Backcountry.com has done it again. A new webpage called DOG, or Department of Goods, is launching.
However, it is special because each purchase over $50 will receive an additional gift, and random shoppers will be given extra gifts that ranger from bikes, skis, kayaks, clothing, and more. The catch is that it is an invite only. If you know me, or someone that is hooked in the circle of trust get a code and check it out. 
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
http://tysonbolduc.com/essay/James_Rhio_C.html
For me Summer is a time to recuperate, work, and prepare for the upcoming season. While there is never really enough time to do everything you need, I found this summer to be a whole new experience with a lot less time. Last year after breaking my self off and spending nine weeks on the couch as a result, I had a lot of time to think and reflect. I thought about my opportunities and how I have experienced something special while traveling and interacting with special people all over the world. While it has all been amazing, I decided it was time to incorporating my experiences as a skier in the mountains into something else as well. After all the experiences I have had, the few that stick with me the most are those when a helicopter was involved. Now, to many, skiing out of a helicopter is what makes them giddy, but for me it was the helicopter. I knew I wanted to fly them when we landed at the top of a pristine face with nothing but untracked powder below, and I was more interested in staying in the helicopter to fly back down then I was about skiing. I never did stay in for the ride back down, because I knew the skiing was going to be good, but as we unloaded, I always took pictures of the aircraft coming and going. My infatuation was obvious, so this past summer I got back on the school train and started flight school in Slat Lake City, Utah.
Therefore, I apologize for the lapse in my communication and blog activity, but come to find out Flight School is very difficult and time consuming. I have spent the summer learning how to defy gravity and stay alive in the process, but as the snow starts to fall I am starting to grow an itch for winter yet again. However, as I spent time on the couch last winter after getting hurt, doing everything I could not to laugh, cough, or move in the wrong way so my ribs would not grind against each other inside my chest, I watched many of the newest ski movies for the previous season. While I watched kid after kid perform trick after trick that I could not fathom, I came to the conclusion that the new generation was taking over. It was clear they had learned everything my generation could teach them, and put a spin on it and made it “nasty.” I realized that the sport had changed and the new generation had taken skiing to a new level. While I sat on the couch observing greatness from the confines of my recovery, I came to the realization that my body was frail and not as resilient as it once was. When I was in high school I could spend the day at the park crashing and jumping, maybe more crashing then anything else, but I was able to get up and do it again the next day. Everyone always told me, “take care of my body because one day you are going to regret it.”
I was young and thought nothing could stop me. However, now, many years later and a few surgeries, many broken bones, a few concussions, and a major trauma to my pancreas, and another to my chest I feel older then I should. Despite the aches, pains, and anxiety of getting hurt again however, I am yet again excited about skiing as the snow starts to fall eager to do it all again this winter.
Skiing creates an allure that no other activity can recreate. Some of the coolest old men I know are skiers for life and despite knee replacements, back issues, and a myriad of health concerns, they still get excited for ski season each fall. Its hard to explain, but the people involved in the sport live for what they do. From the early season snow makers, to the lunch lady, to the ski patrol, and all the people working to create better products that make skiing more fun; there is a community created by the combination of snow and gravity. It is clear that I have caught the skiing bug, so when I am not up in a helicopter trying to defy gravity and learning how to fly, I will be out frolicking in the snow and learning my next move in the symbiotic dance with gravity we call skiing. The winter is long and there is a lot of adventures ahead.
Let it snow and I’ll be talking to you soon.
Muah!
Saving Grace
Max Mancini’s long road back from unthinkable tragedy
By Devon O’Neil, ESPN Action Sports
Two years after the tragic car accident that killed his girlfriend, Max Mancini is beginning to find peace.
The good dreams are more painful than the bad ones. Because every time Max Mancini dreams something good — like Molly being OK — he is inevitably reminded that, in fact, Molly’s gone. “I wake up and have to relive the whole thing over again,” Mancini says.
Mancini, 27, an accomplished Colorado freeskier, bears a four-inch scar on the right side of his head from the car accident. It also left him with a crushed skull, broken ribs and lingering neurological problems that occasionally cause him to trail off in mid-conversation. But Mancini is coping with these things.
Reconciling his mind is another matter. Because on the afternoon of Sept. 30, 2007, Max Mancini survived when Molly Jackson — then six months pregnant and the love of Mancini’s life — did not. In the two years since that day Mancini has undergone countless hours of therapy, trying to, as he explains it, “relearn who I am.”
