The Mongolia Chronicles

WE are burdened with an enormous responsibility........

Yes. You and I. Those that understand that our Forefathers - Jake, Christian, Tony (bony Cock - aka The Robot; Alva......so many others...Craig Kelly)........these folks - paved the way for our lives. We have an inherent need to HONOR their lives and their effort by carrying forth their lives in word and deed. We watched 'Rising Son' the Hosoi documentary last nite. Quinn and I watched a bunch of 'Let It Ride' the Craig Kelly documentary...I would be lying to say I wasn't moved and motivated. You see - that first shot is me on a golf course in Michigan in 1981 - with some 'bindings' that my brother and I made so we could jump higher and farther. This effort led to Telluride in the mid- 80's and a love affair with snowboarding that I will be passing to my son in the short term. And I will do so proudly. If you look in the background of that 2nd shot - the bench on my bowl is made of a 'Mystery Air' - which is Craig Kelly's forst board with Burton - but they couldn't out his name on it....due to contract shit with Tom Sims...so....there it is - my first board...now proudly residing over the MWB. Finally....a self portrait from today. 16 degrees...snow squalls....why bother...but I had business with the bowl after a great session at Eldo...our CHURCH for folks like CK and others. These people...their ideas - there VISION - run through me on a daily basis and if I don't do them justice...I feel shitty...I feel like I dropped the torch that they lit...and oh laws yes.....carrying that torch is a hella lot easier than lighting it. Thanks gents....we will move forward and try to honor you as we move through life...and carry that light and that spark forward.

28mm From Freedom

Freedom - from feeling like the OLD poser wanna be - skater. Something I fight in my mind and heart. But - I figure - if I am willing to learn this shit - and take the beating that learning this shit requires - one day - I may be able to actually consider myself a 'Skateboarder'. A title akin to royalty in my mind.
This is a clean - switch - backside 5-0 Pivot to fakie. It is a sketch trick - on a mini-ramp - or in a huge bowl. It's like laying your dong (sorry) across the freeway and hauling it back in right at the second that the enormous truck with spiked tires rolls by. there is significant - nay - massive - exposure. I have never actually seen it performed. I made it up. Maybe? Perhaps I can share it with T. Hawk when he comes to shesh the bowl this summer. I can ask him - then - if it is a trick - and if - I - am indeed - a skateboarder.

Can't. Capture. It. All.

Windy. Again. Mountain calling 15 - 30 with gusts. Pull up in lot. There's Joey. After our conversation last nite about basically going regardless....this is money. No wind and warm in the parking lot.
The Herminator suggest a rotation. they are opening Placer and IP lift line - let's head there. OK. Damn good call Fitness.
Bang that shit once from the lower entrance and once from the gate. Head for the back. Let's go west. That has worked for years.

For some reason - apparently crazy high winds in Boulder - no one is here. We rock the bird and the beast (chickennnnmmmmmoooooose) and it's empty, lovely and deep and rhythmic and - damn near tantric.
We SPOT Poleriders' tracks. Joey says he may as well have written his name in the snow - and Mike says - yeah - but then we wouldn't be sure which Ray it was. Geriatric Ripper - tell - tale pole drag at fifty-something....I still claim that he is the best all around rider on the hill. I am proud to have introduced him to the addiction that is snowboarding. I head to Filthy and go left...and there are two drops I have not done before...pull up - eyeball the Mo'Fo' sand launch. Roll some lines in lower - well - lower something - and it's all perfecto except for the 5 inch rip in my OR puff coat.

The run out on the FS trees is sweet - we flee the crowdss...and head for the Bananna belt...7 miles from the mountain - but a world away.

I am - well - wrecked from 2 hours of hard skating Thursday, a double ride yesterday and this am. Rally for skating and toe up and tickle the nards of a few things. I really want to "Bone Out' my feebles as the kids say - I think this counts:

So - boning feebles and trying 5-0 pivot variations........this was Q's nap time...then it was on to the Quinn Pull....the 3rd and 2nd to last event in today's epic:

Hauled the sled to Mike's....gnarly climb with the extra 50 pounds. At least my legs were fresh!@%&*!
Back down - and a prep for the snow coming Monday...getting Artful with the trench to the ramp....using the snow - in a Ju Jitsu-ish fashion to keep itself out of the trail to the ramp.
It's 5:33 - can I go to bed now?

