Dorm Disease.

Yesterday I awoke to find my left eye all crusted over and red as can be. Yes I realize that is really gross but I wanted to write a warning blog to any prospective students about just how easily illnesses can travel through the dorms and in this particular case it was pink eye. It is pretty cool living in the dorms, basically living in an apartment with all your friends, but if one of those friends gets sick, it can spread like wildfire.

My pink eye started Tuesday morning, so I immediately went to the doctor that afternoon. After a not to bad wait at the Steamboat Medical Clinic, I got right in to the doctor who described my red left eye as impressive. Not the word I probably would have gone with but I thanked him nonetheless. He then prescribed me eye drops and even got me a free refill if I needed or my roommate or someone got it and needed drops too, which I thought was really cool.

From there I went to Safeway and while waiting for my prescription to be filled, loaded up on some other cold fighting devices. On top of my pink eye, I've had a sore throat for a few days and a congested nose for weeks, but while at Safeway, I discovered a miracle worker. Cold-Eeze is a brand of lozenges that markets itself as being "Clinically proven to reduce the duration of the common cold" and this is absolutely true. After suckin on just one in the morning, my sore throat is gone for the whole day, and my nose dries right up. It has yet to completely eliminate my stuffy nose, but I can already tell it is helping.

In addition to Cold-Eeze, I stocked up sickness fighting medicine and materials. I bought an economy size jug of hand sanitizer so I'll actually be able to touch things without completely infecting them. I had already bought some sore throat spray and Nyquil, even though the spray didn't really do a thing for me. I bought some anti-viral kleenexes, which I didn't even know existed, and I even bought some calcium enriched pop-tarts, just to try and make them healthier.

Now I'm not actually sure when this strain of pink eye first started creeping around the dorms but I do know that I happen to be one of the later ones to get it. The reason illnesses spread so easily around the dorms, besides the fact that it is a bunch of people living in close quarters together, is the ventilation system. In a building like this, all the vents are connected, so when one person gets sick, it can spread to the rest of the building through the vents. Now I'm not trying to hate on the dorms, but I'm just warning you so you can make precautions.

I have yet to figure out a way to close the vents, although I'm pretty sure you can't, but what my roommate and I have been doing lately, especially since it has been crazy warm here, is leaving the window open to try and air out the room. Also, even though you can't close the vent, you could turn it way down so as to have it blow less air.

A huge bummer about getting really sick like this is that I've already missed so much class from going to tradeshows that now I have to force myself to class even with an infectious illness. On top of that, I just found out that my roommates girlfriend is coming to visit this weekend, so I'm going to try to sleep in another friends room so I don't infect my roommate right before his girlfriend visits. And even on top of that, I haven't been snowboarding in four days which is probably the worst part. So take a lesson from me and get your germ fighting materials early so you don't wind up in a situation like this. Peace.

Snowsports Promotions Class.

My Valentine's Day weekend after the Keystone on-snow demo show was spent in class doing another demo.

The class Snowsports Promotions is a one credit, one weekend long class, 9am - 5pm , Friday through Sunday. However, this particular class ended up being 7:30am - 4pm everyday because of the project the class was based on. The idea behind the class is to give students a hands on opportunity to learn what it is like to prepare/set-up for an on-snow demo.

The first day, Friday, was half spent in class, deciding on key things like who will do what job at the show, what necesseties people will bring/be in charge of, and things like that. What we were preparing for was to put on a Liberty Skis demo, which the instructor Tim had prepared for since he has some connections with Liberty. The next half of the class day was spent on site at the mountain, seeing where we were going to set up the tent as well as heading over to Christy Sports near the clock tower to learn about the skis and bindings we would be using.

Saturday and Sunday were spent being at the mountain at 7:30am to set up the tent, until 4pm for the take down. Throughout the day, I was able to head out into the weekend crowds of people, trying to hype up our booth and get people to try the skis, as well as act as tech and set people up on skis, to getting to ride a couple runs here and there.

The final part of the class is a reflective paper that is due in one week, simply talking about what we learned and how we think things went. I'm pretty sure this is an elective class, but I'd recommend it anyway because, despite having to get up early, it's actually pretty fun learning how demos run and interacting with the people you bring into the booth.

Tradeshow, Round 2: Keystone, CO.

Only one week after the insanity of Las Vegas, NV with Rome SDS, it was time to do it again. Rome invited me out to Keystone, CO for the on-snow demo show.

Once again, this show had a bit of a rough start to it when we had no idea how we were going to get there. We wanted to be there by Sunday night because we thought we had to help set up the booth Monday morning which, as it turns out, we didn't have to do. But we ended up convincing Corey and Tyler to drive us to Silverthorne on Saturday, since they had stuff to do on Sunday, and hang out in our hotel Saturday night. An awesome thing about this tradeshow, is that the school provides the students who go to this show with housing, so we only had to pay for a hotel for two nights, then we stayed in an awesome condo with a few other students from CMC Monday through Thursday.

Our day Sunday was spent cruising around the Silverthorne outdoor outlet mall, followed by some chillin in the pool/hot tub, then a little jib mission which ended up being busted by the cops after the best set-up was finished, so that was a bummer. Most of Monday was spent getting to Keystone and Steve, Boston (Kyle), and myself trying to clip someones day ticket so I could ride since I don't have a Keystone pass. Finally, some really nice ladies let me have one of their tickets and I got to experience the intimidating awesomeness that is the Keystone terrain park. From there, we spent a long time hanging out in the Keystone square Starbucks while Steve and I waited to go out to dinner with some Rome guys and Boston waited to check in to our condo. Finally, Steve and I met the Rome guys at Dos Locos for some Mexican goodness and after some confusion as to which room we were in, we all crashed, trying to get ready for the demo the next day.