“I’m starting to feel more of a rhythm,” he says. And it’s true; medically speaking, Mancini’s progress has been extraordinary. The Crested Butte local is back to ripping on skis — he stars in the 60th anniversary Warren Miller film premiering this fall — and he is happy, mostly. His sense of humor has returned. The piercing migraines that at times confine him to a dark, quiet room are easier to predict and treat.
But Mancini carries deep feelings of guilt. And he is haunted by a mystery he’ll never solve: He doesn’t know what caused him to drift into oncoming traffic that day on a curvy stretch of two-lane highway, U.S. Highway 285, outside the small town of Fairplay, Colo. He recalls neither clipping the SUV nor getting T-boned by the pickup.
What he remembers is this: waking up in a hospital, incapacitated by pain in his head, frantically fearing for Molly; she had been riding in the passenger seat when the pickup smashed into her side of the car. Mancini was unable to speak, owing to a breathing tube in his mouth. He remembers motioning the nurse for pen and paper. He scribbled one word.
Molly?
“It doesn’t look good,” the nurse replied.
He wrote another word. Alive?
The nurse shook her head. “She didn’t make it.” Then he learned their unborn son had died, too.
Throughout his career as a professional skier, one word has followed Max Mancini: grace. And it’s meant to communicate his particular way of getting down a mountain on telemark gear, which free up skiers’ heels for knee-dipping turns and backcountry mobility. Think cross-country skis on steroids.
“Even in the hairiest situations, Max has got this incredible, graceful glide,” says Chris Patterson, a videographer who has worked with Mancini on five Warren Miller films. “It doesn’t even look like he’s trying.”
It was in Crested Butte, the Colorado ski town most easily mistaken for a commune, that Max’s life both on and off telemark skis began. He grew up in a log cabin and frequently rode to school in the bucket of the family’s front-end loader. And while many of his friends nurtured their talents on traditional alpine ski equipment or snowboards, Mancini followed the lead of his telemarking dad, a ski bum in his own right who moved to town in 1974 with his high school sweetheart. At age 9, Max stuffed newspaper in his mother’s leather tele boots and began to learn the art of the freeheel turn on 197cm straight skis.
“It was just a really, really cool feeling,” he says. “You’re lower in the snow and the turn is so much more graceful.”
With a local laboratory of the most extreme terrain in America, Mancini mastered the discipline quickly. At 19, he scored a sponsorship with Rossignol, and he went on to win national championships in both racing and freestyle. He also fashioned himself as a backcountry savant, learning to read avalanche terrain like a mountain jedi. He remains one of the only freeheel-tribe members who shreds terrain parks as fluidly as Alaskan faces.
“Max is the kind of guy who will just go for it,” says three-time Winter X Games medalist Peter Olenick. “If he sees something that he thinks is remotely possible, he’ll make it happen.
“Even if everyone else is like, ‘You’re crazy, Max.’”
For all his talent, Mancini always wanted more out of life than just skiing. He met Molly Jackson, then 23, a snowboarder and pianist from Dallas, at a Warren Miller film showing in 2006. She had a smile that glowed and a voice like a pop singer. And she was funny. As funny as Mancini — which, for a guy who once adopted a wild squirrel, named it Dog, and passed time in college watching TV with it, is saying something.
They moved in together in Crested Butte. It was the first step, as they saw it, toward forever.
On the day of the accident, Mancini and Jackson were driving home to Crested Butte after a doctor’s appointment in Denver; it was a routine 6-month prenatal checkup for Jackson. Mancini’s parents were out of town at the time. When a police officer reached them, he instructed them to call St. Anthony’s Hospital.
“Ask for the chaplain,” the officer said.
The crash had fractured Mancini’s skull in a spiderweb pattern. (Jackson, 24, died at the scene of the accident.) Doctors performed surgery to remove a pair of clots in Mancini’s brain and eventually installed a two-inch titanium plate to stabilize the right side of his cranium above his ear.
“They arranged everything like it was a broken egg,” Mancini says. “They put it all on a plate, fit all the pieces back together, then they put it back into my head.”
As bad as the physical damage was, the emotional trauma was worse. Don and Marilynn Mancini, Max’s parents, feared he might take his own life. So they took steps to protect their son from himself.
“But the bottom line was, Max, he wanted to go on,” Don Mancini says.