"I don't think the heavy stuff is coming in for quite some time"

A longer period of time is needed to capture the essence of the journey this morning. Suffice to say - it was moderately epic to epic.

Dirty and Filthy

 

With this reading (-4) at the house, I was skeptical of the report from Eldo that it was 14 degrees. Headed up anyway - simply because that's what we do around here. Period. I was contemplating all sorts of creative ways to ask them for a reality check (mail them a thermometer or something snide like that) until I stepped out of the car into the lot and it was - truly balmy. Within moments of pulling up the car thermometer went from -4 to 21 above. Unreal. Eldo was popping out of the inversion like the Golden Gate bridge. There were NO people (the day after big footbal games is always quiet) and it was lovely. Rumor was that they were opening lower west ridge - which meant that MOOOOOOOSE was open - which meant that Snipe Acres* and especially Filthy Pillows* were now accessible without threat of pass lossage. On the chair on the way up I could hear bombs - which is always a great sign - means there is something to blow up - or down I guess would be the case. Did a cruiser towards the back and the rope was still up. Came back around IP and the upper gate for the shoe was open - so I rallied that - taking my time - warming up. After the eternal wait of the Corona chair the rope was still taught across the access to the back so I headed into Life of Bryan*, the way to the other run when it isn't open yet - found some great knee deep, and then simply crossed the 'other' run for my first hike into Dirty Pillows of the year. It was - dirty. A little creepy - huge windset slab up top with precipitous drops into dense trees. Since I haven't been in there since last April - it's always hard to remember things. Which little burnt tree to take a turn around, where the fun drops are - the details if you would. I banged right at the bottom through the area formerly known as Lewis and Karaus and popped out on the lower maintenence road with three feet of where I wanted to. Sweeeeeet. The far side now being open - I headed for the line through the pie wedge of love between this place and that - affectionately known as Filthy Pillows. A little early for Filthy - but I was optimistic. Angled my way in and stood and looked at this sequential rock drop - photos 3 and 4 above - that I usually don't do when I am alone. It's pretty creepy - three pillow drops with a big one at the end - no landing area (unless you are a small bird) and variable conditions of exposure. Popped a few turns and it felt good - so I let it run - and bombed the last drop into a slowing heelside turn and rode away with a grin. The mountain is OPEN - i.e. 'MY' spots on the mountain - and I can ride all day only using the runs as access points to years of research and hours of bliss and exploration. Long Live Eldora.

Hard To Beat

Today would be basically impossible to beat. Woke up at 5:30 because there was just some sense to the day - and a lack of WIND last night. Walked up the driveway in the dark to get the paper and it was still and warm (20) and that stillness was just intoxicating. Headed for the hill for the bell and rode up with Ed, our Head Patroller on the mountain for about the last 10 years. Ed was cool enough to radio up and see if Muleshoe was 'officially' open, and send me in that direction for an early nab. The 1,600 feet of windset and powder was a lovely start to the day. The snow was way better than I thought it would be. The mountain was closed yesterday due to WIND - so everything had a 36 hour period to re-set under 'wind - event' conditions. Rallied for the left side bumps of Corona - and I had one of those magical runs - ducking in and out of the bumps and the trees, where everything was perfect. Thanks to Ed I was 10 minutes ahead of anyone and the face was silent and very white and very lovely and I wove my board through many tight turns where on other days I would be clipping my tail, digging in the nose, any myriad of technical issues. But from the little huck up top - all the way to some burner carving on the lower face - it was an intimate and peaceful interaction with the mountain. A payback for two decades of freezing to death and ripping my clothes on trees.
I did manage to scalp Ray's line to the east of the tree in Sato.....it was phat and lovely. I also beat in the traverse to 5-0 - and I feel I could do it in the dark, in my sleep.

the day ended with a true Magnolia moment: watching my son get pissed that the day was ending, the sun was setting and we had to head home after a ski on the ridge. He ran away from me - and this I respect - as he didn't want to leave the environs of the top of the ridge - a sacred place - as the sun set. God give me the strength to survive the emotions that this guy is handing me daily. Watching him walk that trail was akin to the first moon walk to me. He's home - he knows it - he owns it in a moral and emotional sense. Soon - he will be walking away for real. I only have like a decade until that - and I plan on savoring every damn moment.

