Back in the Boat Again

Hello all. I am writing to you from my new dorm room here at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus. I thought I'd start my new year as a CMC blogger with a little bit about the end of my summer, my trip out here, and what it's like being back.

My summer shaped up great with my last weekend spent in Chicago with my friend who goes to Loyola. We did a bunch of the touristy things such as the Shedd Aquarium, which I loved, went to Millenium Park to see the bean, hung out at the beach on Lake Michigan, and went to bunch of delicious local restaurants. Unfortunately the trip ended with my bus home getting switched from 1pm to 10:30pm, so I didn't get home until 6am the next morning, but the trip was definitely still worth it.

Saying goodbye to all my friends on Wednesday night was tough as usual, and actually ended up keeping me up until 6am which is when we were planning on leaving so I slept quite a bit in the car. My parents and I drove out to Ogallala, Nebraska, spent the night and finished the drive today. We arrived at the dorms around 2pm, hung out around the pool at my parents hotel, and headed up to the dorms around 4pm to move everything in. Move in went very smooth since we were technically late and got to to miss the crowds of the scheduled check in time. After hanging with my roommate Kevin, who we all call Bacon, my parents took him, my friend Corey, and I out to dinner at the Ghost Ranch, which I highly recommend because they have great food and live music, so its a good atmosphere.

After dinner, I said goodnight to my parents and Bacon and I went to hang out at Corey's house for a bit, since he is a fellow second year and is living off campus. After saying hi to everyone there, we came back to the dorms and organized our room a bit more on top of seeing some more old friends and meeting some new ones.

So now we are just chillin in the room, passing out soon after a hectic day. I am very excited for another year in the boat with some great people and I look forward to letting you all know about the goings on here at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus for another year. Peace.

Spending Money.

This summer for me has definitly been a quest to make some money, and thanks to a friend of mine, I have discovered another way to get a little spending money in your pocket while possibly saving lives. I am talking about donating plasma.

If you don't mind needles on the bigger side going into your arm or getting a finger prick everytime you go in, then donating plasma is right for you. Right now, I've been going to a place in Minnesota called Biolife, although I'm pretty sure they have many locations around the U.S. The first appointment usually takes a while (mine took 3 hours) because they have to do a physical where they pretty much just listen to your heart and lungs and ask you a ton of questions about your history.

From there, the actual donating part takes about an hour once they begin to draw blood. Once they seperate the plasma from the blood, the machine actually mixes your blood with a saline solution and then it is pumped back into your arm to refill your blood and rehydrate you plasma has a lot of your bodies water in it.

At Biolife, the first time you go you get $40 for your donation, and after that if you donate twice a week, the first donation of the week is another $40 and the second is $20. They also give you a convienient debit card, and the money from each donation gets automatically loaded on there when you are done.

So hopefully everyone has some good summer jobs but if you're looking for making some extra dough while helping save lives, be sure to check out donating plasma near you. Peace.

Summer Shred... On Snow.

During the summer, there are many ways to keep one's lust for snowboarding by participating in the other various board sports. Lucky for me, some friends of mine at Coloardo Mountain College told me of a way to snowboard in the summer without paying thousands of dollars to go to summer snowboard camps in Oregon such as High Cascade. I'm talking of course about ice rink snow.

Now yes, you can't exactly build a terrain park such as the one at High Cascade out of ice rink snow, but there is still plenty of fun to be had with it.

My summer shred mission started out with a gray, dull, surprisingly cool summer day in which I had absolutely nothing going on. After being bored for quite awhile, I remember what I heard from friends about setting up some jib features with ice rink snow and I immediately got to work. I started by calling around to numerous ice rinks trying to find out when and where they dump the zamboni shavings. After a number of rinks said they dump it in a melting pit inside the building, I finally found one that was curious as to why I wanted to know about the ice shavings. The conversation went something as follows:

Me: "When and where do you dump the ice shavings after you zamboni the ice?"

Jesse (Ice Rink Attendent): "We have a melting pit in the building we dump it in."

Me: "So no one could come and pick it up?"

Jesse: "You want to pick up our ice?"
Me: "Yea."

Jesse: "For what?"

Me: "Snowboarding."

Jesse: "Snowboarding? Where are you going to put it?"

Me: "Just on the side of my house. There is a little hill there so we were going to set up a rail or something."

Jesse: "Well I suppose I could just dump it outside for you."

After talking to him about dumping times and a few calls to friends with trucks to haul it, we were ready to go.

For those of you in Minnesota who want to get in on some of this hot action, google Victory Memorial Ice Arena for the number and be sure to talk to Jesse because he's a really cool dude. It was his own idea to kick the public skaters off the ice early in order to zamboni a whole extra time just to get us another truckload of snow, so he's pretty legit.

These following three pictures are of my friends Ryan, who we refer to as Dub D or Ocean D, and PJ as we were in the process of shoveling all the snow we could into Ryan and my Lorries' trucks.

After getting a ton more snow than any of us thought we'd get, we headed back to me house to set up our feature, which we decided would be this party table I had in my garage that had a smooth surface and was perfect for buttering. The rest of these pictures are of the fun that insued, and hopefully I've inspired you to bug your local ice rinks to let you shred in the summer. Peace.