There was also the issue of criminal charges stemming from the accident. Mancini could have faced seven years in prison had prosecutors pursued a charge of vehicular manslaughter. But instead he was convicted of careless driving resulting in death, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 30 hours of community service. (Letters to the presiding judge from supporters, including the Jacksons, and the refusal by the crash’s other victims to press charges after learning Mancini was sober at the time of the accident also helped his case.)
“[Skiing is] the only thing that’s going to get me through this.”
– Max Mancini
Two months after the crash, on Nov. 22 — his 26th birthday — Mancini was allowed to return to Crested Butte. Knowing their patient well, doctors issued him a parting caution: Don’t ski for four months. If he hit his head, they warned, he could die.
Mancini kept skiing. He couldn’t help himself; it was the one sliver of normalcy he could cling to. “It’s the only thing that’s going to get me through this,” Mancini told a friend.
He stuck to groomed runs initially, but he often skied from the first chair of the day until the last. During one stretch he skied 25 days in a row. Only when grief overwhelmed him did he take a day off.
Gradually, Mancini began courting more risk, starting with small cliffs at the resort. He flew to Alaska in April and skied, without incident, the big-mountain faces of the Chugach Range. By the end of the season, he’d put out an impressive film segment — without ever really crashing.
But Max Mancini still wasn’t whole. Ever since he was little, he’d found his greatest peace in making other people smile. Little things: Like rubber-banding the sink sprayer open, or closing the curtains in his college apartment and putting on mellow music so his roommate would sleep through class.
So generous is Mancini with gear from his sponsors that local kids in Crested Butte have a saying: “I’m sponsored by Max Mancini!” It comes with a smile wide enough to rupture an eardrum.
This time around, it was Mancini that needed a spark. “It was the first time I’ve seen him sad in the 10 years I’ve known him,” said Brooks Baldwin, a high school friend and professional kayaker.
Mancini came up with an idea that gave him purpose. He called it Life Turns: a program to provide kids — orphans, cancer patients and paraplegics, among others — who didn’t grow up with the advantages he had with a week of winter heaven.
He worked on the logistics for months before he noticed the problem: They didn’t have nearly enough money. Enter Molly Jackson’s parents, Sharon and Pete Jackson, who donated the majority of the cost.
So this past March seven kids attended the first session of Life Turns, which is now a registered nonprofit. Mancini, who enlisted everyone he could (his sister, old ski buddies, Molly’s parents, Molly’s best friend) as counselors, pretty much wore a smile the whole week. And the kids bawled when it came time for them to go home.
“It’s just the most impossible feeling,” Mancini says, “to see some of these kids who’ve been in hospitals their entire lives, who will have to get their legs broken the month after the camp so they’re the same size again, kids who’ve been through 20-something surgeries — watching them achieve their goals, like skiing their first black diamond, and seeing the look on their faces.”
Mid-thought, Mancini trails off.
“It’s honestly more of a healing process for me than it is for any of the kids in the camp.”
We asked Mancini for a photograph of himself and Molly together for this article. He obliged eventually, e-mailing a single photograph. He also offered some insight:
“I have attached a photo that I am comfortable with. It is difficult for me to put up photos of us together because I don’t want to offend anyone who may not be far enough along in the healing/grieving process. This photo is not much but it means a lot to me. It is of Molly and I and we are sitting on a snowmobile on Vail Pass. I don’t know if this one will work as there is not much to see. I have searched for others that would work better but I haven’t come across any that I feel comfortable sending. Let me know what you think,” he wrote.
You could argue that Mancini’s ski career hasn’t suffered since the car crash. He’s back on the Warren Miller big screen, Rossignol is debuting a Max Mancini Pro Model ski (Mancini is donating his proceeds to Children’s Hospital in Denver) and after his second season back on the slopes, observers say he is skiing better than before he had titanium in his head.
“If he sees something that he thinks is remotely possible, he’ll make it happen,” says three-time X Games medalist Peter Olenick of Mancini.
Ever-reflective when discussing his ordeal, Mancini makes it a point not to cloak his emotions. He recently decided to return to therapy and says his foremost daily challenge remains forgiving himself.
“I’m still working through that. I mean, I know it was an accident; there’s no question it was an accident. But I was still the one behind the wheel,” he says.
“I think about Molly. I just think about the interactions we had and how much Molly loved me. I know she would never blame me for it. I’m positive about that. And her family, if they don’t hold this against me, then how can I hold this against me? That’s what gets me out of the darkness of blaming myself.”
