My name is Jacob Jerome Malenick and I'm from St. Anthony Village, Minnesota, a small suburb right outside of my favorite city in the world, Minneapolis. I came out to Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus in Steamboat Springs for the Ski and Snowboard Business program. I hope to one day start my own snowboard company and to keep snowboarding for as long as possible.
This weekend was the NCAA Western Regionals for ski racing and I volunteered again to get my friends another pass for over spring break.
The first race was Giant Slalom on Friday at Steamboat, bright and early at 7:45am. The race didn't start until closer to 9, but they wanted us gatekeepers to be there early to go over our duties and get us into position. Thankfully it was a really nice day out unlike last race I worked at which was most awful. The level of racing was really too since the teams in it were made up of many people who were actually recruited from other countries just for racing, so there were some really fast skiers. I unfortunately forgot my video camera this day so here are just a couple pictures from my cell phone camera.
Beautiful view of Steamboat.
My view of the bottom of the course.
My seat when things were slow.
The following night, Saturday, was the race under the lights. The same teams competed in the slalom race at Howelson Hill, but this race was thankfully not until 6pm. Us gatekeepers were asked to get there at 4:45pm for the same reasons. This race was unfortunately much colder since it was at night. I did however remember my video camera so I made this little edit of some CMCers racing, along with a picture of my view of the course. Peace.
Thank you to all who voted, it was a very close battle but I have won our blogger vs. blogger competition. The final results were four jackets to four jackets so it came down to the total votes and thanks to you I came out ahead, 99 to 94 votes. So thanks again to everyone, if any of you have any suggestions on what I should ask Bobbie to cook for me feel free to share because I can't decide! Peace.
I am sorry for being a day late on this one, but since I missed last week, what's another day right? It took me so long because I recently discovered the magic of Windows Movie Maker so I had a lot to play around with on this video instead of just the usual Flip Share edits you've been seeing. Also, this is a special Kevin "Big Mac" McClelland exclusive video since this was his first day riding with us after officially being done with ski racing for the season. Enjoy.
I have blog coming soon detailing the shenanigans of a Friday afternoon adventure I had with fellow blogger Bobbie Jo and our crippled friend Eli, or as I've dubbed him, Crip Nasty. As part of this adventure however, we stopped by a local thrift store called Rummagers. As with all thrift stores, this one was full of awesome old and used clothes, which sparked the idea of having a blogger vs. blogger contest. The following pictures are Bobbie and I trying on various jackets we found, some awesome, some ridiculous, but we are counting on you the reader to help us out. After the pictures is a poll where we need you to vote for who looks better in each jacket. The poll will be open for 10 days, until the 25th, so get voting! The loser has to cook dinner for the winner, so you should probably vote for me because I am a terrible cook! Be sure to go to Bobbie's blog as well because she'll have the same poll up, so tell all your friends to vote and we'll for sure let you all know the results. Peace.
Friday was an adventure. What was supposed to be a relaxing, chill afternoon/evening on the town with friends turned out to be much more.
The day started not early at all when I decided it was one of those days to not get out of bed until noon. After snagging some lunch with everybody's favorite cripple Eli, we decided it would be a good day to cruise around town, especially since Eli has been going pretty stir crazy in his room with a broken femur. So we met up with our friend and fellow Alpine Campus blogger Bobbie Jo, who was up at the school for some sort of meeting, a began our adventure.
It started off with us purchasing $2 movie tickets in the cafeteria after lunch so because we were going to see Wolfman at 5:30pm. From there we headed to Bobbie's car where our troubles began. Bobbie had left the lights on while she was at her meeting, and being that she has an older car, the battery was drained in no time and the car wouldn't start. So Eli and I headed up to the dorms while she went to maintenance to get her car jumped. As it turns out, maintenance gave her a dead battery jumper so she had to get someone leaving the lot to jump it.
After that already rough start to the trip, we cruised into town to a health foods store on Yampa and 11th called Bamboo Market Health Foods since Eli was looking for some calcium or tea to help with bone growth for his femur. He unfortunately didn't find quite what he was looking for as well as things there are a bit pricey, so we headed down the street to Rummagers, which is one of the three thrift stores Steamboat has to offer. Here is where the idea was sparked for the jacket contest still going on in the blog before this one, which you all will hopefully check out and vote on. So we all ended up buying a couple things for nice and cheap and then continued on around town.
Next stop was one of my absolute favorite places around Steamboat, Off The Beaten Path Bookstore. Bobbie Jo was looking for a book called "Bananas: The fruit that
shaped America (or something like that, I can't remember). They unfortunately didn't have it, and neither did Epilogue Book Store down the road. Even though that was a bummer, our spirits were certainely lifted when we went to Fuzziwigs Candy Shop. This is by far the craziest and most awesome candy store I've ever seen, so I'm sorry I completely forgot to take pictures of it. They have every kind of candy imaginable along with a bunch of toys including my personal favorites, Legos.
From there, we headed to another awesome store in the Boat, All That Jazz. This store is full of music and music attire, as these next few pictures hopefully illustrate.
Mad CD's.
Vinyl's for record collectors. Some nice sound systems.
Reppin' Skullcandy.
Bobbie Jo couldn't get enough modeling.
