Maybe Our Last Day of Skiing?

There's me going off the dip. I'm actually in the air but it's hard to tell from this picture.
There's my brother going off the grind. Here's two pictures from the peak of Tamarack.
One of Troy's cool jumps...

So it was a great last day of skiing! Next year it'll be even better...

A New Approach

There's an old saying that's part of the skiier's code, and it say "respect gets respect." And gradually I've learned how true that is and how well it applies to blogging (yes, it's another entry about blogging...).

The thing is, blogging's like a community. And someone who's never seen out in public probably won't be go winning awards or recognitions. No, I've seen that some of the most successful ones (in terms of views and links and such) have been those that were active citizens in that commmunity. The guys that scrolled through "next blog" on the toolbar half a dozen times and finally found an admirable website, left a comment, and then kept looking for more - they seem to be doing the best (of course this doesn't guarantee anything if the blog's no good, but works for the most part with good writers). And you know why?

Whenever a comment is left on a post, you can bet a fortune that the author of the post's gonna take a look at the profile that left it. You want to know who was complementing you (or bashing you), right? And if the author likes what he sees in terms of the commenter's blog, then chances are he'll leave his own comment. And if these two really like each other's stuff, than voila! Links ahoy!

Now this is not to take the emphasis off the work and talent that goes into writing posts, but rather to encourage people to read and comment on other blogs to spur the growth of their own. Because one would have to be a downright Dickens to just get famous on the Internet without friends and without links. Which I'm not. And since Google doesn't actually recognize me when I search my blog, I'm just gonna have to find some friends and make some links. An author's got to read, after all.

A Photo Post

I've gotten into the habit of carrying my camera around with me to try to find good photo oppurtunities. And now I've got a lot of pictures to get off my memory card. So here we go.

Last weekend I had the TEAMS competition. I forget what the acronym means, but it's a huge test that fried our brains.

The TEAMS room, with all the people in it.

Our team with Zack, Bronte, Payton, Richie, and me.

After several hours, we looked like this...

Or worse, like this...

The whole Junior Varsity TEAMS participants, as well as Doctor Neznanski, our C. Phys. teacher. He's funny as all hell, I'll have to get him to write something sometime.


A week later came a busy weekend. First off I had to play keyboard with the band at the basketball game

The school band (which I'm in) played at the school's basketball championship. Here's everyone who was there.

Here's another picture of us playing...

Last one... by the way, band is really fun. We play really fun songs like Jump (Van Halen) and The Final Countdown (Europe) and plenty of others.

After that, I went and saw Jumper. It was like 10:00 PM before it started.

Jumper.

All that was Friday. Saturday was the Junior Varsity Hockey Championship. This was what I've been waiting for.

We lost.

6-0.

Oh well. It kind of sucked, but we did make it to the championship. And as a note, Boise (the team we played) had 14 players. We had 8. Plus the refs were totally on their side. Closely following that, I went to the Hallissey Mass. Hallissey is a local inter-Catholic School basketball tournament. My brother took part in it so we went to the mass.

This will give you a little bit of an idea of what the church looked like. Really nice church.

Well that was Saturday. To top it off, I got hurt at the game so I could hardly walk. So Sunday I took a little bit of rest. I did go to the Discovery Center, though. But I don't have any pictures from that, sorry. Monday though, I felt quite a bit better, so I went skiing with my brother Andy and my friend Troy. We found that most of the kids from the hockey team were up there, and we skiied with them.

Bus ride up...

It was a beautiful day out.

Here's most of the hockey team in snowboarding gear. We had a lot of fun and went to the backside several times.

And finally, I got back home from my incredible weekend. I was almost looking forward to school by the time that I finally finished. That can't be good... Oh well. That was my photo post.

Weekend in McCall: Friday Skiing

Well Hello Again. If you didn't read my last post, I'm here in McCall, staying with family - my uncle Brian, my aunt Julie, my cousin Billy, and my cousin Annie. Me and Andy ditched school at Lunch to go out to McCall with the family. We just got here yesterday, and spent last night tubing. But enough about yesterday. We spent today skiing.