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, with the Jacksons in Texas and the Mancinis in Colorado, each family suffered apart. Then one mother, Sharon Jackson, sent a candle to another mother, Marilynn Mancini.
With it came a message titled “Grace”:
“How you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. And so it is with life, which for many of us becomes one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. In the end, it all comes down to one word. Grace. It’s how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light.”
Where will the bar be raised? Can it be raised much higher? How much bigger can you go without the use of fossil fuels?
If you have not had a chance to check out any of the seasons ski films, then prepare to have your mind blown away. The sport has yet again been taken to a place that only pubescent kids with Mom and Dad’s health insurance would dream of taking it. While it is incredible to watch, where is the reward? I am reluctant to ask a leader of the progression such as Tanner Hall, who in pursuit of his career broke both his legs this past spring how he feels about it. However, I also ask myself, where is the attrition rate and how do we make room for new legends in a sport where the legends themselves are not ready to step off the pedestal or mythical podium of glory? Therefore, the kids of tomorrow are risking everything to fall in the shadows of heros not ready to take a seat.
In my career I have been shadowed by many, and for good reason, but I felt there was a gap in the generations of progression. With the heros of yesterday remaining strong, but not enough change to create change, guys like Glen Plake, Seth Morrison, JP Auclair, as well as others have been leading this sport in their respective positions for years now. Glen went from zero to hero in the days of skiing’s greatness and as a result earned himself the self appointed title of “Spokesman of the Ski Industry” to which I see no better fit. Seth, well, he is just Seth and incredible at what he has been doing year after year while progressing the art of Big Mountain skiing; yet even “The Seth” he has hit a wall of innovation that generationally would be imprudent for him to compete with. PJ Auclair has been an innovator from the start, by inventing new tricks, new ways of skiing, and setting the bar high in every aspect of the sport that he participated while remaining strong and still innovating years longer then the others of his generation like JF Cusson, Vinnie Dorion, Mike Douglas and Shane Szocs, who along with JP collectively comprised the “New Canadian Air Force.” However, while the others have fallen into their perspective industry positions, be it announcing for events, a professional golf career, or company representative; JP has comfortably found his spot in the industry by inventing new ski designs and staying involved in other ways through companies and film while perceptibly knowing when to keep has ass on the preverbal bus while the younger kids play.
Needless to say the sport is constantly changing and this year more then the past I saw it go to a point that I have come to the conclusion that I am a spectator of greatness. It is obvious that the use of gymnastics and growing up skiing perfectly manicured parks is to this generations advantage if that is the kind of skiing you are trying to perfect. Stars of the past have had to invent their style from a background in racing or freestyle, which I can exclaim from experience is a difficult transition and almost impossible to break certain habits. Personally I used to hit the half pipe in my GS suit and slalom skis on my way to training because it was new back then. Now, there are schools you can go to that focus on just that. I remember the first twin-tip skis I had and how innovative they were. I remember the Pocket Rocket and how unprecedented it was as a “fat” ski at 90mm at the waste. Today the sport has taken a new direction as kids are growing up watching a different sport and learning from the start what the heros of today have taken a lifetime to create.
MSP’s “Ski Movie I,” and “Global Storming” or Greg Stump’s “Blizzard of AAHHH’s” were the flicks I tried to emulate as a kid, but now the impression kids are getting is on a completely different level and the progression is sure to continue. With facilities like the Woodward center in Copper and other similar air sense training facilities pooping up all over the country, the progression is sure to be mind blowing as well. At the same time I just hope the kids are doing it for the same reasons as the mentors of the past. Skiing is a sport and a game at the same time. It is a sport for the athletic prowess it requires, but it is a game, because it can not be take too seriously if approached with the wrong attitude. If you are lucky enough to be on skis there is nothing serious about it.
Have fun and let it snow.
If you have been stuck inside the past few days and have not noticed the temperature change, the early setting sun, and the long casting shadows then I have some news for you. The weather has changed and the snow is falling. The preverbal storm has come and there are people already skiing in Colorado. Others are panicking about the eminence of winter, or the idea of cold, but there is a place you can prepare for winter called backcountry.com. A web page ergonomically designed for you to easily and comfortably locate all the gear you need, and maybe some you don’t need but really want. Backcountry.com is a short step away from heaven for gear geeks and is also the place you need to remember when you walk out the door and think “gosh, I need some gloves,” or “I really need to get a new jacket this year.”
