January

Well the month of January began with a bang. New Years was spent at the Tahoe state line party (borders of California and Nevada). It’s a massive street party in between 2 of the big casinos. It draws a crowd of around 25 to 30 thousand people. It was a big night that saw me walking in the door as some of my housemates were getting up for work at 6 bells in the morning. The rest of the day was a right off, but I did not have to work after doing the Christmas day shift.

The next two weeks were to be the busiest of the year as it was the holiday period, so work was flat out and it was hard to get some good riding done. But we where blessed with the third biggest storm in the history of Lake Tahoe. In a 3 or 4 day period we received 2.7m of snow. This was the first time I had got to ride real powder and it made for some of the greatest riding I may ever have. Thankfully my shoulder was on the mend (after my stack on xmas day). I was in need of all the strength I could get to climb, crawl or dig my way out of powder above my waist. As it was the holiday period the weekends were packed on the highways, so like good Aussies we would head to the pub, get a few tables and drink until the last bus left. During the storm the resort closed early as the highway was going to close early. As we headed out of the resort and onto the highway, 2 cars became trapped in an avalanche and it took almost 2 hours for them to be removed from the roads. After this they thought it would be best to perform avalanche control, which meant it took a further 3 hours until we could get home. So to kill time we walked up and down the road talking to randoms and playing in the 10 feet walls of snow on the side of the roads.

As my confidence in my riding started to improve, as did my ambitions to go faster and bigger, which of course resulted me re injuring my shoulder after falling heavily from a rail. So once again I was on restricted duties, but thankfully the snow was starting to deteriorate. After mending slowly I had a cracking night at the staff super hero party, where I came in a close second to the Brazilian boy dressed as ghost busters. The South American supporters were a bit more vocal than the Aussies. My outfit was of the up and coming super hero. SUPER BEE, the costume began from a $5 t-shirt that I found at K-Mart and it turned into a master piece of costume designing.

From this night I decided it was time to set myself a challenge to heal my shoulder, body, mind and spirit by not heading out for the week until Australia day. My commitment paid off with only have 2 beers in the week I was ripe and ready to fire at our hottest 100 house party (Australia day eve over here). Our house that is cosy with 7 of us here, some how fitted possibly 100 or so people. No major damage apart from the police being required to break up the party and a long clean up. Come Australia day the housemates and I where battling, some of them required to work. But for the lucky four of us that have out bossed on side, it was time to hit up the mountain Aussie style. Can in hand, wearing my Geelong footy jumper and shorts with my Aussie flag as a cape, me and the other well dressed Aussies rode the slopes in style and drank at all the bars. After the others had finished for the day, the pub put on a few slabs of coopers, packets of tim tams, scotch fingers, smarties and licorice. Catching the last bus as we usually do on a Saturday the aussies sang and chanted our way home for a change of clothes and prepare for the night at a bar on the other side of the stateline, which was hosting an Australia day party. To get to this party became a bit of a mission as we started to get kicked off for singing Roxanne and having a few drinks. We were fortunate to hail a cab which took us to Sam's bar. But who would have thought there were 2 Sam's bars in a 2 mile radius. So after a long walk we finally made it and deserved our drinks. But unfortunately the coopers was sold out, but they still have bundy on hard. Not my favorite weapon of choice, but it was the Australian thing to do. The bar also had meat pies, that more resembled a pastie with mince meat in it, but it did not stop us going for seconds. For some strange reason they also had pictures posted on the walls of Australia's greatest exports in Steve Irwin and Heath Ledger. After a sunny and fun aussie day the clouds started to roll in.

This gave us some much needed powder and thankfully I had the Monday off and with and a few mates enjoyed untouched runs for 3 hours and riding thru the tree in the afternoon was great. Also on the Wednesday morning after a couple of hours of work I was able to once again get fresh tracks for 3 hours with the ipod pumping and the sun shining. It really made every bit of coming over here and missing an aussie xmas, new year and summer worth while.

So now that January has come and gone, it is time to start to do some travelling to other mountains locally and interstate, before half of the Seirra resort heads home for uni. I have already had one amazing day at Heavenly and had heaps of different runs to ride, but the resort seems a lot more commercial than Sierra and I am enjoying my time there a lot more than I would at Heavenly. Also I am going to have to start hunting down some house mates to fill the void of the 5 house mates heading off at the end of February.

---

---