Just Give Me 14 More Days

So I really haven't written anything in a while, but a lot has been happening.
In December, Amy Purdy, on behalf of Adaptive Action Sports, granted me a snowboard. It's a 2009 GNU B-Nice. It's actually proboarder Barrett Christy's model. Amy told me that it was actually Barrett that was giving me this board. Of course, I was extremely excited but also a little nervous. It seems silly now. But I was worried that it'd be like a lot of women's boards and would be purple or pink or sparkly. It was actually none of that. It's a very cool women's board, and a good freestyle board for me to learn on.

I did get to try it and my new leg out this winter. Dad and I made another trip to Park City, and I had a lesson booked for every day. Having that leg made such a difference! Plus, my residual limb had had more time to heal and mature. The previous winter, when Dad took me snowboarding for the first time after my accident, I had only been walking for 6 months. I was determined tho to re-learn to snowboard, and I worked myself so hard that I got sick. This year tho was the complete opposite. I have a lot more stamina and strength. I got out there on my new leg and totally kicked ass!! And, just like last year, I met up with Nicole Roundy, one of the few other female adaptive snowboarders. We actually ended up switching legs. She has the same one as me and since she's been riding for years on it, she knows how to set it up. We're also about the same height, so she told me to put her leg on so I could feel how it's supposed to feel, while she put mine on and made some adjustments. I thought it was the funniest thing!



The colorful boots are mine and the orange ones are Nicole's.



I went and took my leg for a spin after that, and when I came back Travis, the adaptive snowboard team manager, was talking to Nicole about the adaptive snowboard world cup in France. When the meeting was over, Nicole asked me how the leg was and I was said it was awesome and that caught Travis's attention. He turned to me and asked, "So why aren't you going to France?" I said that I hadn't heard anything about it. He said that that wasn't a very good excuse and proceeded to explain the whole thing. I was having a bit of an information overload and all I had to say was "Well, that sounds cool...." haha Travis's response was, "Well, we can chit chat about it or we can make some plans!" So I talked to my Dad about it, who was very hesitant. He wanted me to wait till next season when I'd have more experience. However, I wasn't going to let that stop me. Ever since I learned about competitive adaptive snowboarding, I'd been looking for a way in and this was it! Yes, I don't have much experience, but I have to start somewhere.

My last day in Park City, Travis took me out on the mountain. What happened is actually pretty embarrassing... One of the first things he did was make adjustments to my board, which helped a ton! The embarrassing part was when he took me to a double blue square run so that my Dad would be forced to go another route since he can't really handle that kinda of run. We sat down at the top and talked without my Dad around and while we were chatting, Travis noticed that I was riding my board backwards! How embarrassing! I could blame Caleb, Sam's bf, who set my board up, but I really should've noticed, or at least one of my instructors that I'd been working with all week should've noticed. Since then Travis has made a couple jokes about me riding my board backwards for a week.... But yea, Travis took me down that double blue, which by the way, the hardest runs I'd done before were single blue squares so I was a little scared, but I still did it! He fixed my board when we went back to the bottom and we took another double blue and it was amazingly better! I totally nailed that run! After that I told Travis that I was for sure going to go to France!

During MLK weekend, I went back to Park City to do some training. I actually got to train with the other riders with world class coaches! It was very cool! I feel like I got a lot out of it. Monzo, a BK on the team, took me up to the top of the mountain and took me down this little trail that was just loaded with rollers. He was teaching me how to absorb them. I don't think I did that great, but I got the concept. haha Travis also taught me how to "drop in" and do half pipe turns. Honestly, a lot of the stuff they had me doing terrified me, but I did it anyway. The first time I dropped in, I totally face planted. When I did that run with Monzo, I spent a lot of the time on my ass. But it's like what I said about wakeboarding, "To totally rock it, I've got to be fearless!"

Oh and the weekend before this, it actually snowed about 10 inches!! Seriously, in Huntsville, Alabama, it dumped snow! So me, Heather, and Stephen built an igloo. It was about 7 feet tall and about 5 or 6 feel wide. It took about 2 1/2 days. Never again! haha Heather and I didn't even really get to enjoy it either. We both left for MLK weekend and had melted a lot by the time we got home.  

In the beginning of February, I flew to Denver and met up with the rest of the snowboard team. There were a lot of new faces, but I ended up really liking everyone. They're all so funny! So we got on our plane and flew straight from Denver to Frankfurt, Germany. Our plane was late, so we had to like rock star our way through the airport. Travis had some people waiting for us at the gate and they herded us to a bus, which took us to passport control and then to security and then straight out to our plane on the tarmac. The plane had waited an extra 30 minutes for us to get there. That plane then took us to Lyon, France where we met up with two more guys that that flown separately. We all loaded into a van and drove to Ocieres, France.

We trained the first day and ran the course. I wasn't doing so well. I wasn't getting enough speed to make the gates. I picked it up and did better, but the first feature was a little table top jump, and I really don't have much experience with those, and I fell almost everytime. The next day was the actual competition. My hands were shaking so bad as I took at the gate waiting for my turn. I think I totally failed on the jump and then on one of the turns, I didn't make enough speed to get around the gates so I had to hike up. It sucked so bad. Keith, a BK on the team, told me that one of the US girls and a french guy were laughing at me and he marched right up to them and bitched them out. He said, "She's only been snowboarding for 14 days! I'd like to see how you were doing after 14 days." I love that guy. He's so cool. He was always encouraging me and telling me that I did a really good job. I'm always really hard on myself, so it was good to have someone always encouraging me. Travis also told me that the reason he asked me to go to France was not because he thought I'd win, but because I'm so motivated. He said that someone like me is really easy to train. Which is so true! I work myself to exhaustion when I train. I want to win! I want to be the best and I know I can be. I've only got now 17 days of snowboarding under my belt and I'm already had an international competition. Just give me 14 more days, and I could totally give Nicole and Amy a run for their money. Seriously!







Keith got 3rd, Tyler (Canada) for 2nd, Evan got 1st







I made fourth, a french woman in 3rd, Nicole in 2nd and Amy in 1st.