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.