Hot-Springin Spring…

At one point in time Mammoth was our home away from home. Even if you didn’t live in Mammoth, you spent at least three months a year there; a month of early season, a month of spring borderline summer shred and smattering of camps and contests throughout the winter. Eventually, the scene shifted from Mammoth to Summit County and pretty soon Mammoth was a once a year trip, if at all. So, when I went up to Mammoth last weekend for a few days of fun with the US Team after a two-year hiatus, it felt like a big ol’ trip down memory lane. I rode some slush, tomahawked over some frozen wind pockets, saw the weather change from sun to storm in a matter of gusts and journeyed out to the hot springs with the crew.El and Hannah walking out.

We spent a lot of time in those hot springs back in the day, cold winter nights traipsing though snow and sagebrush just to soak under the stars with a few beers and of course one or two random naked dudes (I swear there’s always one) and long spring evenings watching the sun set over the Sierras. It’s darn pretty out there.Hot Creek is a little too hot to handle these days…but pretty all the same.

Even though we’ve been to the tubs a million times it’s always a scavenger hunt. You know they’re out there but just can’t quite remember which dusty single lane dirt road you took to get there, or which cattle gate you turned left or was it right after and when you finally remembered the spot, you roll up to a tub packed with people.“Got room for 6 more and a dog…”

This time was no different, we and apparently everyone else from LA up for the weekend decided it was a lovely night for tubing. We spent 2 hours rallying from tub to tub looking for enough space for 6 people and a dog….not exactly the kind of crew you want rolling up on your good time anyway, but ya know, we figured we could annoy them out it. After lots of “awh eff it” talks we went back to the original spot, watched as 15 dudes sifted out and in a empty perfectly hot hot-spring we soaked as the sun set, relished in the goodness of life and of course rolled in the mud.
Gretchen and Ellery…homespun sulfur facials, rotten egg scent and all.So yeah, get out there and get your soak on next time you make it to Mammoth.

 

xo t

 

Hot tub photo stolen from @themegamo

Vacation-ish

Vacations are kind of a novel concept when every trip is kinda like one…part work, part play, part always kinda connected just incase. But when you make plans to travel some place awesome just to laze around with your man and your friends, I guess it’s officially a vacation. No real plans, stopping for roadside hikes, eating tasty eats and just enjoying the nothingness in a day with old friends, ya know, vacationing…sounds pretty good, right? Y’all should take one too…

unless, of course, you’re little E…then your life is a perfect little farm vacation filled with swings and wild critters and whole days spent running amok in your pajamas. Seeeeee….real vacation, nerdy group shots and everything.

get after it…

xoxo t

Late Season Aspen

Sometimes you forget just how much fun riding pow is….sometimes, like when it’s April 10th and you can see bare spots on the mountain and the buds are budding and that little nagging voice in your head is mentally check-listing everything you need to do for another spring cleaning.

And then it starts snowing… usually you get a few annoying neither here nor there flakes to make it look all sparkly and wintery again but nothing major. But last week in Aspen, it hammered feet upon feet of snow, day after day, turning our muddy April into full on winter over night. Since half of the town had already migrated to warmer adventures a tight local posse of appreciative peeps got the goods in Highlands’ Bowl. And it was freaking good…untracked empty laps on wide open pow fields and deep snow in perfectly spaced trees all day for days in a row kind of good.

Tess did this.Megan did that.and Gretchen and I did these….after a million bowl laps, of course.So, thank you mother nature and Aspen HIghlands’ for staying open these extra weekends!

And thanks to these guys for keeping it safe out there…

Because if you’re out of bounds it’ss all sorts of sketchy right now…Biggest slide I’ve ever seen…all the way around and to the dirt on Maroon Bowl. I’m sure there are technical terms and stuff but…dang.

 

xoxo t

Seven Springs of Icy Hell

I love me some east coast shred but holy hell, these Pennsylvania Poconos people are next level. I’m out here in Seven Springs (home of Kristi Leskinen) for the Burton US Open qualifiers/Rev Tour and damn, is it icy. I know, I know…I cut my teeth on the boiler-plate wilds of Vermont and have a very intimate understanding of the varying degrees of blue ice but I’m starting to wonder if Colorado hasn’t made me soft.

Mother nature’s warriors caked in ice…

Last night, we rolled up here in the pouring rain and all consuming fog and watched happy shredders battle the elements for some east coast goodness. This morning, in classic east coast contest fashion, those soggy sixty-degree temps dropped down to the low teens and mother nature flurried the worlds smallest layer of snow on top of the slick-as-hell ice. And like any good resort, when the temperatures drop the guns go back on to replace what was lost in the rain creating the perfect version of “hell freezing over”.the mountain’s open til 10…diehards, I tell ya.

So, when I finally rallied out of the matrix of a hotel this afternoon, I thought I’d be prepared. Heck, I pride myself on my ability to ride some crappy ass stuff and still have fun, and it was fun. Riding up the lift, checking out a new scene and marveling at the peeps dressed in Steelers Starter jackets lacking any form of eye protection. Did I mention these people are hardcore? No goggles, I repeat, no goggles…no gas station sunglasses or anything, just skiing under the world’s fiercest snow guns blasting shards of glass like “snow” into your eyeballs…NBD. I could barely chisel two icy eye holes in my pink iridium flat light lenses before being completely coated by the next gun. snowgun spackel 

Jaded? Maybe, but I took two damn runs up there (albeit one was spent skitching over frozen dirt, cheese gratering my ass and squealing like a school girl) but I did it, and I promise not to complain about “icy” conditions in Colorado or anywhere west of the Mississippi ever again.

