I got my eyes set on moving to Utah this winter, and I just hunkered down and did what I had to do to get there in the shortest amount of time possible.
However, I discovered that I'd gotten myself into a bit of a pickle when I didn't take a particular class in the spring that just happened to be a prereq. I was wanting to finish up the rest of my classes in one semester, but there was no way that I could take the prereq and the class after it at the same time. So I ended up calling the dean of engineering and telling him about how I'm an amputee and I absolutely had to graduate in December because I was moving to Utah no matter what to train for the paralympics (At the time Sochi hadn't said no yet, which is why I was in such a hurry. I wanted to get in as many seasons as possible so I could go to the paralympics). Anyway, long story short, the dean said no prob and gave me a substitute. I ended up taking 19 credit hours, that's 7 classes, in the fall semester. Luckily, I got used to the course load and still managed to juggle all of those classes, my social life and my love life. I actually came out with 4 As and 3 Bs and graduated December 10th from the University of Alabama in Huntsville with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering.
On January 7th, my dad and I left for Utah. We road tripped across the country with a cat and arrived on the 9th. I have an apartment in Heber City. It's about 20 minutes from Park City. I started training the next day and have been on the mountain most days since. I'm still only on day 27 of EVER snowboarding. On day 23, I think, I followed Heidi and Ravi down a black diamond. I got a little nervous at the top, but I thought to myself, I can't tell Travis (team manager) that I did a black diamond unless I actually throw some turns down. Otherwise, it doesn't count! So I did it then went back up and did it several more times.
That's Ravi in the picture below. Heidi and I are in the reflection.
We also got 2-3 ft of snow on the mountain last week. I went boarding with Travis, Kate, and Wes and all I heard that day was "awwwww it's bama's first pow." It was a lot different than I expected! I've never ridden so much powder in my life! It was like relearning to snowboard... so of course I spent a lot of time on my butt. No complaining tho! I kept watching the other snowboarders and saw how excited they were and knew that once I got the hang of it that I'd be having just as much fun as everyone else.
I did also learn some new lingo that day: "the white room." A couple of times I visited "the white room" when I front flipped and my head was under the snow for a moment until I made my full rotation. All I could see was white, hence "the white room".
