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.