Kudos to the PA peeps and good luck to all the competitors…

xoxo t

Home for the holidays

I know, I know. Resolutions have been made and broken, Christmas trees have been left for dead and the Valentine’s day is already taunting its heart shaped boxes in the faces of single people everywhere…but hey, I went home for the holidays. Or well, kind of. For the last seven or so years I’ve spent Christmas and New Year’s with my surrogate family of Gorog-Bleiler-Hotells doing all things wintery. And by wintery, I mean sledding, shredding, skinning, hiking and caroling (yes, caroling, as in, singing out loud to unsuspecting strangers). All of this, of course, with copious amounts of holiday treats, maple cayenne bacon and sips of Stranahans mixed in….welcome to the wild west.

Ellery came for some sledding and new year’s bliss. #stayhydrated

Scoping sled lines in Snowmass.

Kota and Chris doubling down.

Note-to-self, Gretchen and others who think “naw naw, I’m not gonna go sledding”: Put on the damn snow pants and mittens and hat and winter boots because no one goes out to “watch” a sledding mission and even if you are dressed in jeans and slip-ons and some sorry excuse for winter gloves you will damn well go sledding and proceed to freeze you effing ass off so, do yourself a favor and bundle up. See above photo for what not to wear.

Pow slashes too…

Bells from the bowl. I swear this never gets old.

Dogs, dogs, dogs.

lights out holiday style.

So yeah, there were powder filled days, cold Aspen nights, lots and lots of dogs and fun and friends and new year’s cheer.

happy new-ish year to y’all.

xo t

Side note…my amazing, sassy, equally crazy biological family is sprinkled around the east coast and unlike Santa I can’t seem to get to all their houses in one night. So, you know…we all gather round for turkeys and thanks during the other holidays and I beg them to move to Aspen.

Austin City Limits

Music festivals sound like such bad ideas. Yes, generally, it’s a bunch of epic bands that you’d die to see all congregated in one location with the chance to discover new favorites along the way. But still, most outdoor music festivals translate to crowds full of hot, drunk, sweaty, muddy people you can’t believe share the same taste in music as you do. Leather short shorts in 90 degree Texas heat…that’s rock n roll from Tennis.

But when your new bestie offers you all access passes to Austin City Limits you’d be a fool to turn em down, drunken, hot, muddy mess and all.Matt from Delta Spirit climbing up the crow’s nest. 

Now, truth be told, I’ve never been to a legit music festival so all those aforementioned prejudices were just mere speculation, combined with summers on the Zumiez Couch Tour and winters navigating crowded super security showdowns like X-Games and Dew Tours. But, Austin City Limits, was surprisingly chill. Yes, we had epic treatment, food and drinks and golf carts shuttling us from stage to stage but often as not we would sit out in the field and listen to the bands with the other bajillion people in a non-hot-drunken-mess way. And I spend another minute deep in the heart of Texas I’m in danger of buying cowboy boots and short shorts, that state is kinda growing on me.Alabama Shakes kick ass. Period. The end.

But really, Austin is about the music and not one of the 20 or so bands we saw was even slightly disappointing. Old favorites like Andrew Bird, Weezer and The Avett Brothers rocked like you’d expect and new favorites like Delta Spirit, Caveman, Bombay Bicycle club and Alabama Shakes blew my mind too. And yeah, we got muddy and hot and danced with drunk people but I guess those parts of music festivals aren’t so bad after all.Caveman…singers playing floor toms are all the rage these days and I’m kinda backing it.delta spirit…I went from never hearing them to three shows in one day. #fullthrottle sopping wet, muddy and super stoked on ACL with Alyssa and Allison.

xo t

Improv

playing pretend…

For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to take improv classes. But living in a small mountain town it wasn’t really a reality. So, in this autumn of new adventures, I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is or was or however that saying goes and take one.

I signed up for a 101 class at BATS here in San Francisco. Sweet, awesome, cool….until all of a sudden it’s the first day of class and I’m filled with a massive bout of first-day-of-school panic a la “what the eff am I doing, I’m the shy kid with a lisp who hates being put on the spot” and so on until I eventually dragged my-nerdy-ass-self to class. As adults, we rarely put ourselves out there in that uncomfortable, “hi, hey, I’m new to this” situation. We avoid experiences where failure is eminent and try to limit our exposure to floundering in front of others. Enter improv. It’s all about failing, saying stupid shit that you didn’t mean to say and subjecting yourself to suffering the awkwardness of flailing, floundering and fucking up big time in front of total strangers. But, it’s kind of liberating to publicly suck at something…because ulitmately, you realize, that it doesn’t matter and then you succeed because failing isn’t as bad as you thought or some yoda, Tony Robbins shit like that. Om.

Anyway, improv is my new favorite hobby. I’m not aiming to be some theater kid or land my big break on SNL but it’s cheaper than therapy and you laugh a hell of a lot more. Every class is a random mix of kid’s-birthday-party-esque games ( freeze tag, charades, word games and silliness minus pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey) and group therapy (standing in a circle discussing “Now, what did we learn from that exercise? And how did that make us feel?….go ahead Johnny we’re all listening”.  Wait, I’m not doing it justice. But three hours of playing like a kid and laughing out loud (none of this LOL shit but real old fashion laughter) at yourself and others is kind of awesome and who doesn’t need more of that in their lives?

xo t

PS. When you move to a big bad city filled with crazy-ass-up-in-your-shit-mother-effers it’s nice to know there are some strangers worth knowing.

PPS. sorry for swearing.