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| Winter Break 2003 |
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12/18/03:
So, as I type this I'm at the airport waiting for my fucking airplane. I'm tired and moderately pissed. A wonderful way to start the vacation. Let me explain...
Alllll yesterday was spent attempting to study for the two exams I had to take today. However, for some reason or another, my ability to absorb information completely failed around 5pm. And when you wake up at 1pm, that's not a good sign. So, basically I got nothing productive done until about 5am this morning, when, after sleeping for like 3 hours, I awoke to being trying to study, yet again. The sleep must've done some good, though, because the shit I was looking at began to stick a little bit instead of flowing in one eyeball and out the other. Anyway, so I studied until I left for the first exam at 9am. That one, architectural history, went ok. Then, after that wonderful experience came the organic exam. Fuck me in the goat ass, I didn't know shit for shit. I think I got like a 65. However, I soon came to the realization that, "What-thefuck-ever, I'm going snowboarding, so fuck school, fuck Florida, and fuck exams." After that I felt much better. Now I faced a new problem: I had been up since 5am and I had to drive for two hours to the fucking Jacksonville fucking airport. Greeeeeaaaaatt. See, the only time I've ever REALLLLLLY fucked up a car was when I fell asleep while driving like 70 MPH on the highway. I'd been mountain boarding all day and just passed out. So, THAT sucked my balls, as you may imagine. Ever since then, I'm very hesitant to drive, especially for long distances, when I'm really tired. I made it, though barely, with the help of a lot of Zone bars and a two liter of Diet Dr. Pepper. Yes, I drink diet sodas...go fuck yourself.
So, I get to the airport and the lady won't let me fucking check my bags and get on the flight. Apparently 20 minutes isn't enough time to get my fucking bags on board! I could walk them my goddamn SELF to the plane in 20 minutes! Bitch. So, now I'm here, waiting for my plane for like two fucking hours. CUNTS!!!!
Oh yeah, if you haven't figured it out yet, that's what I look like after being up for WAYYYY too fucking long, taking two ass-reaming exams in one horrid day, and missing a fucking flight. I need a girl, a beer, and a bed. And I don't even like beer. Fuck.
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12/19/03:
5am: Why in the hell am I up at 5am? Sleeping for three hours, two days in a row, sucks. But you know what DOESN'T SUCK?! GOING TO VAIL, COLORADO, YOU UNLUCKY SONS OF BITCHES!!! You are unlucky because you aren't on a plane flying to Denver. Aaahahahaaa...I win again. We left out of Dulles, and as you can see, it was pretty fucking packed.
However, the lines and whatnot went smoothly and we made the flight...yayer. I'm flying at 39000 ft. as I'm typing this, eating an "excellent egg, cheese and chive wrap" (where the hell are my chives?!!), and we have 1286 miles to go...ugh. However, I did steal myself a nice pair of headphones to replace those I'd been using for the laptop. Headphones that only work in one ear can be very disorienting. These are much better. Thanks, United, you money-guzzling mega-corporation. I feel like I'm doing my part to break your greedy, capitalist back.
2:30pm (Mountain Standard Time from now on): Ahhhhhh, just arrived in Vail. The plane ride was an interesting one, though. At one point, I was reading a book and began to feel kind of sick. I thought this was a bit weird, since I don't really get air or carsick. So, I put the book down, but I started to feel worse. My mom asked if I felt nauseous and I said "no," but soon reconsidered and said, "yes". So, she went off to get me some water and a wet towel or something. However, by this time, my vision had started to white over, as if I were about to pass out, my hearing had 90% stopped working, and I pretty much couldn't move or speak. I decided that this might not be a good situation. The problem, though, was that I was, for whatever reason, too weak to explain what was happening, so I just sort of slumped into the chair and tried not to pass out or puke. I thought at one point about the predicament of having a medical emergency at 39,000 ft., but then I started to wig out a bit, so I stopped considering that idea. Then, as I tried to breathe evenly and whatnot, I realized that I couldn't even think straight, like I couldn't put together coherent thoughts. Hmmmm...not good. Then, The Mother came back with the towel and some water and put it on my head. After about six or eight minutes, my vision and hearing started to come back very slowly and I didn't feel so sick. By the time I felt ok enough to explain what had just happened, I was so exhausted that I promptly fell asleep hardcore. I dunno. Obviously, most of these symptoms were caused by my blood pressure suddenly dropping REALLLLLLY low, but what caused the drop is unknown. Hopefully, this won't cause me problems out on the hill.
