The Book of Sifty

Knee deep 1:28AM

Today I worked. It sucked. I was hung over as hell from last night.
Quite an impressive feat of bludging since I went out with $3 in my wallet. Also work sucked since two of my work mates have been fired for not showing up to work, and not calling in. Pretty slack cos they were both pretty sound dudes, and good fun to work with. But the thing is this year, unlike previous years, you don't get paid a bonus for sticking out the season. Actually this reminds me of a funny story. This guy who lived in our block and worked as a lifty too, got his arse fired for not calling in. His father came from Kansas to pick him up and the story he told his father was that he failed a random drug test. Apparently his father was cooler with that than him just being slack and getting fired for not calling in.

Anyway on Thursday I had potentially the best day of snow boarding ever.

My roommate Shane woke me up at 2am the night before. He'd been out drinking, and alerted me to the fact there was about 4' of snow outside, and it was still dumping it down. He wanted me to make sure he was up and out of the house early to go riding. I'd got my free ticket to Steamboat and had organised with another Kiwi guy called Shane, (he's actually from Wellington) to go riding at Steamboat. So when I was outside waiting for Shane and the boys to pick me up in the morning I was thinking perhaps I should stay here and ride Winter Park, rather than risk an hour and half drive to Steamboat for an unknown snow situation. The boys arrived in the van and did a sweet as donut in the snow coming into the carpark. We decided that even thought the snow might be marginal at least it was getting away from the resort we work at all week. So the drive to Steamboat took almost three hours, rather than about and hour and a half, since there was so much snow on the roads.

But at Steamboat the snow was beyond anything I've ever ridden before. This was pro video material. It was waist deep powder in places, and consistently knee deep. Spent the entire day riding. Inhaled lunch in about 30 seconds and headed straight out again. Did plenty of chutes and small rock drops. Even if you screwed up the landing it didn't hurt. Got home at 6pm, and was asleep at like 8pm. A very wicked day.

Anyway one thing happened that reminded me why I got a helmet. We were bombing down a run after lunch. Shane who's a bit of guru rider pops off a cat track and gets a bit of air. Timmy, (little aussie lad), hits the same lip but lands on the top of mogul and cuts left pulling up pretty quick.. Unfortunately about where I was planning to land. So I sit it down just over the crest and land on my butt sinking up to my arms in powder. Neil who was riding behind me couldn't see much cos of all the powder that was chewed up. He came over the crest and saw what he thought was a rock sticking out of the snow. Realizing too late it was in fact my head. He pulled up but still bounced off my helmet with his board.
All I can say is thank god for helmets.