I just got back to Whistler from my trip to Calgary. I'll put up some pictures to here for you to check out before I bore you with my stories. So my internet isn't allowing me to post the pictures right now so you're either going to have to bear with me for the stories or you can always just scroll down the the bottom. Here's a funny conversation I had with one a couple guys working at the ticket office:
I hand the guy my Canada West Pass (which works for lift tickets at all resort in BC and Alberta), he takes it and asks "Are you from Alberta or BC?"
I say "I'm from the Northwest Territories."
"Is that in Alberta or BC?"
"Neither, it's the No
rthwest Territories."
"OK, which state is that in?"
I look at the guy dumbfounded. "Uh..."
"Oh, it is a state?"
"Yah basically, you're not from Canada are you?"
Turns out he was from Australia. Fair enough that he didn't know where it is I guess but come on... state? I thought that was pretty funny.
Kyle cooking up a breakfast of champions for us!
Now to the trip... it was pretty sweet. The first day we were there it was dumping snow. In typical Calgary fashion the next day was a sunny +10. Our first day we spend riding in the late afternoon and night to see what it would be like riding under the lights. It took a while to get used to riding a 22 foot tall halfpipe again. For those of you that don't know, Calgary has one of the biggest halfpipe walls in the world. So the first night was mainly spent getting comfortable riding really, really fast towards these monster walls.
The huge pipe
Day 2 was the official training day and the day before the contest. It was cool to see riders from all over Canada shredding the tube. I tried to get into my contest run but was having some trouble with my backside spins so at the end of the day I decided to change up my run. This meant that I would have hardly any time to practice the run I was planning on doing in the contest but the up side was that I had done that run in contests before.
There were 2 pipe contests back to back and they both went pretty well. I wasn't worried about how I ended up because I was just using these contests as training. I landed my run both days and I was happy with that. I ended up finishing in the middle of the pack both days. I'm working on backside spins as well as some other tricks so that I can compete with the top guys in Canada by Nationals. Joe and Kyle taking vid and pics
The slopestyle contest on Sunday was fun to do. I made the finals and it ended up being really tight with the time we had to leave to catch our flight. I literally did my last run, went to the car and left. We couldn't stay for the rest of the contest, let alone awards or dinner. So I'm not even sure how I did. I know I didn't come in the top 3 because I fell on my last run and on my first run I did a backside 3 where I wanted to do a 5. It was a good experience though and something to build on.
I'll be back to Calgary for the Burton Open at the start of February, I'm excited to see what that's like.
Now if only I could get those pictures to work...
Andrew
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