Crankworx Madness at Winter Park!

Kurt and I spent the weekend at Winter Park Resort watching the downhill mountain biking championships. One word. Awesome.

We drove over on Saturday night, got to spend a lovely evening with some friends, (bliss!) slept in (double bliss!), had breakfast on the deck and then, after a little Thai Massage all around, headed over to Winter Park.

I've never been there, and I was excited to go for a few reasons. First, my very first skiing mentor, Mike Hickey and his wife, Bonnie, are from Winter Park, so I was excited to get a first hand look at their old stomping ground. Also, Bob Barnes (the other one) is the director there, and he's just about as fun as they make em, so I was hoping to get to say hi.

Barney wasn't around on Sunday, so Kurt and I headed up the hill to watch the madness. Winter Park is amazing, they did a great job making it homey and fun. I couldn't BELIEVE how crowded it was, they definitely have their summer fun dialed.

There was mini golf and mini zip lines for the little kids, an awesome alpine slide, lots of tables, chairs and umbrellas and food stands all around so you could get a beverage easily and still watch your kids play.

People were pedaling around in their full armor on their gnarly full suspension bikes, and it was EVERYONE, not just the competitors. I saw kids as young as 7 all decked out with huge grins on their faces, I saw moms, I saw whole families. I had NO idea the sport of Down Hill Mountain Biking was so accessible!

My experience on a mountain bike thus far had been sketchy, scary and painful. (but fun). I had kind of come to the conclusion a year or so ago that I'd better buy a road bike and learn to love to suffer, because I was getting too old to fall off my bike. And when I did fall off my bike, it was scary and ridiculously painful. The consequences just seemed too high. I wished I had the talent to ride, but it just seemed like I should have learned when I was 18, not 35.

Enter purpose-built trails, bikes with huge squishy full suspension, full body armor, and a little bit of technique and instruction. Almost ANYONE can do it. Kurt had a family the other day in his lesson that had like 10 people in it. The youngest was 9. The oldest was 74!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. (because I want to tell you about what it feeeellls like to ride like this... but that's the next day. hold on to your britches. here we go.)

SO we hike up the trail and wander off under this huge bridge to watch the best guys in the nation get after it.

 While we were there, we ran into Chris Conrad (the guy with the chainsaw) and the Tater Patch crew. These guys had hiked up and brought shovels and huge nails to bang on them, cow bells, the chain saw, and they were creating a huge and AWESOME ruckus as the riders came ripping through the wood and launched off this huge rock before making a hard turn to the right.

The speeds these guys ride at and the amount of air they got were truly inspiring, and Kurt and I left feeling really REALLY psyched to ride the next day!

Stay tuned for more DH Mountain biking insanity... (and thanks for your patience, its high season here in Aspen, so we are all working our tails off. I finally folded my laundry and I can find my bed again... ahhh!!)

What are you doing with your summer?

My plan is to spend it frolicking! (Okay, probably not.)

Sorry for the formatting issue, I've re-posted this one several times, but for some reason it won't make space between the paragraphs...

 Okay, so the next question is: what are you going to do with your summer?  I started thinking about it and working on it in plenty of time, but I did kind of put all my eggs in one basket. I didn't want to apply for a job at another ski school and then have to turn someone down.

When I didn't get the job in Portillo, I was sad. I struggled a lot with what it meant. I'm not sure why I didn't get hired. I do respect the decision, of course, and I'm so excited for my friend Andrew and Cindy who will be there teaching this summer. I'd love to be with them, but I'm just as stoked for them as I would be to go with.

The repercussions of what it meant not to get the job hung around me a little longer than I expected. I struggled with what it meant, I worried about what it would mean in my future.

I resigned myself to ski locally and head to Portillo to train in August, and then, my back country partner got hurt. Yeah, there's lots of people to ski with, but this is the person I trust who is free to go get some quick training laps in and who doesn't mind if I'm slow. (Well, I'm sure he minds, but he tolerates it fairly well.)

So I started looking at working overseas again. But I have this wishy-washy feeling about it, and no time to feel that way. I looked at several of the schools and while I'd love to work for many of them, my goal for being on snow this summer was to get great training in, and I want to do a good job for whatever ski school I work for. I know that there are some situations that would challenge my ability to keep my morale high and work hard, and so I have chosen not to take the offer at that ski school, which I'm pretty sure I will regret.

And I may or may not have been pining for some time with my boys. In the sun. In the summer. What was I thinking, endless winter? Yeah, LOTS of people do it. But four months without Ethan and Bodhi and flip flops? Without a trip to the beach anywhere in there? Could I handle it? What if I committed to it and then I was really sad, and the boys were really sad, and...

I think I felt safe with the idea of Portillo because its small, a little tiny isolated community, and I like that idea. I like the idea of being somewhere insular and working hard and training hard. I don't know, I've been thinking about it so much that I had prepared myself for it. When I started thinking about what it would be like to live in Queenstown, I got scared, worried, unsure.

But that's my job, right? I need to get my butt on snow and get to work! Regardless of being scared. Geeze, Kate, for real?

So then I started thinking, what if there's another way to do this? I talked with my good friends who have really been lovely mentors for me, and we talked about other options... traveling just to train, if I can save the money. Or traveling with clients and staying to train. I have three clients who are interested in skiing with me in the South this year, and two more maybes, and the possibility of coaching for a camp. So should I do that?

Should I stay here and head south with those clients? What if they don't materialize? Then will I forfeit my training this summer?

Is all this hemming and hawing keeping me from having a job of ANY kind?

A few days ago, I made a DECISION. And then I got an email and had to rethink that decision. Its all so mutable.

I think because of that, and the injury of my friend, and the fact that I'm broke again, and we are moving out of the Ponds, this beautiful apartment that we can't afford, and back into the tiny cookhouse again, and and and...

The result is that I'm sad, frustrated, and not eating well. I went on a MASSIVE sugar binge (well, not massive like it used to be, I'm still off the Red Bull), but I went the opposite way I was heading. I had a hugely productive, positive three days and then I hit bottom for about three. And I've been climbing out ever since. I did manage, in the midst of all that, to take two long walks, play on the slack line, get some work done and book a bunch of massage, so it could be worse. I know things have shifted to some extent because even though I was feeling rock bottom, I was still productive and still able to make some positive choice.

My point is, it happens. While it was happening, I was watching, and I knew I had some control, but not the kind of control I wanted to have. (This is the subject of another blog post, called Fly Wheel, coming soon!).

And so, using those Flywheel techniques, which are still active, even when things are hard, I slowly started turning things around.

I knocked out another three projects that needed doing that I've been meaning to get done for two years again tonight, I'm getting closer to finishing up other lingering obligations and writing assignments from this year so that I can climb out of this hole and be living in the NOW.

I guess that when you live in a tiny boat, its easy to swamp it, and my financial boat is tiny, tippy and funky. Sometimes, I float along side it because its upside down. But its growing, and I'm getting faster at righting it.

The thing that keeps me sane in all of this is knowing that starting new, with nothing, in a new place takes time. I am kind of looking at myself like a business, it takes three years to break even. Last year, I had to borrow money from my mom. This year, I didn't.

This year, I have more ski clients and more massage clients, next year will be even better if I keep working hard and doing a good job for my clients. I know I can do it. I know I can. Meanwhile, I'm lucky to have picked up some cleaning work, so back to scrubbing floors we go, but hey, its a paycheck while everything else gets sorted out.