Have you ever been to Brundage? You should, it's a great place to ski (or snowboard). Andy and I skiied for hours while little Billy got some snowboarding lessons. They finally set up their terrain park, called Jammer. We pretty much did that all day. Let me tell you, you can get some serious air off those jumps. Andy did a bunch of cool little tricks and I even managed to do a 180 off one of the jumps.

Around two though, we were spent, and we skiied over to pick up Billy and go home. And that's what we did, climbed back into the Lexus and drove back to the house. Mom shooed them outside once I passed out on the couch and told them to play in the snow. When I woke up she sent me out too. So we built a jump and skiied down it. I wish that I could say that it worked just fine, but it really didn't. Oh well.

We put some water on the jump though and maybe it will freeze over tonight. Til tomorrow...

Possibly My Best Weekend So Far

Well guys, this one was a winner for me. It really was quite incredible. It started on Friday. The school day went as usual, and we got to play "extreme volleyball" in P.E. Shortly following that, I went home, ate, and got my hockey stuff together. Because I was playing a Varsity hockey game today (usually I'm on Junior Varsity, so kind of a big deal for me). To be honest, I thought I would suck.

Ånd to be honest, I think I did just the opposite. Friday was hands-down the best hockey game of my life. I had several great breakaways and great shots, and for a Varsity game I think I did just awesome. We may have tied at three, but it really boosted my confidence.

In short, a day passed, and I played again on Saturday for Junior Varsity. This time I played center (again kind of a big deal because that's a major position). I'm not sure whether it was because coach thought I was a competent player after seeing me play on Friday, or if it was because one of the kids on the team got kicked off due to bad grades. Hopefully the first. It wasn't nearly as good as my last game, but that was mostly because it's been a while since I played center. I think I did alright though, and we won 4-1.

Sunday I went skiing with Andy and Troy. They finally set up Claim Jumper, a bigger, meaner version of playground. Which, of course, we went down countless times over the hours we spent up on the mountain. I had one of the best wipeouts - I was bombing down this bowl but when I accidentally ran over a cat track, it threw me off balance and I flung forward and faceplanted, sliding twenty feet with snow coming up my nose before sliding to a stop. I was covered in snow. I really wish it had been videotaped; it was pretty sick.

God, I am sore though! Too much hockey and skiing. And too think I'm supposed to get up tomorrow at 6 AM for a hockey practice...

Crazy Day of Skiing

Last Sunday, Andy, Troy, and I all went out skiing. I probably should have already talked about this, but lately I been behind in my posts. So here's how it was.

Well, we got up at about 9:00 AM or so, listening to Gregorian chants and other sorts of classical music on the drive up to Bogus. Mom sent us off with our skis and a couple dollars more than three digits for tickets and lunch.

Now let me say something. We do this basically every weekend, and we all have a singular favorite run to go on. It's called Playground. It's basically a terrain park that empties out into a really sweet, somewhat difficult bowl. So we turned left off the main chair lift on our first run and headed to Playground.

Now I like skiing terrain. I like it, but I'm not great or even too good at it. Sure I can go off a few jumps but usually grinding is out of my league. But as Andy went down and grinded off a table and jumped off, I thought I should try it. I did, and the table was easy. It's only a picnic table and you just have to keep your legs straight and jump at the end to make it. But there was another grind down there that was a little bit more difficult.

It wasn't very thick, maybe 1 or two feet wide, but was like twelve to fourteen feet long. I didn't want to lose my momentum, and I jumped on, going straight down with my skis perfectly parallel. But as I made it halfway through, one of my skis slipped and lost it's place on the grind. I also lost my balance, and when I finally flew off in a mess. My left ski came off and I slid on my ass for seven feet before finally slowing down.

And I laughed. It was hilarious. Troy was laughing too. I finally grabbed my ski and continued down, bombing down the bowl. We went down that one again next time, and this time, I hit the grind perfectly. Andy was great and did a few 180s as well, and Troy got to grind too. We eventually went off that same run 15 times. It was the only run we went on, and we perfected our routine again and again until we were going down the mountain like pros, grinding and jumping and everything.

Sunday Skiing

My first time skiing this season. Hopefully it will be the first of many.

