in the process of starting our final project which is to write a business plan for a potential store, including layout and everything (Speaking of which, I should really get started on that).

Don't worry though, I am taking more than two classes this semester. The other ones I'm taking are courses from the business program here at CMC that have been included in the Ski and Snowboard Business program to give you a well rounded education. The other classes I'm taking are Intro to Sustainable Business, which is just an intro to business class with a green emphasis since in the coming years there's going to be a big change in the way businesses operate because of the global warming crisis. The other classes I'm in right now are Principles of Macroeconomics, Intro to PC Applications, and College 101, which is a course that pretty much teaches you about what to expect in college.

Now for the coming semester. After going to a local bookstore with my friend Nate and taking quite a long time to pick out the perfect schedule in order to balance the ridiculous amount of snowboarding I'm going to do and leave enough time for homework, I filled out the registration form, got it signed by the SKB advisor and head professor Mike Martin, and got my classes the first day possible to make sure I would get the greatest schedule ever.

As it stands, I don't have class til 2:30pm on Monday and Wednesday, and not til 4:00pm Tuesday and Thursday, and no class whatsoever on Friday. On top of that, I got into the class I've been most looking forward to, Product Design. In this class, you get into groups, come up with an idea for either a ski or snowboard company, and design all the specs and graphics of it. Then, for the midterm, you present your project to the judges, they pick a winner, and the winning groups board or skis actually get made. This class is going to be pretty much perfect for me since I want to start a snowboard company and this classes teached you how to make snowbaords.

The other SKB classes I have next semester are Accelerated Ski and Board Repair and Tuning, which is just a faster version of the normal tuning and repair class, and Snowsports Promotions, which is only one weekend long, and discusses different promotion strategies within the snowsports world.

The rest of my awesome schedule is filled by English Composition 1, Business Communications and Report Writing (which I'm not to excited about, I don't even know what I'm going to be doing in that class but it just sounds rough), and Principles of Microeconomics to get a full cover of the basics of economics.

So that's just a quick look into what the classes are like in CMC Alpine Campus's Ski and Snowboard Business program. If it sounds like something you want to do, I highly recommend coming out here for it, because besides gnarly hills, this town/school is a really fun place to be and I can only imagine how much better it will be once I'm out of the sling and riding that Champagne Powder. Peace.

Everybody Wing Chung Tonight.

I'm here today to tell you all about one of the greatest events known to the residents of Steamboat Springs, CO which all of you can hopefully one day partake in. I'm talking of course, about wing night.

Every Tuesday night is a celebration. A long day of classes is entirely relieved once you step foot inside The Taphouse. The Taphouse is a local sports bar that, not even including wing night, has excellent food. I had eaten there when I came out to tour the school in March, and had no idea the important role it would play in my Tuesday schedule.

Wing night is probably one of the most popular events for The Taphouse as well as a lot of CMC students here at the Alpine Campus. The basis for it is very simple and ridiculously awesome: 33 cent wings. With a wide variety of flavors ranging all across the board in spicyness and flavor, it's definetly worth your while. However, I must admit, the rules of wing night are slightly more complicated. You must get at least 6 of each flavor you order, which still only comes to $2 of delicious wings. I am a particular fan of 15 mild, mostly because I sweat profusly if I eat anything spicier, but also because mild is a delicious flavor. I have friends who go across the board, getting 6 mild, 6 medium, and 6 hot. Some day they even switch it up and include some of the excellent barbeque flavors including regular, hot, and oriental barbeque, or their quite hot spicy garlic sauce. You take your pick at The Taphouse, and the friendly wait staff deliver with your choice of blue cheese or ranch dressing on the side along with the best hot mouth fighter, celery.

Coupled with this already fantastic event, is the always popular Dollar Bowling Night at the Snow Bowl. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Every game you play is only a dollar per person. Unfortunetly, shoes are still $3.50 or so, but when you think about the savings you get with dollar games, it's worth it.

Now you may be asking yourself, "But Jake, I have class til 9! Can I still partake in the awesomeness that is wing night and dollar bowling?" And the answer is most definetly yes, for you see, I too have class til 9, and wing night and dollar bowling still remain the best part of my Tuesday night. Wing night lasts til midnight and dollar bowling is open til eleven. Unfortunetly, I usually don't make it to both, mainly because of homework, but if you get the chance to rock both, do it to it!

