The Winter Break Blog.

I don’t really know where to start about winter break except that it was awesome and I love Minnesota. I’m excited to be back in Steamboat Springs to try out this powder riding I’ve heard so much about, but I just love the bitter cold and the butter run fun the Midwest offers.

I started writing this blog in the Denver airport, worked on it on the shuttle to Steamboat from Denver, and am finishing it up in room back here in the Boat. I starting my semester off with quite a long day which consisted of a 2 hour flight, 3 hours waiting around at the airport, and 4 hours on a shuttle. I’ve been watching my fill of the Office (which, if you haven’t seen it, is the greatest show ever), as well as jammed to the new Jack’s Mannequin CD while writing this. It was great to be able to have a day of riding on Sunday before classes started up today.

My winter break started with a much needed, relaxing night with my good friends from back home, followed by probably the funnest day of riding I’ve ever had with my friend Ryan, who I like to refer to as Dub D, Dirty Dizzle, DFB, Ocean D himself! Together over winter break we learned tailblocks and tail tap rewinds, not to mention we built a mini snow quarter pipe to jib on.

As far the rest of my snowboarding adventures of break, I spent my time at Welch Village, which is near Hastings, MN. Besides the awesome times had there riding with friends, the highlight/lowlight of my winter break was the trip to White Cap. Eight of my closest friends and myself went to White Cap, WI, on the edge of the U.P., MI for 4 days and 3 nights of snowboarding and bro time. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out the way we had planned. For starters, on the way up there, Ryan hit a deer. He, as well as myself and my friends Scotty K. who were both in the car, were very lucky at how it turned out. The deer had just jumped out in front of the truck, so Ryan’s headlight hit the deer right in the head, which was way better than if the deer had been entirely in front of the truck. However, the body did slam into the driver side door, denting it in, keeping it from opening and the window from rolling down.

So after that incident, which happened very early in the morning, we got to White Cap for our first day of riding. It was pretty crazy warm out, so the snow was really slushy, but as it would turn out, this would be our most fun day of riding. After exploring the mountain, we headed back to the house for the night to hang out.

The next day we wished we had the slush back. It had frozen solid overnight and the day itself was freezing cold. Towards the end of the riding day, we did find some fun on a trap box and a cliff jump that my ridiculous friend Joe hit quite a few times.

The third day wasn’t as bad ice-wise, but the last was insanely icy, cold and windy. However, my friends Ryan and PJ did not get to experience these conditions because of the final ridiculous incident of the trip. My friends Joe and Jimmy B. had to leave early the last morning, however, the night before, Joe had borrowed PJ’s keys and yes, forgot to give them back. They were about 3 hours away when we called and Joe realized he had them, so Jim dropped the keys off at a cheese store on the border of Minnesota, forcing Ryan and PJ to spend the day driving to get them, making them miss a day of riding. This is the third year we’ve all gone on a snowboard trip and I gotta say, as fun as some of the times were, this was probably the worst one. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from this ridiculous adventure, but Joe had a video camera with him so I’m sure a fantastic video will be hitting YouTube in the near future.

Besides friends and snowboarding, it was great to see my family again and hang out at home. Christmas was super fun seeing all the cousins and extended family, not to mention I got some great gifts. We did the usual Christmas tradition of brunch and presents at my grandparents’ house with my mom’s side of the family, then dinner and presents at my house with my dad’s side of the family. It’s a pretty crazy day since I’m the second oldest grandchild on my mom’s side of the family right after my brother, but I’m the youngest grandchild on my dad’s side of the family so that definitely keeps it interesting.

I also unfortunately had to go back to work at Pacsun in Rosedale Mall near my house. I work with some cool people but I would definitely rather have not had to work, but I suppose at times like these I should be grateful I had a job to come back too. Plus it was for sure nice to get a bit of money before I go back to spending way to much of it.

An awesome thing for me that happened over break was I made my first order of t-shirts for the snowboard company I’m going to school at Colorado Mountain College to try to start. That being said, I gotta take this opportunity to make a shameless pitch. If anyone would like one, they could be yours for the low, low price of $15 a shirt! Just send me an email at jake3613@comcast.net with where to send it, and I’ll send you an email back of where to send the money. I have sizes medium, large, and extra large left so act now!

Now that my dignity’s gone, I’ll leave you with this: winter break was awesome even though I had a sinus infection for most of it and still kind of do. I wish break was a little longer but I’m excited to be back in The Boat and ready to ride some epic runs now that the whole mountain is open. I hope everyone else’s break was awesome and I look forward to writing more throughout the semester. Peace.

Riding The Boat Once Again.

Today was my first full day back at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus here in Steamboat Springs, and naturally it was spent on the mountain.

After passing out early from a long day spent getting here (which I'll post about soon), I woke up around 10:30 after a great night sleep ready to ride. My buddy Nate and I hit some breakfast consisting of some not very missed cafeteria food, jumped on the Yellow Line bus, and were on our way.

We didn't get to the mountain until around noon, but since neither of us were used to the epic runs Colorado has to offer, we were there in plenty of time. We started the day off right by taking the gondola up to mid mountain, then cruising down a run to another lift to take us up to the peak. As it turned out however, this was not the best idea. Down in town it was snowing nicely, which, as we soon realized, meant it was insanely foggy, windy, and snowy at the peak. With our faces frozen, we made our way downhill as fast as someone could who can only see 15-20 or so feet in front of them. However, fighting through the rough weather payed off because we ended up at a lift that took us to one of the funnest parts of the day; the roller mini-park.

We must have taken at least 7 or 8 runs through, throwing as many little spins and butters as we could, as well as riding some powder on the sides of the track. From there, we decided to make our way to the bigger terrain parks Steamboat has to offer. On the way there, we took a super fun run called Broadway, which has some fun banks and hips all the way down it, and even though it made my calves burn like no other, it was well worth it.

We then came upon a pretty empty main park consisting of only a few features, but there was a pretty fun flat box that we hit a few times. From the main park, you can continue down the same run to another mini park in the front that actually has some mini features such as some short flat boxes, mini pole jam, and a few smaller but still fun jumps. After taking some more main/mini park runs, we decided to head back to the roller park. We of course had forgotten about the fact that we needed to head back up to the peak to do so.

We jumped on the gondola and back to the first lift we took and were once again amongst the fog, wind, and snowfall. However, this time did not go so smoothly. We of course found the park by shear accident the first time, so now that I knew where we were trying to get, I screwed it up. I ended up going right too early because I still coudln't see a thing in front of me. After taking the longest, bumpiest, and most tiring run of my life, I realized I had ended up at the wrong lift. After a few phone calls back and forth with Nate, trying to figure out where we both were, we met up and decided to just head back down, since it was getting toward closing. We took the Elkhead lift back to mid mountain, and cruised back down to the main park. After a run through that, a few laps through the front mini park, and one final run through the main park, we called it a day, mostly because all the lifty's told us to.

After we were off the mountain and headed toward the bus was when we realized just how exhausted we were. This made the hour bus ride back to school even worse. It definitely doesn't normally take an hour but we left when the mountain was closing so there was a lot of people crowding on and off.

That night was a lot of fun getting to see everyone I missed over winter break and after a night of cathcing up about everyone's life, I passed out once again, getting ready to ride again the next day.

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.