Fall. Autumn. What ever you call it, it’s close. The air is thick, the winds are shifting, and there are gaggles of geese fleeing despairingly from the north. Well, here we go again with another winter and who knows what kind of adventures but as the days are still hot we must enjoy the last days of summer before its too late. The sad yet euphoric reality is that the days are getting shorter, and the snow will fall soon. As the the nights get cooler and you know fall is coming when you wake up in the morning slightly chilled and have to grab the blankets tight or spoon a little closer to get the last bit of warm sleep.
In my opinion this is the best time of year as I find a particular energy created by the anticipation for the inevitably unknow. My eagerness to enjoy the last days of heat motivates me to do things I have been putting off all summer, while the anticipation for winter creates an ora that carries me and motivates me to not only enjoy the last few weeks of warm weather but also to get my lazy ass back into shape before the snow falls too. This summer more then any I have changed my focus in life and taken on some new challenges that I thought would pull my focus away from the coming snow, but as trailers and ski magazines start popping up, my insides are yearning for gravity like a nymphomaniac recently released from the penitentiary. The anticipation for fall has winter enthusiasts eager and on edge for what is to come. However, before its too late, enjoy the brown, because it will be a white christmas after all.
No too much longer.
Follow the link, by clicking on the banner below, shop, and save.
Well, where do I start? The summer came upon me rather quickly this year, and has hit me in the reality face hard. After getting hurt this season and missing a few months of the skiable winter, I feel like the season passed me by before I was able to find a groove and really accomplish anything I set out to do. When I was healthy at the beginning of the season I was plagued by issues ranging from weather, conditions, family obligations, work issues, and just plain life challenges. However, I am not different the any other person, so I had to take the battles as they came and keep my nose to the wind.
So, to make a long story short, the summer came and I had to make some decisions. Now that it is towards the end of the summer I am realizing how badly I have neglected the sweetness of tysonbolduc.com. Rather inane I know, but in the midst of the hectic winter and having to take life as it came at me, I decided to start something new this summer. Therefore, instead of using gravity as a counterpart to my activities, as I have my whole life, I am now studying to tame it and harness it. Back in May I started flight school and have been learning how to fly helicopters for the last few months. It has been a feat far more difficult then I anticipated, in every stretch of the imagination, but I am loving every time consuming minute. The process has been interesting as finding a school, learning the process to get in the FAA’s program, taking class, learning the whole new language of flight and radio jabber, and most of all learning how to play with gravity and not die have all been a full time job. It has been an exciting few months, but given the difficulties I have been faced with I apologize for my lack of posting and knowledge tossing here on the page.
However, keep in touch as the fall will be filled with product reviews and preparations for the winter and I hope to do my part. Deals from backcountry.com will be posted directly on this page so stay tuned. Otherwise, enjoy the last few weeks of summer and keep your eyes to the sky, because I could be flying over you.
~Tyson
RSN Interview Series:
The ESPN affiliate, Resort Sports Network, has recently launched a new interview series where they will be interviewing sport personalities, ski industry icons, show hosts, etc.. The questions/answers are quick, but open to interpretation. Click the link to see how my answers or responses tickle you fancy. Tyson’s RSN Interview
On a recent trip out to the wild-wild-mid-west, I had the opportunity to take in a spectacle know as the Indy 500. I hesitate to call this a sporting event, as the term sport to me would have to exhibit direct human functionality or individual effort. However, am not trying to say there is no athletic ability involved with driving a car at that level, but I just fail to see the benefit in spending millions of dollars and wasting precious resources while polluting the earth on many levels just to drive around in circles. But,,, that may just be the hippie in me.
However, having attended the event, with approximately 300,000 of my closest friends, it was quite the experience to say the least. Just imagine the largest amount of people you have ever seen, all hammered, with a mean education of around the ninth grade all watching toys go around in circles. Additionally, not only are these toys really really expensive and fast, but the people with mullets and handle bar mustaches live solely for this day. The combination not only creates the most tense energy alcoholic brethren-hood, but it is nothing short of spectacular.