Wakeboarding Shenanigans.

With the 10,000 lakes claim to fame, Minnesota is an excellent state for some serious time out on the water, so I wanted to write a blog about how great it has been wakeboarding a ton this year, a share some pictures of the ridiculous times.

My family owns an old 70's style boat but unfotunately the motor doesn't work, so summers for me are spent on my friend Ben's boat. It has a smaller wake but is still fun to butter around behind and try new tricks. It is especially fun to butter because the wakeboard I have is designed to be a snowboard on water. It is a Hyperlite Roam and has no fins, rocker camber, and the shape of a short, fat snowboard as you can see on the right.

There are many lakes for us to choose from here in Minnesota, but the one we always go to is out by Ben's house called Linwood Lake. I think it is in East Bethel, MN but I'm actually not sure.

Sunday was a particulary nice day, so we headed out to the lake early (we planned on being there at 10 but didn't get there til 11). The usual crew of people were there, Ben and my friends Lorrie, Ryan, and Joe. The day started off with me wakeboarding and Ben trick skiing, when Joe had the ridiculous idea of two person wakeboarding... on one wakeboard. The following pictures are of this ridiculous endevour. Enjoy.

Joe and I

Getting Situated

Attempting...

Again...

And again...

And again...

Epic attempt

It finally working

After CMC Endeavours.

I realize I have not yet graduated from Colorado Mountain College, but I wanted to write this blog about how I have already been using some of the things I have learned from the Ski and Snowboard Business Program.

Right now, I am putting the final plans into action to print some new t-shirts for the company I am trying to start; Rill Snowboard Clothing Co. For those of you who've read my previous blogs, Rill was originially going to be the snowboard company, but after taking the Product Design class and coming up with the snowboard company Able, I have decided to pursue that and make Rill the clothing brand.

One of the main lessons I took away from my Intro to Sustainable Business class with Jeff Troeger was the importance of businesses taking on a green initiative and take strides to be completely sustainable. Because of this eye-opening class, I am doing what I can with my small budget to make Rill a green company. After some research, I found a wholesale t-shirt website that has great prices as well as a great selection of t-shirts, including recycled organic cotton shirts. I am currently waiting on an e-mail back from Jeff Troeger to get his opinion on organic cotton, but once I hear from him and do a couple test prints, I'll be ordering either 25 or 30 of the organic cotton Anvil t-shirts and be off and running.

And now for the shameless pitch. In case you haven't seen any of my previous shameless pitches, see The Winter Break Blog from January for the first shirt I produced. Besides that, the following images are the graphics I plan to print this summer on the organic cotton t-shirts.

These moon graphics both go on the very bottom of the shirt and go up about 10 inches.

Front:

Back:

I came up with this next design awhile ago but am finally able to print it. The graphic goes on the lower left side of the shirt so it looks like the dinosaur is walking around to the front of the shirt.

The rest of these are some graphics I have come up with over the course of the school year and some this summer.

So there you go, my shameless pitch and what Colorado Mountain College has inspired me to do. And feedback is always welcome if you care to comment on any of these and if any really strike your fancy, let me know and I'd be more than happy to get them to you.

On a completely different topic, I hate to ruin anybodies plans but it turns out that the off campus dorms I wrote about a while ago are not happening this year. CMC didn't think the place would fill up so they cancelled it. They may do it in later years, but unfortunately, not this year. Peace.

Summer 09.

Hello everyone! Hopefully summer has been going great for all of you out there. I realize school is out and I'm in Minnesota so I can't exactly write about CMC/Steamboat life, but I thought I'd let you know how my summer's been so far and some things I'm excited for in the coming school year.

Summer is great. Unfortunetly right now its about 60 degrees here, as well as cloudy and rainy. But luckily we've had some amazing days here in Minnesota, full of all the awesome things summer has to offer.

So far, I've already been wakeboarding more in my first month of summer than I usually get to throughout the entire summer. My friend Ben, who has the boat we use, was unfortunately not able to get out snowboarding as much as he wanted to, but that just made him that much more all about wakeboarding. We've gotten out on the lake around 3 times a week so far, which has been awesome. I've already learned some new stuff and can't wait to keep progressing. Plus the wakeboard I have, the Hyperlite Roam, is shaped like a short fat snowboard and has no fins, so basically I get to snowboard on the lake all summer, so I'm very stoked about that.

Continuing with the board sports I partake in to fill the void of not being able to snowboard, I have been longboarding almost every sunny day this summer. There is a pretty long, kind of steep hill by my house, that I used to longboard down everyday after working at a daycare right by my house (that job I unfortunately did not get back but I'll talk about that in a bit). After breaking my collarbone longboarding down Bob Adams Dr. by CMC, I was very sketched out to bomb that hill once again. Lucky for me, when I set out to conquer my fear, the familiarity of the hill eased my nerves, and I have bombed that hill almost everyday I've been longboarding.

The final board sport is skateboarding, which I really haven't done very much so far. I had big plans to build a mini-ramp in my backyard, but unfortunately money is a bit tight and it doesn't look like that plan will be put into action.

