Flippin awesome!

Yesterday we had a leisurely morning then got in the vans and traveled from Oberjoch, Germany to Solden, Austria. It was a whiteout blizzard and due to the slick roads, the lack of street signs over here, and our lack of directions, it took an extra hour and a half to cover the last 3 miles.  A large part of that was the golf cart sized drive that leads 300 yards through a field to the hotel. We went from ditch to ditch shoveling and pushing alternately, as the van slid around in the 60 mph winds whipping the snow off the banks next to the road. Once we were settled in, had dinner, and were in warm dry clothes, we looked outside and all thought the same thing. “Lets build a booter on that hill over there and hit it in the dark!” It was pretty awesome! We built it where there was about 50 feet of landing zone before the hill flattened out, plenty of distance, and where the wind had blown in a lot of snow(It had to be 3 or 4 feet deep in spots.)  Tanner, the crazy kid on the D team, threw a double back flip and stomped it which inspired me to give it a whirl. (I’ve never gone inverted before on skis unless by accident, so I thought I would go for trying a single back flip and leave it there for the time being.) I was honestly pretty nervous standing at the top of the run-in looking down at the dark silhouette of the jump, framed by the parking lot lights illuminating the landing. But what does worrying about it do? So I went for it. The first three times weren’t that pretty, ill just say that. Got the wind knocked out of me a little bit, but other than that it was like landing in a foam pit. The fourth time was closer, and the fifth time I crushed it and was so pumped!  I have always wanted to do one, but hadn’t to this point found the right time and place. Who would have thought it would be Austria during a racing trip! Looking forward to more such excitement the next few days!