day 52. skiing. sunday river. 2/4.

i was fighting off a cold but i was really pumped about snowboarding. kasmira had a race but i was a bit apprehensive about that since she was so stressed about doing the slalom. the day started off great but by the end i did feel like a little air had been let out of the bubble. i started on the chondola listening to a dale charles mix and running broadway and escapade. i was getting way over (for me) on my turns and cranking with all my force (and 300 pounds) on my edges and really riding out my turns. my plan was to ride hard as i could until i got tired. no pacing myself. i headed up barker and came down the lazy river. back up the chondola and back down escapade and broadway. it was quite cold out but not out of control cold. still, i was ready for a break and went into the north peak lodge. after the break i took another run down escapade and broadway to barker. then i took ecstasy where i was once again cut off at cascades so i took monday mourning down to roadrunner. by the end of roadrunner the long traverse was getting to my legs. took the slow ride up little white cap in the sun. moonstruck was perfect with just a little drifted manmade on top of corduroy. for some reason there were a couple of icy spots but they were easily avoidable. my second run down moonstruck i was way over on my edge and it let go and i almost fell but recovered. i was getting a little tired already. then i took tempest up and since cascades was closed i took wildfire to cut back back to barker. went up and back down the lazy river to grab a beer at the foggy goggle. from there i took the chondola up and back across broadway to barker to meet kasmira. we got to the top of barker and the girls on the team seemed surprised to see me on my board. ecstasy to monday mourning to the race course. they checked out the course and then we took the same run again and i headed down to watch.

on kasmira's first race she missed the hairpin gate and had to walk back up. the reason she struggles at the slalom is because she aims right for the gate instead of aiming wide and turning into the gate. she does the same thing at grand slalom but grand slalom is more forgiving. she walked back up, skied around the gate and finished. she was pretty upset, but lots of people missed gates and many others that didn't still got worse times. i tried to encourage her to just take it slower and make sure she made all the gates on the second run but she still went for it and missed the same gate. it was also real icy the second run and the temperature was plummeting now that the mountain was in the shade. she finished a disappointing last on her telstar girls team, but both the telstar boys and girls won. unfortunately, the first race in the states is slalom, too. i'm not sure she even gets what she is doing wrong when coach kav explains it to her. someday she'll start turning before the gates instead of right at them and she'll make a huge jump in her times for both slaloms and grand slaloms. maybe, if we're lucky, it'll be at the states next week.

after we went to the thursday happy hour at the goggle. we had had so much fun when we went before but today we were tired and spent and while the cheap chicken wings were good, it wasn't the happiest of happy hours.