We woke up bright and early, around 7am, on Monday morning. Thankfully, the room we ended up in was within walking distance of the Peru lift, which is where the show was taking place. We got there around 7:30 and helped set up the tents, board set-up tables, and displays. From there, our day consisted of talking to people who were looking to demo boards and bindings and setting them up on the gear. A really cool part about this trade show as opposed to Vegas, was that Steve and I actually got to give a sort of mini pitch to buyers about the products they were trying, so in other words, we got to act as reps in a way. After a long day of that, we hit Dos Locos and once again passed out, ready to wake up early and do it again the next day.

The next two days went the same, even the part about going to Dos Locos afterwards. On top of helping buyers and demoers, I got to ride Rome's boards for next year as well. I was able to try the Postermania and Pusher, which both have rocker technology, as well as the non-rocker Artifact and the Graft. On a seperate note, I decided to get the Graft for the board and the 390's for bindings as the set-up Rome offered me for working in Vegas. That, however, is another great part about Keystone as opposed to Vegas; you get to actaully try out all the product.

So after another fairly hectic week, we headed back to the Boat Thursday night. I unforunetly had another three days of waking up early to look forward to since I had a weekend class which I just finished up today, and am currently catching up on homework still, but check back soon because I do plan on blogging about the class as well. Also, sorry again for the lack of pictures, but no one had a camera out at Keystone. Peace.

Viva Las Vegas.

Sorry to any loyal readers for my absence but it's been a busy week cathching up on school and riding after an epic adventure to Las Vegas, Nevada with Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate.  In addition to that, I just got back from another week spent in Keystone, CO for an on-snow demo with Rome SDS which I will write about soon.

One the greatest things about the Ski and Snowboard Business Program here at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus is the incredible opportunities they provide. Through this program, they give you the chance to apply for internships with any company in the snowsports industry to work for them at various tradeshows throughout the year. I was incredibly lucky to hear back from Rome SDS and they offered me this chance to go to Vegas with them for the Snowsports Industires of America (SIA) tradeshow, which is the biggest one in the U.S.

The whole adventure actually started out pretty poorly, with my flight from Hayden to Denver getting delayed, followed by my flight from Denver to Vegas being delayed, until I finally arrived at my hotel, The Excalibur, at around 1:30am. Even after that rough day, my first taste of Vegas was awesome. The drive from the airport to the hotel had an awesome view of the strip. I had seen it in movies and such but actually seeing the lights and feeling the energy of the city was pretty incredible. On top of that, the view from our room was epic. It looked out over the New York New York hotel and down the strip towards the Belagio. So after soaking in the city for a bit, I passed right out, ready to wake up early tomorrow to head to the convention center in Mandalay Bay to help Rome finish setting up their booth.

By the way, before I continue, I have to apologize for the lack of pictures. My friend Chelsy had a camera there and was taking a ton of pictures, but unfortunetly, on the 4th of 5th day, she lost it at the tradeshow, so sorry for no visuals.

Anywho, the nest day started nice and early (for me anyway) when we had to be at the convention center by 9am. The day started by meeting a bunch of Rome employees including Ron, who was the one who contacted me about the internship.  Most of the work day was spent getting all the boots and bindings out of their boxes and on display, as well as behind the boots and bindings bar where the sales reps give their presentations to the buyers about, of course, next years boots and bindings line. As a side note, an awesome thing about the tradeshow was that I was able to see a ton of product that's not coming out til next snow season. Also, I found out that they are also pretty much done with the entire 2010/11 product line so I thought that was cool. After the day of work, I even got to contribute to a session where the showed all the ideas for the 2010/11 outerwear line and all the sales reps and even us interns got to write our opinions about each idea. It was awesome.  Being not 21, the nightlife for me in Vegas was nothing to brag about, but after the show, some friends and I would usually wander the strip, checking out all the cool hotels and casinos.

The next day the tradeshow started.  My time at the show was spent, once again, with the boots and bindings.  My main job at the show, besides any tasks Ron or anybody had for me, was to keep the boots and bindings in order and to help the reps during their presentations by grabbing product for them.  Besides that, the next three days of the show are a crazy blur of new product, crazy snowboarders, and free shwag.  A ton of companies were giving out free t-shirts and necklaces and such, so I made sure to load up before the show was over.  On top of that, I got a hat and a pair of gloves from Rome, so that was sick.

My final full day in Vegas was spent again in the convention center, breaking down the booth with the remaining people there from Rome.  Afterwards was the best site seeing night I had in Vegas.  After getting cleaned up from the breakdown, the Rome guys and I decided to celebrate the last night in Vegas, especially since the tradeshow will be in Denver next year, by going to the buffet at the Belagio.  Best... meal... ever.  We walked down the strip from the Excalibur to the Belagio and were able to see the fountain show out front, which was awesome and kind of surreal.  After the meal, we decided to see the sites the best way possible, go up the Eiffel Tower.  I have to admit, I'm fairly scared of heights, so being up there was a little scary but still epic and awesome.  From there we headed back down the strip, played a couple games in the Midway at Excalibur and called it a night.  I said goodbye to everyone, thanked them for giving me the opportunity to go with them, and went to bed to get up at 5:30 for my flight back to the Boat.

I couldn't be happier with how things went in Vegas and am super grateful for the opportunity.  Also, Rome is hooking me up with discounts and hard to get gear, as well as a free board and bindings, so I'm pretty stoked how things worked out.  But now I'm back in Steamboat once again, and again am needing to catch up on homework.  Overall though, interning with companies is by far the best way to get into the industry, and if you're looking at coming out to Colorado Mountain College to do just that, I highly recommend it.  Also, check back soon for how things went in Keystone this past week.  Peace.