Off to the Shop

Today, I begrudgingly dropped off my car at the body shop to get the remaining work completed on it. I'll be without my car for at least three days and at most five days. During this time, I'll have to depend on the local bus system, which I'm never a big fan of no matter the town, my roommate, Sean, my mountain bike or my own two feet to get around town. It's not the end of the world; I'm just not looking forward to it.

It's funny how quickly my perspective has changed about transportation, as a car owner. While living in San Francisco for just shy of four years, I didn't own a car and literally rode my bike everywhere when the weather cooperated with me. I viewed cars as a luxury, not a necessity. (Actually, I saw them as a hassle, especially when trying to park it in the heavily populated Mission District.) Now that I own one, I feel kind of lost without it.

Thankfully, the skiing conditions have been amazing! It was sunny for most of the day too, which doesn't happen as often as I'd like. Today, I skiied with Sean and a few of our new friends. Because of the conditions, we felt a little bit more adventurous today. (Note: Click the photo to the right to see huge rocks snowed in and an old Tram tower. Plus, pay attention to the great contrast in colors. I love this photo.)

The highlight of my day was going big, i.e. trying to ski something difficult, right under a chairlift. I find it the most rewarding when you do something skillful under a chairlift because you have an attentive crowd that will gladly share their opinion with you. You'll either win them over or be the laugh of their day.

In this particular moment, I chose to catch a good amount of speed before I launched myself off of a 15-foot rock. I knew that the landing would be very soft with 1-2 feet of fresh snow, so I had no problem with taking this approach. After hitting the lip of the jump, it felt like I flew through the air for a couple of seconds, which was probably a half a second in reality. Unfortunately, I got in the back seat during the air, which forced me to weight the tails of my skis and lose my balance. On touch down, I took a nasty tumble that consisted of at least one cartwheel. In the photo below, my friend, Bill, is going off the same rock.


Even though it didn't work out as planned, it was all worth it. Whether it's at work or play, you really learn alot about yourself when you put everything on the line and are calculated. Graciously, the chairlift crowd gave me props (aka their support) for trying to pull off this ambitious cliff drop.