And lucky for those of us who are unable to make the Tuesday dollar bowling because they're too busy enjoying the magic of wing night, dollar bowling happens twice a week! That's right, it wasn't a typo, you can enjoy paying only one dollar plus shoes not only on Tuesday, but on Sunday as well! And if you're fortunate enough to not have an early morning Monday class, dollar bowling lasts until midnight on Sundays!

Telling you about wing night and dollar bowling; however, can only go so far. You have to come out and experience it for yourself, for it is truly an event only worthy of every Tuesday night. After enjoying myself last night, I get to look forward til next week when it all goes down again.

Origins of the Blog Name.

A lot of you reading this blog may wonder where I came up with the name Collarbone Chronicles. Well it just so happens to be an interesting story...

It was my second day in Steamboat Springs. The day was filled with orientation activities and events such as class picking and college life presentations. After a long day of that, there was a scheduled school event where students could go to the local Strawberry Hot Springs (which is awesome by the way) for free to relax. My friends Matt, Shane, and I attended. After hanging out for awhile and meeting some new people, we headed back. On the car ride back we were talking about what we should do for the rest of the night and little did I know that I would have a very busy night ahead of me.

Nobody really had any suggestions, considering we were all new to the city, until I had the brilliant idea of, "Hey, let's go longboarding."

Matt had a longboard of his own, Shane used my skateboard since he didn't really ride, and my roommate Joe came along on his rollerblades. It was already dark out, but the road we were going to ride on, Bob Adams Dr., has lights down it. So we grabbed our stuff and headed outside.

In the parking lot, Matt, Shane, and I skated around while Joe put on his rollerblades, sort of as a warm up, which, as it turns out, didn't do me much good. Once Joe was set we headed out from the parking lot down the small road that leads from the dorm parking lot to Bob Adams Dr. Once we reached the end, we turned the U-turn to head downhill. I was in front and already had a good amount of speed, but just for kicks, I decided to add a few pushes to it.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with Bob Adams Dr., it's pretty gnarly. If you're leaving the dorms to head downhill to main street, the first curve of the rode is pretty sharp, coupled with a the hill being pretty steep. I've been longboarding for a while, but being from Minnesota, I soon realized I had no idea what real hills were.

My speed was increasing as I started in to the turn. Another great things about Bob Adams Dr. is that as the turn gets sharper, the road steeper. I was gaining speed like mad while trying to hold a sharp toeside turn. For those of you that don't longboard, toeside turns are quite a bit tougher than heelside. As I tried to hold this turn, I realized I was curving into the oncoming lane of traffic, which was the first bad sign. Thankfully, there were no cars coming, but as I kept heading downhill, I noticed I was coming up on quite the sizeable crack or mini pothole if you will. My previous longboarding experiences have taught me that cracks that big are not cool.

I realized as I was heading straight for it, that I couldn't turn sharp enough on my toes to dodge it. This left me with two options, altough the smarter one of course didn't come to mind, unitl after the accident. The better choice that I now see was I could have pretty much just sat down and taken the road rash. As bad as that might sound, it was better than the outcome of the alternative. The choice I went with, was to veer off on my heelside and try to run to a stop in the tall grass on the side of the road. Not good.

Getting back to being from Minnesota, I really don't know what real hills are, as well as I don't really know what fast on a longboard is. Around my house back in the MN, I can usually just hop off and run to stop if I get into trouble. Not in Colorado. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I tumbled. There was no couple steps, then fall, it was straight flippage. And by now you've probably guessed what body part slammed right into the ground; my collarbone.

I landed straight on my left shoulder which led into a pretty quick summersalt. I did not hit my head on the ground, which I have no idea how it happened but I am very thankful for. I immediately stood up and tried to breathe since I had the wind knocked out of me. On top of that I was in a pretty dizzy state from the tumble and the insane amount of adreline rushing through me.

Matt came cruising by, just fine of course, and up into the parking lot of Bristol Hall. To be completely honest, I really don't remember where Shane and Joe came from, but I remember them coming over to me too. Matt asked me, "Dude, what happened?" and as best as I could with still little oxygen I replied, "Dude, I bit it." I hear Shane from a little ways away, "Yo, did he fall?" and I proceeded to nod and gasp, "Yep."