Yes, I ski. I do not snowboard. I don't have anything against snowboarding, except that it's just about useless in cat tracks. You all know it's true.

I woke up early this morning for the second time in the last three days. I'm not sure I've filled my Christmas Break Sleep-In Quota. But I may have to live with that. After grumpily climbing out of bed I began to pack my skiing gear in the back of the car. After some fussing with Mom and some confusion about my boots, we headed up to Bogus Basin. Troy (my friend), Andy (my brother), Brandon (my brother's friend), and I all packed into the car and after nearly an hour of windy roads and Gregorian chants playing from the speakers, we made it.

That picture above may give you a false impression of just what the mountain was like; it was foggy as hell. The visibility was just awful and I could hardly see where I was going. But we skiied anyway, and for the record, we did pretty well. Troy and I split off from Andy and Brandon to shred the mountain as best we could. Our first run after warming up on the bunny hill was into a usually friendly terrain park off the main lift. The problem was, nothing was really done yet, so none of the jumps were there, but near the end of the run it dumped into a hellish bowl filled with moguls and dry patches. After that we played it easy for a while and built up our confidence. So we blazed a trail down the main lift, and guess what? We somehow ended up right back up at that same mogul-stricken bowl off the terrain park. I've got no idea how either.

Frustrated at the difficulty of finding jumps and/or visibility, we sat down for a nice lunch in the lodge. They make really good food. Anyway, following lunch, we went to the backside this time. This time we went off a few black diamonds and got lost a couple of times, and ended up having to ask for directions from a man named John. He kindly showed us how to get back to the frontside, and after bombing down the mountain one last time, we hung up our skiis and snowboards for the day and waited to be picked up.

Or so I thought.

It just so happened that my older brother (Micheal) and his good friend Al was there as well. They called me and Mike told me that he wanted me to take one last run with him. "Can you keep up?" he asked. "Can you?" I replied, laughing. So up on the main lift we went and guess what? I ended up in the same damn bowl as I did the other two times. But this time I ripped it up. I almost kept up with Mike and Al, and that's saying something. You should have seen them, just going down at top speeds. I'm afraid I just don't register on their Crazy-Ass-ometer. Oh well. It was still a good run, and I finished with style.

To a good day of skiing!

Friday Trip

Well it's Friday. Ok, not really. I had to write this on Thursday. And I wish I didn't, but I'm gone for Friday, so you'll have to deal with it.

"But why are you gone on Friday?" Glad you asked. Well, there's a town one hundred miles from here called McCall. We have a cabin up there, and it is one of the best places to go for vacation. And the best part is, it only takes about two hours to get to McCall from Boise.

There's always some great snow up there around wintertime and the family always goes up and skis at the two ski resorts up there: Brundage and Tamarack. If you haven't been too either, I can't suggest it highly enough. I still remembering skiing straight down Brundage. Not turning and stopping, but as fast as I could in a straight line. Good times. Tamarack is better for tricks and jumps and such. Even on their 'bunny hill', they've got a mini terrain park. I still remember me trying to grind a rail on my skis and failing miserably. Good times. And of course, there's always the activity barn. Lesser known, it's basically a hill with ruts. Grab an inner tube and hook up to the lift, and you're ready for some hell of a ride. I still remember sliding down the hill with wind burning my eyes. Good times.

There's everything you could want in a winter season there. What seems strange to me is how far I'll be away from home so soon after school. I'll be more than one hundred miles away when other kids just got home and are having dinner. It's a strange thought. And I'll be home on Saturday. And nobody will never know.

Of course they will now. That's the problem about blogging. I've told just about everybody I know to check this blog, and now so much of the school is reading it that I have to be careful about what I write. I'm really not sure how many people see it, but I'm sure the number is underwhelming. But enough to screw me over if I say something bad about someone. So I'll keep it vague.

By the way, as a sidenote, I'm thinking about changing the web address of the blog. probably won't change much, but hi-fen confuses alot of people and I keep getting complaints that my web address doesn't work. Just vote on the poll on the right.


"I need a vacation." - Arnold Schwarzenegger