Pce out - and thanks for stopping by.

Frozen Boneless

"House money" as DV8 would call it. Temps in the minus 20's with windchill....we are entering another 'wind event' and it has people on edge. I am turning the battle for the path to the ramp into art - using the snow against itself to form an impenetrable natural snowfence. This is the theory at least. We'll see how it fares overnite. The mountain did not open today. Zero degrees and 30-50 with gusts - which in Eldora terms is pretty much a natural disaster. Getting to skate at all today was a HUGE bonus. Having a good session was just icing. Got a nice note from way up north on these bizarre photos I post of the bowl and the daily battle in my head that plays out on the ramp. Thank you, Jill. It's my feedback mechanism, and the way I measure progress out there. I have almost 5 years of notes from sessions. Tricks I never thought I would learn (see above - the day I really committed to these shenna came out and actually had to sit down because she was laughing SO hard at these slams I was taking. She said it looked 'horrible'); tricks I have never seen but do; and just the general state of the world as I feel and see it from the comfort of my little 'studio', my little sacred place out there. The thought of August - and waiting for the sun to go OFF the ramp to skate - is so funny. Today I hit it perfect - right about 11:15 - 1:15. With a temp of about 13 degrees, when the sun leaves, it's time to come in for analysis and Quinn wrestling. A co-worker asked the other day why all skateboarding mags have so many sequences. I shared that it's really hard to tell if someone is coming into a trick, out of a trick, etc. and the sequences lay the groundwork for an appreciation - usually - of the difficulty of the trick. Some of these are more obvious than others - like the FS Boneless - that LOOKS like something. The switch 5-0 pivot on the other hand looks like you are just standing on the coping. I guess - it's that simple - only coming into it backwards and learning that 5-0 balance switch - none of that shows. And that's ok. The committe in my heads likes the trick, the subleties and the complexity of the trick and the time I put into learning it - from simply feeling it out to actually committing - and now - it feels smooth and natural and relaxed. Such is the documented journey within the confines of the MWB - and every step of the journey is an honor. Even when I can't feel my face becasue it's 20 below. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr...but stoke knows no freezing temperature thankfully.

2 Hub Week

Riding croostown on Wednesday my geared biked suddenly went all fixed. Then - later that nite - I took a huge slider/slam on invisible black ice. This morning - after a nice cup at The Cup with an aspiring Frigid Friday Commuter (Thank you S) everything worked pretty well on the 1x across town. On the way home this afternoon my rear hub just started missing - and skipping. Nursed it across town and made it - but I think it's dying.Picked up the truck with the sicko new stereo Shenna got me for X-mas to facilitate booming tunes on the Baja. Rocked new tunes home....three day weekend with snow and single digits forecast. Bring what it may.....and may it be fine.

Winter Boosts

Not to be a sissy, but - when my hub froze this am - I needed to take some action along the lines of "Places that are warm that we can go to soon". So - we booked Mex for March and Panama for April. I like knowing they are out there. It's solace when the 4 degree ride this morning - is the WARMER ride of the day - as they are saying like 9 below tonight....Lights are charged...I have extra clothes here....don't have to come down tomorrow....actually looking forward to the sublimity of a freezing cold ride.

So - if anyone is hankering for a tropical vacation on a - quite literally - deserted island in Panama with a nice house, food and surfing. Lots of surfing. We have 10 folks committed and we need 2 - 4 more. Approximate cost is $1,300 with air travel, food, everything. It's a hella trip (see photo album on the side there about Panama). Drop me a line........all abilities welcome...or you can just come and stare at the water and drink bad beer that tastes pretty good when consumed in Panama!

The More Things Change

The more they stay the same. As the Audioslave live from Cuba was blaring out of these speakers, sandwiching the baby monitor - I was accosted by the fact that the ONLY choice we have in life is how we spend our time. Choose door A, or B. The net end of your life will be a sum of the places you chose to spend time. That's about it. So frighteningly simple.....