Believe it or not, what actually hurt the worst was my hand, which now had many small rocks embedded in it. It wasn't until a little later that I realized my shoulder was a little sore and I tried to lift my arm and failed. I said to the guys, "You guys I can't lift my arm at all." and continued to try and do so. After a few tries I felt my shoulder and realized my collarbone felt like it was sticking out a lot more than usual. "Does that look right?" I franically asked Matt, Shane, and Joe, "I don't think it's supposed to be like!"

"I don't know dude, we should go find an RA or something." Matt replied. We walked back up to the dorms after grabbing my longboard and luckily found an RA at the front desk, who initially thought I was kidding when I came up to her and said, "So I think I broke my collarbone." She asked if I wanted an ice pack which at first I didn't because the adrenline hadn't yet worn off and the pain really hadn't set in, althouhg after about a minute of sitting down, it definetly did.

A number of passers by asked if I was ok which I half jokingly relpied to, "Nope." A few asked to see my shoulder and when I had confirmation that it was for sure broken I decided it was time to head to the hospital.

Thankfully my parents had come with to Steamboat to see me off on my first year of college and were still in town, so I gave them the call that no parent wants to get and they came and picked me up. We went to the hospital and ended up waiting in the ER for over an hour which was just a great experience for me. When the nurse finally came in and after having to deal with taking off my shirt for the first time ever with a broken collarbone (which is most uncool), she took to get an x-ray of my shoulder and then back to the room to wait for the doctor. When she finally came in with the printed x-rays, it showed that it was most definetly broken and in fact, split in half.

After talking with me about things I'll have to get used to doing, such as being in a sling, sleeping flat on my back for the next month, and having a terrible time in the shower, she proceeded to prescribe me pain pills and clean out my hand. The cleaning of my hand was one of the worst parts of the night. With water constantly running on it, the doctor used some special cleaner fluid, which stung on its own, to dig out the rocks in my hand, which of course made the stinging that much worse. After that wonderful experience at the hospital, I decided to stay at the hotel with my parents, pop some of my freshly prescribed pain pills, and fall asleep before it sank in how rough the first month of college was going to be.

It had been about two months since my little accident and unfortunetly, I'm still dealing with it. After about 6 weeks, I went back to the doctor because it was time to try taking the sling off. Since then, he told me to try moving it more and working it out to try and get the muscles back into shape; however, if after two weeks it was still bothering me, I should go back and see him. Well it had been two weeks and, even though my collarbone was supposed to be all better by now, it was still sore and causing me sharp pain whenever I put weight on it.

Turns out, it's still not healed. The doctor took another x-ray of my shoulder which showed, even though some new bone has formed in the break, there is still a significant space bewteen the bones that still needs to be filled it for it to be 110%. After hearing this awful news, the doctor then told me that I needed to set an appointment for three weeks from now to have it checked again and that if it's not healed by then, I would most likely need surgery. Not cool.

So, I am once again back in the sling by my own choice, trying to do everything possible to avoid surgery, which would completely ruin my snowboarding plans to ride at the season opening of Park City Resort in Utah. This also means that there won't be anymore snowboarding blogs for awhile since my first aventure of the season probably didn't exactly help my healing process. So yea, sorry to sort of leave this blog open ended, but wish me luck and I will definelty keep you updated on the happenings in the world of my recovery. Peace.

The Dollar Tree.

I wanted to take a second here to let anyone in or going to the Steamboat Springs area know about a great resource for any college student. I'm talking of course, about The Dollar Tree.

I couldn't say before I came here that I've ever gone to one, as well as I didn't know that absolutely everything in the store is actually a dollar! But one day, when my dorm room was running ridiculously low on food and drinks, my roommate opened my eyes to to the awesomeness that is The Dollar Tree.

I was originally planning on spending around $50 at City Market to restock our food shelves which I was not happy about. My roommate explained to me that everything is a dollar and I knew I had to check it out. Now I'll admit, the food selections are brands that I've never heard of before, but hat doesn't mean they're still not quality food for only a dollar. After my roommate spent only $9 for crackers, chips, pretzels, animal crackers, Teddy Grams type cookies, Arizona Tea, and salsa, I picked up two things of kool-aid type juice for only $2. It was great.