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On the other hand, the drive out was nice. Driving from Denver to Vail is always nice because as you approach the mountain range at the edge of the valley in which Denver lies, the landforms around you change in a steady progression. First, there are the foothills that get bigger and bigger until you get to the edge of the real mountains you see in the picture to the right. Then, as your elevation rises, you are encompassed by high rock walls and steep forested mountain-sides. There wasn't a lot of snow on the ground this year for a good ways up into the mountains, but after we passed Vail Pass, the highest point driven between Denver and Vail, the snow increased markedly. You could tell by the way the snow was shaped that it had been sitting for a few days without being covered over by a new batch. However, the depth of the snow on the sides of the roads was heartening.
Finally, we got into Vail proper. The hill is always a nice sight to see. It's like coming home after having been gone for a looooong time. The snow looked pretty good and there weren't too many people out at that moment, so that's a good sign. I'm gonna go out for an hour at 3pm to get a bit of my legs back and see if my body is gonna shit out on me again, like on the plane. We'll see how it goes. By the way, we're staying at the Apollo Park Lodge, the best damn lodge in Vail. Cheap, comfortable, and right by the hill. Here's the view from the balcony up towards the mountain, and here's the view down to the stream that runs by the back of the lodge.
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7:04pm: Damn, that was good. Snow was good, temperature was a balmy 35 degrees F at the bottom and probably about 25 at the top. Blood pressure stayed nicely stable and my oxygen debt wasn't too bad, it seemed. Got a couple good runs down before the hill closed. Took a few pictures off the number 6 chair lift, the best way to get onto the mountain out of Golden Peak, the section of Vail in which we stay. At one point, the lift goes over a ridge and down into a valley, which you can see to the right. Here's a shot of one of the trails running down into the valley. If you get down into the valley, the only way to get out is on a long ass, flat-as-fuck catwalk (a trail that has little slope and traverses the mountain) that sucks balls on a snowboard. Anyway, a good day, but I'm rather exhausted. We went to check out the lighting of the public menorah in Vail Village, as tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Christmas sucks. Hanukkah represent, foo.
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12/20/03:
8am: So, today we were scheduled to meet up with our old skiing friends, the Roths. They live a bit out of Denver. Their family is eerily similar to my Mom and I. Not really the rest of the Bent clan, but us two in particular, so we get along well. Jill, the mother, called my phone at 8 or so and told us they were already here. They said they were coming around 10:30 or so, but Princess (a.k.a Jamie), pictured to the right, made them leave the house at 6am to get to Vail ASAP. Herb, the dad, also came, which was cool, since he will prevent me from being engulfed in a sea of estrogenic fury.
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4:30pm: We finally got out on the hill, a bit late because Herb had to get his boot adjusted, but still in good time. We made our way to Mid Vail and attempted to meet a friend of Jill's, but that didn't pan out. The view from Mid Vail out to the front side of the mountain is pretty hotness. That's what you're looking at here. The back bowls were open, which was cool, so we went over to the back side. For those of you who are unaware, Vail is famous for its immense series of back bowls that run across the back of the mountain. They're reallllly nice, especially when there's a lot of fresh snow. We dropped down into Game Creek Bowl and headed to chair 17. This is what Game Creek Bowl looks like from the bottom, and this is what it looks like as you're heading back up on the chair lift to the mountain top. My edges are dull as hell, so I'm gonna try and get the board tuned tonight. Might take a lesson tomorrow. Hopefully the clouds that were over us most of the day will drop some snow tonight. That would be VERY nice. Oh yeah, and my Mom got some nice altitude sickness going today and, after puking off a chair lift, went back to the lodge around 1pm. That was fun.
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12/21/03:
8:30am: Yeah, so I felt like shit today. Woke up with a headache and it stayed all day. Ugh. Also, talked on the phone realllllly fucking late last night and basically just felt wrecked today. Didn't take any pictures on the hill due to me feeling like poop. Here's what Vail Village center looks like in the morning. We had to hang out there for a while while the Roths got their equipment picked up and boots fixed.
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6:26pm: We went out shopping today after getting in from the hill. Still felt like shit, except now I was exhausted shit. I got a sweet ass hat. It rocks out. This, however, is not my new hat. This is a super-awesome helmet cover I found. I am apparently inside a fish mouth here. Here I am as a cute bunny, and here I am as a princess or something. I don't fucking know. All I know is that I'm awesome.
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12/22/03:
10:20am: Got the board tuned last night. The backside edge was fucking ROUND by yesterday afternoon. It suuuuucked. However, here you see the majesty of the freshly tuned Burton Dragon 158. It is an amazing piece of equipment. It reminds me of myself, actually. Ask it very nicely to do what you need, and it will do far better than any board I've ever ridden. Try and force it to do something, you're gonna get it. I love it. We work together very well.