The people watching was comparable to standing in front of a Sam’s Club on black Friday, however the vibes were slightly more exhilarating and intoxicated. As a guy who grew up in Vail Colorado, I felt right at home in the white sea of un-diversity, but I felt safe because everyone was flabbergasted or elated. Aside from the one ignorant group who thought it was okay to run off with our cooler of beer, and when I say run I mean take it fifty yards away and drink out of it; the event was rather innocuous. We frolicked around the infield of the massive track, socially/binge drinking out of the coolers we carried with us, interacting with the crowed of pandemonium. We saw every Dale, Joe, and Sally, and all their cousins, who had come out of the wood-work to experience the event they had clearly been planning since last year. People set up camp for days before the race. RV’s for miles surrounded the track and people had come prepared with everything you could imagine from grills, to bathtubs, to personal lit up stages for nightly entertainment. To make things more interesting this is all taking place in a state that promotes the use of fireworks. There was explosions all over the place going off every few minutes and loud enough to send veterans into flashbacks. Enough to scare you if you were not paying attention, but scarier knowing the people lighting them had been drinking for days too.
None-the-les, like any event there is a high and a low. Winning or loosing in this event is no matter, in fact I bet half the people walking out of that place couldn’t have told you who won, but the experience and energy that is shared created a unique camaraderie. For me a one-time thing, but forever something I can say I have done. Plus, having never watched the whole race before, I now know that the race is really only 200 laps, not 500.
PARK CITY, UTAH (May 2009) — HuckNroll.com, an online shopping experience dedicated to dirt riders and the “take-your-personal-best-and-shove-it-up-your-ass, meat-hucking, scab-picking habit known as mountain biking.” (As stated by Jonny Atencio from Backcountry.com) HuckNroll.com is an online mountain bike shop operated by backcountry.com. In other words, the web page is your ticket to bike gear and anything that has to do with the bike industry.
Therefore, everything you have experienced from shopping online at backcountry.com, you will find at HuckNroll.com as well. The crew from Backcountry will be stocking more than 6,000 products from 130 high-end bike-specific brands. With gear stalked from top bike manufactures such as Shimano, Race Face, Truvativ, Avid, Easton, and Gravity; apparel and accessories from POC, Fox Racing, Troy Lee Designs, Sombrio, Dakine, Endura, and Zoic; and complete bikes from Santa Cruz, Intense, Titus, Look, and Rocky Mountain.
“HucknRoll.com is staffed by mountain bike people, and as you all know bike people are a unique group. Therefore, as you have experienced at the bike shops from the guys who talk down to you you will find that here too, but only because they are highly trained and knowledgeable people. Only USA Cycling race-certified bike mechanics will touch your bikes, and only fully trained customer service “gearheads” will take your calls and answer your live chats. Our goal is to provide, hands down, the best customer lovin’ in the industry.”
HucknRoll is also an online community with gear reviews, Q&A’s, and images submitted by the users on the site. Therefore the experience will be full of reviews from people who have purchased the products you are looking to buy. From the trail to your fingertips before your purchase, honest and disease free.
When the crew at Backcountry.com realized skiers, climbers, and mountaineers don’t know anything specific about biking, they created HuckNroll.com. So log on and check it out and take the sweepstakes challenge (@ HuckNroll.com/sweepstakes) to see what you can win and see what you need for the upcoming season.
There are a few of us out there that are panicking for reasons other then Swine Flu. A risible situation that if you click the link below you will see that it is NOT the first time it has been considered a “pandemic” in the US given that this video is from the 1970’s.
However, to some of us, the snow melting is more of a tragedy or a concern then the media driven scare tactics of a flu that is only effecting 109 people out of 6 billion. (I think the odds are in our favor on this one people.) However, for those of us who depend on snow for our sense of direction (i.e. Down), the snow melting and the seasons changing means its time to figure out how to carry ones-self into the next winter. Where do I work, where will I go, and how will I do what I did this year again, but better? While the rest of the country is in panic, I am looking back on a season and trying to parlay my experiences into the future. I find there is always a slight panic among my friends in and around the ski industry this time of year as people are forced to change everything they know and choose a different direction to carry their soles through the summer. While I must say the summer is my favorite time of year for a few reasons I am still driven by the winter months for many other and more passionate reasons. There is just something about skiing the carries the sole and drives the heart to make sometimes irrational decisions in order to maintain the feeling of frolicking with gravity. However, one things is for sure and we can all look back on this ski season as a success. Although we lost friends and legends alike, the feeling of skiing is never lost but only harnessed in a different and more respectable manner. There is nothing quite like falling, wether its down a mountain or in love. Something inside us drives the desire to keep falling, but in the process push our limits on the way. So what ever path you are falling on, remember that the snow will fall again and the experiences of today will only make us want more in the future. Therefore, live your life despite the worry of a flue only effecting .00000003% of the population. You’ll be okay, because the snow will fall again and all your worries will be alleviated.
Swine Flu PSA