For those of you seeking a new way to shred in the summer, I recently saw a commerical for just a way to do so. A lot of people on the coastal states do something called skimboarding, which I've had the pleasure of doing in Florida, and it's wicked fun. The company Banzai has come out with a slip n' slide type product made just for skimboarding. It's only $30 at Wal-Mart and even comes with a skimboard. I'm sure it's designed for kids but I think it looks crazy fun so hopefully some friends will want to go in on it with me an we can spend the summer shredding in a new way.

Unfortunately, summer is not all fun and games. I just recently went back to my job at Pacsun in Rosedale Mall (which I am not happy about). Before that, I definitly felt the effects of the economy as I searched for a different job with no avail. I even tried to use my previous experience at Pacsun to get a job in the same mall at Zumiez, but they just weren't hiring at the time. I especially tried to use the courses and knowledge I've gained at CMC to get a job at some local boardshops, but again, they just weren't hiring. As for the daycare job I had last summer, they even have let some people go because so few kids are enrolling in the program since their parents can't afford, so it's been rough for everyone. On the plus side, my mom, who was laid off from working at the St. Anthony Community Center, where the daycare program is, had found a new administrative job with the union she was a part of when she worked at the community center, so we were all very happy about that.

Something I am VERY stoked about that is happening soon is that I will be printing more shirts for my snowboard clothing company Rill. I am sure that once I get my designs finalized and begin production, I will put some shameless plug for my products on here, so you'll get to see them eventually. Something I've decided to try to pursue is actually the company we started in Product Design class. My original plan was to make Rill a snowboard company, but I've now decided to make Rill the clothing brand, and Able (the name we came up with in Product Design) the snowboard brand. I have to go through some legal aspects with everyone in the class so I don't get sued or something if the company gets big, but it'll for sure be worth it.

Another great part of my summer so far that I wasn't able to do in Steamboat Springs is go to concerts. There were some cool local shows in Steamboat, but there was no venue for any of the bands I listen to regularly to come play, so I definitly missed that. So far, I have seen Envy on the Coast, Anberlin, and Taking Back Sunday at one show, and Hey Monday, Metro Station, Cobra Starship, All Time Low, and Fall Out Boy at another show. On top of that, I have plans to see Green Day/The Bravery, Blink 182/Fall Out Boy/Panic at the Disco, and go to the Vans Warped Tour, which has a crazy amount of sick bands going, so it's definitly been/will be a musical summer.

On top of music, art has come back into my life a lot, right now just some sketches and pencil drawings, but hopefully it will expand into more mediums. I have plans right not to go sketch at the Art Institute of Minnesota on Thursday with a friend, so I'm very excited about that and will probably blog about that as well.

Finally, the last thing summer is all about, at least here in Minnesota, is going to cabins. I had the pleasure of going to my friend Joels cabin already this summer, and have plans to go again for his birthday at the end of June. Cabins here consist of pretty much relaxing in the sun, hanging out outside, grilling, and boating, so it's always a good time.

Well there you go, hopefully that gave you a glimpse at what summer's here are like, and maybe even made you want to make a trek to the great state of Minnesota. I'm sure I'll write a few more times over the course of the summer, but if not, thanks for reading and I'll see you in the fall. Peace.

Blog about Blogging.

As of right now, the head of this whole blogging endeavour (Sara Fowler, Marketing and Communications Editor) is planning on hiring on at least one first year student on each campus to be a student blogger next year, so as summer gets underway, I thought I'd write about what it has been like to be a blogger for Colorado Mountain College.

It all started for me in the cafeteria of the Alpine Campus in Steamboat Springs. I was eating late night dinner with some friends when I noticed these signs and posters about a program called iBlogCMC. I figured I'd read it to see what it was all about, and turns out it was a pretty sick deal. According to the cards, you could get paid by the hour to write blogs about life at CMC. I thought, why not, so I found out where to apply and gave it a shot.

I've had a bit of experience writing in high school, but I had no idea it would be enough to become a blogger for the school. The application process was similiar to that of any other job. You had to list previous work experience and any writing experience and things like that, but you also had to write a sample blog to show you're writing style, so I thought what better than to write about what would eventually become the story behind the title of my blog; me breaking my collarbone. Maybe I got some sympathy or it was just a well written blog (probably not the second one) but I got chosen and became an official CMC blogger.

Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of paper work involved in actaully becoming a blogger, but once all was said and done it was very worth it. I was most excited when I found out CMC bloggers got paid $11 an hour for writing, and you had to write a minimum of about two hours per week, but if you had a ton to write about that week, you could certainly write more. I would typically try to write more than two hours per week, one because the money is always nice, but two there just ended up usually being a lot going on around campus. After winter break rolled around, Sara gave all the bloggers at the various campuses the option of staying on for second semester with a generous raise, so as I'm sure you're all aware, I definitly decided to do so.

So there you have it, just a little glimpse into what it's like being a blogger for Colorado Mountain College, and hopefully a few of you out there have some interest in doing this as well. Thanks for reading these over this past year, and if you really liked them that much, you'll be happy to know I'll be doing this again next year. Take care and have a great summer. Peace.