After All That Jazz, we decided to take a break from walking around and chilled at Bobbie Jo's place for a bit. From there we rolled to Quizno's where the adventure went down hill. I was drove since Bobbie Jo was sick of driving. When I parked at Quizno's, I tried to pull right up to the curb, but little did I know that there was a hole full of snow between the ice and the curb. After grabbing the food, we were going to park closer to the theater, but our snow hole friend had other plans. We attempted to pull with no luck, even when myself and a kind Quizno's employee were pushing on the front bumper, trying to rock the car out of the hole. Wit h no luck and after my leg became soaked in muddy snow, we decided to just head to the movie and hope that our friend Corey would pull us out after with his Land Rover.
The following are our valiant attempts to get the car out and hole that followed.
Wolfman ended up being really good, even with a freezing cold wet leg. Thankfully, Corey did come to the rescue and we made it out with no damage. The adventure was still not quite over either. After escaping the Quizno's parking lot, we headed to one last stop at Urbane to check out the new stuff they had as well as some deals. While there, I found this gem that I just had to share with the world. It's a collaboration between Element Skateboards and The Mountain, the sick company that makes awesome wolf tees. Enjoy.
From Urbane, it was finally back to the dorms for us. I was completely exhausted and still wet and muddy, so needless to say I went to bed mad early that night. Overall it was a really fun day, and minus the getting the car stuck, I hope to do it all again soon. Peace.
Before I left for SIA, there was a ski race at Howelsen Hill at which I volunteered. I had heard you would get free passes to Steamboat, and I have a couple friends coming to visit for spring break so I wanted to hook them up with passes.
The day started crazy early since I was told to be at the hill at 7:30am. Thankfully, Tyler let me borrow his car so I didn't have to get up even earlier to catch the bus. This is a picture from inside the lodge at 7:30am looking up the race course, followed by a shot of the empty lodge since I was pretty much one of the first ones there before all the racers started showing up.
Once more people started showing up, along with the other volunteers, we got together to go over our duties for the day. We were going to be gatekeepers, which meant we would have to watch a certain section of gates and mark on our gatekeeper sheets if a skier missed a gate and didn't hike up and go through it properly in case there were any disputes over times. It was a simple enough job, but the weather decided not to cooperate.
We headed out to our posts along the course. I was the fourth one down and had to watch five gates. We unfortunately had to use the T-Bar to get up the hill, which I personally hate and are usually pretty awful for snowboarders. Once we were in our spots and were just standing around waiting for racers was when I realized just how freezing cold out it was. The wind was blowing like crazy, it was snowing, and there was no sun to be found. I'm not even sure how long we were outside, but to give you an idea, we had to watch 150 racers between the men and women, and that was only their first run. Thankfully CMC hooked us up with bag lunches after the first runs while we warmed up before the second ones.
Thankfully the second runs didn't take as long since some people got eliminated, although one of the women actually got pretty seriously injured, so that delayed things a bit, but thankfully she ended up ok. It felt especially long for us gatekeepers since we had no idea what was going on from our spots on the course. The following picture is the pit I dug to help block the crazy amounts of wind. Pretty much all the gatekeepers built something similar to this to make it through the race. So around 3pm, the race was finally over, all us gatekeepers strapped in, and cruised down to the lodge to warm up again. I honestly couldn't even tell you the results since as soon as the last racer was done we were out of there. As rough as the day was, we were all super stoked when we found out we were going to get two day passes to Steamboat for the one day of work since the conditions were so awful and they were so grateful for volunteers, so my friends better be grateful for the passes. With that said, it was pretty interesting being up close and personal to the race, since I've only ever seen races on TV. Plus Bacon is a ski racer and I really didn't know very much at all about racing before doing this, so it was cool to learn. I'll leave you with this little video I put together of some of the racers and to give you an idea of the cold windy conditions. Peace.
P.S. For you loyal followers of Big Mac Mondays, my camera died on Monday when I was going to film, and then I forgot to bring it today, so I plan on filming tomorrow and throwing an edit together, so keep checking back for it.
I'm very sorry about the lack of Big Mac Mondays, but with SIA I didn't have time to put together an edit. So here is some older footage of the week before SIA that I threw together. Unfortunately it does not feature the skiing of Kevin "Big Mac" McClelland, but I think it came out pretty good nonetheless.
Also, this edit is dedicated to our good friend Eli, who had a very unfortunate encounter with a tree and broke his femur. Hopefully he we will be able to ride a little bit very late season, but only time will tell, so this is for you Eli. Peace.
These pictures and video don't nearly do SIA justice as to how fun it was, but here is just a glimpse at the products and some events that went down in Denver.
The big blue convention center bear.
A little glimpse at the many, many boxes of product we had to carry into the show.
A few shots of the booth once it was done.
The new boots and bindings display. Surface Skis is a super legit small ski company out of Utah that Bacon loves, so I snagged a few pictures of there new stuff. Here's a taste of the new Holden outerwear since you couldn't get in unless you were a buyer. Another favorite company of mine who has a sick team is Academy Snowboards, so here's a look at there new line.Lastly, here is a little video I put together of a Mountainboarding Stunt Show that took place daily and the mountainboard show.
Sorry I didn't get some more pictures or any at the on-snow, but they kept us interns pretty busy at the show. So hopefully this was a good look into what goes on at SIA and more and more students start to get internships, cause it is definitely worth it. Peace.
Beautiful view of Steamboat.
My view of the bottom of the course.
My seat when things were slow.
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