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11:00am: Jamie, shown here being retarded (the beast's natural state in the wild), had a real dilemma this morning. She ripped a hangnail and took some cuticle off. Oooooooh, poor baby. I offered to stanch the bleeding by sucking on it, but apparently that's "gross". Who knew?
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11:30am: It snowed last night about four inches in most spots on the mountain. The trees got some cover, as you can see here. These pines are the ones to the right when going up chair four, I believe. It runs from Mid Vail up to the mountain top. It snowed throughout the day. Here is a shot off of chair 17 out into the back bowls. you can see the haze of the snow storm in the distance. It's quite amazing to be able to observe whole weather patterns from such a distance, unobstructed. One more reason I love the mountains. Finally, I want to introduce you to one of the more famous trees in the valley, the Aspen. They're all over the area, and when it snows, they're an amazing sight.
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9:15pm: The Roths left today. That sucks. We went to a bar/restaurant place called Pepi's, in Vail Village, after getting off the hill. They have live music and it kicks ass. After we got back to the lodge and I'd taken a nap, I ate something and went out to the hot tub, as is my habit at night here in Vail. I'm not really a fan of towels and whatnot, so I go to and from the hot tub just in my suit. Therfore, when I come back to the apartment after being super-heated for an hour, I'm steaming like a pot of boiling water. It looks like I'm evaporating. It looks even weirder in person. But you can get an idea of what it looks like here.
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12/23/03:
12:30pm: Today was an interesting day. First off, I was informed that they don't have lessons for my level right now. Then, Mom tried to get a lesson, but they fucked something up, so she said whatever to that until tomorrow and went around with me for most of the day. Here was the view out the window from inside Two Elk Lodge on top of the mountain during lunch. You can see the sky today was almost perfectly clear today. It was awesome. Here is another view of the sky. The shot is too dark, but there's a strange color that the sky gets here on realllllly clear days. It's the most intense, true blue I've ever seen. It's almost hard to look at because it's so perfectly smooth. It's quite weird.
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7:35pm: Oh yeah, for those of you not following as well as you should, tonight was the fifth night of Hanukkah. Representing Hanukkah stylee, biaaaatchezzzzz!!!
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12/24/03:
10:30pm: Hoooodayhoo, biatchezzz. A few cool things today. Began solidifying my boardslides AND landed a frontside 540!!! AAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!! I WIN AGAIN!!!!! That was awesome. However, the run through the park after the 5, I clipped my back edge taking off on a switch backside 360 and found myself flying backwards through the air with my feet to the sky. Then I landed. Fuck me, that hurt. My left hip hurts like a bitch. I dunno how that's gonna go tomorrow...:>P But anyway, I LANDED A FRONTSIDE 540!!!!! Now, where's my ice cream and ibuprofen...fuck. Oh.....there it is.
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12/25/03:
9:00am: Got an early start this morning. Decided today was the day to abandon the scraped-off, barren slopes of the front side in favor of the hidden, secret stashes of powder known only to those who are true masters of their environments. Oh yes. I started out in a Blue Sky Basin, a relatively new expansion area of Vail mountain. If you're willing to go where other people aren't, you get the good shit. I got some nice first tracks through some deep ass powder in the woods back there, as you can see. However, getting to the untouched stuff wasn't the easier thing ever. The trees were so tight sometimes that their branches actually interlaced. I had to go through them with my hands in front of my face and my head tucked so my ass didn't get cut up...yayer, baby.
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12:30pm: After lunch, I headed over to a place called BFE, in the back bowls. I have a clearing there I go to once in a while and just sort of sit in the snow and think. It's sooooo quiet there, not to mention the few feet of snow that's perpetually on the ground. You can see a part of the clearing in the picture to the right. On the lift up from the lower half of BFE, there are a couple of interesting sights. First of all, there's the ever-present bra tree. You may also notice thongs and marti gras beads on the tree, but whatever. Who's looking? Also, there are some amazing aspens on both sides of the lift as you go up. Check it, foo.
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12/27/03:
3:41pm: Ahhhh, got home at about 1:00am this morning. Got to ride from about 9am to noon on the 26th. That was fun. There was some good snow out, and they'd groomed a run called Northstar. It has a huge roller-type drop off at one point, and if you go off at around 3/4 speed, you fly for probably about 40 or 50 feet, so it's cool. The wind was crazy at the top of the mountain, too. As we were leaving the mountain, it started to snow harder and harder. From the time we left the hill to the time we got on the road to leave Vail, it had snowed probably an inch or two. It was awesome...except for the fact that we were going. That sucked. Anyway, it was a good time in Colorado....until March...hehhehheh.
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