Now that that adventure is over and our food supply is running low again, it's time to make another trip to The Dollar Tree.

The First Shred Mish.

This morning I woke up at 6:30am excited and ready to go. How you might ask? Today, two of my friends and I went snowboarding on the top of Buffalo Pass here in Steamboat Springs.

Last night, my friends Tyler and Corey came to my room, eyes wide with an idea. "Want to go snowboarding tomorrow?", they asked. Almost instantly I replied, "Yes! Where!?" "Buff Pass has snow and it's supposed to snow more tonight." After they had left and I was falling asleep, getting ready to wake up at 6:30am the next morning, I realized just how crazy it is for me to be snowboarding on October 13th. I've lived in Minnesota my whole life, and even though it's ridiculously cold there, we don't usually get snow until close to Christmas. So the idea of snowboarding before Haloween is just crazy and awesome to me.

Six thirty rolls around. We meet up in the dorms, all geared up, and head out to Corey's car. On the drive up there, we could see snow on top of Mt. Werner, the mountain Steamboat Resort is on, and there was a good amount of snow. This naturally made us that much more excited. We kept climibing up the mountain without any sign of snow around us. Just as we started to worry if there was going to be any snow for us, around 7000 ft. up, we saw some on the ground. As we kept climbing, it only got better. Soon the trees began to have snow on them and the ground cover got thicker. We soon realized that other people had had the same idea as us. While driving up, we saw a pipe rail set up on the side of the rode that people must have hit the day before. However, we decided to keep driving and at around roughly 10,000 ft. up, we found a spot and prepared to ride.

The actual snow cover on the ground was only a few inches, but it was enough for us. We found a line near some trees and made the first run of the season. Because of the light snow cover, I ended up getting a couple good scratches down my 07/08 World Wide Weapon from some barely covered rocks, but just being out snowboarding again made me not even care. I'll just have to P-Tex it later.

Since we couldn't exactly hit any bigger hills, we decided to set up a mini jib line. We found a log about 6 feet long that we built a kicker into for a little tree grinding in which Tyler threw a NASTY tail press on. A little ways down from that we built another mini kicker just to get some air and throw some spins. A little further down from that we set up a kicker to a stump bonk to complete our mini park experience. I played role of park manager/crew and using shovels Corey had bought, set up the majority of our mini adventure. As small and unimpresive as this mini park may sound, it was awesome. We ended up sessioning this set up for 3 hours before deciding to head back down.

The ride back down was actually pretty scary, considering Corey's gas needle was below the red line and for about 6 miles, his digital gas mileage meter was at 0. Thinking the car was going to shut off and the brakes weren't going to work made for and interesting and sketchy ride down the mountain. Fortunetly, thanks to Corey's driving in nuetral most of the way down, we were able to make it to a gas station before it died, and we're all alive to tell about it.

Once we made it to the bottom, we knew we needed a food run. After stopping at McDonald's and Wendy's, where at I got a delicious Jr. Bacon Cheesburger and Crispy Chicken Sandwich, we made a trip to Sports Authority to check out some new gear. We got a couple of weird looks from employees as we rolled in the store with full snowboard gear, but if they knew how awesome our session was, they'd understand. We made a stop at The Click as well, then headed back to the dorms. We got a couple looks there too, but mostly of excited interested and wonder at where we just were. On guy even said, "It's so cool to see kids all decked out in there gear right now."

The night before we went snowboarding, we had a few nay-sayers trying to tell us that there wasn't going to be any snow and it wouldn't be worth it. They were very wrong. Tyler sent a picture of our log set up to our friend Steve and, mixed with our testimony as to how fun it was, we convinced those nay-sayers to go up tonight to try out our mini set-up. They went up before us and when we got there, we found they had a whole new set up. They had moved the corogated pipe to a new spot and bulit a kicker into it as well as a quarter pipe on the side. However, before they moved it, they got a couple pictures of Steve hitting the orignal set up.

These shred sessions are probably the most fun I've ever had on October 13th, and we all can't wait until snows some more so we can head back up there. I must admit; however, class today was pretty rough after waking up at 6:30 but I made it through alright and am ready to go again asap. Peace.