MY STORY

On January 20th 2010 I departed for my Colorado adventure. Final destination is Telluride, CO. My previous employer closed our Boston office on October 31, 2009 and this seemed to be the most opportune time to do something different. My inspirations are two things really. They are both movies. First is "Into the Wild", a movie about a person who leaves his life behind to pursue a life in the Alaskan wilderness and along the way he meets people that shape his life. The second movie is "The Bucket List", a movie about two terminally ill men who escape a cancer ward with a wish list of to-do's before they die. The #1 item on the wish list is "Witness something truly majestic". My adventures are not exactly similar to these movies, but underlying themes and life changing perspectives are. As far as the location, I thank my sister for that. She lived in the beautiful & remote town of Telluride for five years and met Paul there. Their 1997 wedding was in Telluride (Trout Lake). Telluride is nestled in the dramatic Rocky Mountains of Southwest Colorado.

BLOG 101

If you are new to blogs so am I. Here is an intro. The home page http://mycoloradoadventure.blogspot.com/ has all the posts (the write ups) in order and they work so that most recent is at top of the order. i.e. Day 1, my first post/write-up, is on the bottom page of all the posts/write-ups. On the left side of the blog site there is a "Blog Archive" section where you can navigate to pick and choose year, month and then specific daily posts/write-ups. I wanted to share this in the event you are new to blogs.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Day 31 - 2/19/10 - Let It Snow










"There's one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor's." ~Clyde Moore






Today is Friday February 19th 2010. I chose my quote of the day because it made me laugh, but after this write up I think you will see there is plenty of good with snow here in Telluride. This is Day 2 of the 4 day Jim Drew Memorial FIS Colorado Ski Cup. Not to take anything away from this honorable race, it is also the first day of a supposed three day snowfall. How excited am I for this? Wait until you see the video from today! And don't cheat an go right to the video links. I'll build it up well enough so that watching it after you read makes you appreciate the video more.

Today is the second day of the Giant Slalom (GS) for the racers. I've been asked to return to starting gate duty. Does that mean they like my level of volunteer effort? Sort of. They liked the collective start gate group and since we all returned today, they like to keep us together i.e. we know how to work together. The start gate can be hectic. Note the picture attached to this blog post. For example, say either the men's or women's race starts at 9:30am. Here is a timeline on how order is kept:
  1. Racers can show up to the start gate (top of the race course) 45 minutes prior to start, or 8:45am, for inspection. Inspection is their very slow descend through the course. They can "slide" down on the edges of their skis, flatten out uneven terrain and get a fee for what the course will be like.
  2. Five minutes prior to the race, at 9:25am, we start seeing the racers. Each racer has a bib number that they wear over their race attire so we can identify them. Also during this five minutes we send "pre-runners". They are exactly what they sound like; there are 3-5 of them and they run the course (as if they are racing for official time) as a test.
  3. When the clock strikes 9:30am the race starts. The first racer (bib #1) goes. For the first heat, if there are 45 racers, 1 starts, 2 is second, 3 is third and so on. The order changes in the second heat....depending on the first heat finish results.
  4. It gets hectic here because Donna (oversees start gate team) is constantly getting the right racers/bib numbers in line so that we go in order and go within 30-40 seconds of each racer leaving the gate. The picture shows the racers coming into the start gate area. Keep in mind, these are high school level kids and although they can race with the best of them, the boys joke around, the girls are chatty, and in general, you have to yell at them to get organization and order. Donna is very good at this!
  5. So again, racers leave every 30-40 seconds after each other. If a racer misses a gate, he/she can climb back uphill and re-run that gate. Some racers take bad falls on the course and do not finish. Some racers never show up at the start gate (known as a "Do Not Start" or "DNS"). All three of these scenarios effect the 30-40 second in between racer time, but Donna, Greg (gate timer) and the entire crew make sure the course is clear before letting the next racer go. Safety is always most important.
It a well run operation and I have learned a lot. Now, I told you I would build up the video section of this blog. Part of building it up is to say that as the race day went on, into the second women and men's heats, the snow kept falling. Here is a video of a lift ride up (near the race course). Note that the powder on the ground is just from snowfall today! This will keep the build up going:


So that is a nice set up video. To finish on the race side of things, we went through the first and second women's and men's heats. The snowfall picked up as the day carried on (I'm building up the videos again) and the racers certainly felt the impact of this during their second heat runs. There were more falls than morning, but due to some efficient race crew work we were done with the races by 1:30pm. What does this mean for me? Two hours of time on the mountain! This was my first taste of this life out here where people can work and, in the same day, be on the mountain for 2-3 runs. Some do it in the morning, some on a break and some at the end of the day. It's certainly a unique way of breaking up your work day. Even though my work is volunteer I certainly appreciated this time at the end of my day. Here we go:

Video 1 - This video is crazy. This storm made for pretty intense winds and snowfall. To be honest, there is not much to see in this video (literally), but I'm showing it to you in the hopes you can imagine what I went through here. Picture a complete loss of your sense of balance. In this video, it's a white out. I have no sense of depth perception and equilibrium. Reasons are because I am in a bowl area of the mountain and there are no trees, or anything to give you a sense of depth, for hundreds of feet. Even with sunlight, "bowl" skiing areas are huge wide open areas of white (snow). So I introduce you to Revelation Bowl....it is white out Friday and I have no idea where I am going after I pass the sign. It was a strange feeling....like learning to walk again. You may not notice this, but I fall 3 or 4 times in this short video. Zero balance on my part! You also get to see the art of strapping boots into binders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_A8Vu0f2Gk

Video 2 - Video 2 is a testament to Video 1. In this video I'm somewhat coming out of the white out. I begin to see a lift, a tree and ultimately I get my balance from seeing those things. There is also a thing called "flat sunlight" in skiing and that effects vision/balance as well. I'll explain that some other time. Also keep in mind that there is over a foot of new snow on the ground. That is hard enough to navigate through on a snowboard! Here you go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ6hVqkGYzE

Video 3 - Here is Apex Glade. This has become one of my favorite trails on all of Telluride mountain. On this day it was even better than previous days. Apex is a black diamond (just one) trail so it has steep areas and quite a few trees. It eventually dumps into a wider open area, but that area is more bumpier and it did not make this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U20gV4xQdo

Video 4 - And finally, here is my last run of the day. I even throw in a little trickery with a 180...somewhere toward the middle of the video. A goal of my adventure is to become a little more aerial on the snowboard. I will hit terrain parks momentarily and there I will train myself to go off jumps and do 180's, 360's....and maybe more, but that will be a good start. Not sure if the video camera will be safe for that, but it's a future date and we'll see. Also, toward the end of the video the snow has let up a little from earlier and you can see the town of Telluride. Nice view, even on a snowy day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyqiPAXPzsU

So good races and a VERY good day on the mountain. If this storm has done this much on the first day of what they say is 3 straight days of snowfall, then imagine what it will be like by Monday! Wow. And you can imagine it since these videos have dragged you into my journey. Good night from Telluride and hope you are well.


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