Chapter eight: Searching for ignition

When I left you last I was Colorado bound and heading to my season opening races. Since then I have successfully made it to Colorado…which really wasn’t that tough and, I have kicked off the year with two slaloms…these on the other hand could not have been tougher. Well I guess they could have been more of a challenge technically, but it would have had to involve wrestling a bear or something. I could go on for ages and complain about how hard life is, but let’s get real here, racing isn’t all daisies and I knew that going in. So now I am turning my focus to turns that are a little bigger and looking to find the spark I need to ignite my season.

   

So, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of separate paragraphs; it’s not exactly my style. I like keeping it as one run on thought, or at least a jumble of ideas all in a row. Today however I’ve broken up the blog into two sections, the reason being that I didn’t finish it last night and with another day under my belt it wouldn’t be right to leave it out. Anyways, I’m still here and still battling as best I can but it was one of those days where things didn’t come together. Of course this is not the result I am looking for and not exactly what I like blogging about, but it can’t always be good times…no matter how much I want it to be. The summary of my day was good turns followed by bad tactics, and then sending it riiiiiight out of the course. Usually I am the first person to drop f-bombs and break a pole or twenty but I was kind of just sad more the choked so I didn’t make a scene. Then when I got back to the hotel I took it all out on a small bit of wood by throwing it into the ground as hard as I could… yeah I know, very mature. Sometimes it’s the little things though that make the day a tiny bit better. Tomorrow I get another chance to put the pedal down and I think it’s about time I do it.

Great form, great bell bottoms, welcome to Colorado

Cold and stormy, perfect.

Ghetto #nuffsaid

Sponsor shot, but damn they look good.

I always seem to be driving into the sunset.

Thanks for following my progression through the year, i'll post some more ski related photos next time, probably mostly of me, but hey its my blog so I can do that.

I want to throw huge props to my brother for making his World Cup debut and charging hard. Very proud of him.

until next time,

Morgan

Chapter seven: Stepping into the freezer

I have now journeyed from fireside at Nakiska over to…well fireside at Panorama. It turns out that I like to blog somewhere warm and comfortable, who knew. But based on the title of this chapter it clearly hasn’t been all warm fuzzy times, it’s been classic freezing Pano… Yes, I am being a tad over dramatic, its not thaaat bad but I thought it deserved to be noted. Moving on, I am still making my final preparations for racing and today I had a session of battle against slalom. It actually inspired me to write this chapter, that and I have photos piled up the yang that need to be seen or they will be outdated fast. So let me get this off my chest, battle resumed early this morning and I say resumed because this has been going on since I strapped on those little sticks way back when. It was a beat down. All I want is a healthy relationship with Slalom, something loving, but right now it’s not even making eye contact. Tomorrow I will be strapping on the armor and getting back at it, because what Slalom doesn’t know is that I never gave up on it, and I’m going to grind this one out until I get a victory. Assuming I survive tomorrow the countdown will continue, it’s now at five more days of training before I test my metal down in Colorado. 

Start the day off right, 24 egg omelet and bacon strips...and bacon strips...and

No, you're right, the stairs would have been way less fun

Checking out the hill

New Snow? NEW SNOW!

The boys at the bottom of our Super-G

My battle ground was eery today.

Good night Panorama, you done good.

I hope you are enjoying my story so far, the next chapter will be written states side and with the races in mind.

Morgan

Chapter six: Tune ups and an engine check

Today I am writing you from lovely Nakiska, Alberta. Well actually to be more precise I am writing you from a cozy fireside arm chair in the Delta, which just so happens to be located in Nakiska. Now that that’s cleared up let me get on with it. So far training has been great, it’s felt awesome getting back up to speed and having some wind in my face again. This camp… or maybe it’s easier to just say this month is dedicated to the final tune up before its time to race. Honing of skills, improving technique, taming any bad habits that still remain, anyway you want to put it, that’s what’s going on right up to race day. And to be honest it doesn’t stop when the bibs go on, but let’s leave it there because getting into that is a whole other thing completely. Along with being tune up time it’s also when I turn the key, fire up the engines and start to put the pedal to the floor. Even though I’m working to charge every run I personally think it will take until race day to hit top speed and really see how much I can push before the bolts start to come loose. Anyways, please do me a solid and forgive the analogies. From this point forward the future is still unknown and I’ll just have to wait for it to play out, but what I do know is that I’m excited to race and starting to feel ready. 

Alpineglow doing its thing.

Where snow comes from...and yes the angle is like that because I was sneaking up to take this one

Lift ride #hipster

Thousand km/h winds.

A nightly meeting, this is where we discuss...really important things...

A cramped parking lot before we got to skiing.

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by.

Morgan

Chapter five: The between time

I am back home on the west coast at last, sleeping in my own bed, eating home cooked meals, and all that jazz that people say they miss while they are on the road. The coming weeks, give or take a day represent the last little break before the season starts and it’s all systems go. Now let’s be real here, at first when I got back I was all like “heck yes! Whistler, good times” and so on so forth. Then one morning it snowed, not much, just a bit of a tease really but it stuck with me and now all I’m thinking about is strapping the sticks back on and parking some arcs up on the mountain. Anyways just thinking about skiing doesn’t make the time pass by any faster so I’ve needed to kill the time between. But since this isn’t a blog about detailing my every activity each day I won’t get too far into it. The only thing out of the ordinary I got after this week was shooting guns, and it turns out that its exactly as much fun as you think it would be. On that note I have a couple videos for you below, two of the clips are training footage as this is a ski blog after all. I didn’t bother to put any techno beats or anything with them because I don’t think it actually makes them any better…and as far as I know it doesn’t make me look faster either. The other two are just things I’ve gotten up to. 

I apologize for the crappy quality of the videos, I couldn't get a hold of steve jobs to help me out, weird he isn't returning my calls... Too soon?.. Well yeah, thats all for now, thanks for stopping by. The next chapter will be written on location in merry Nakiska AB. 

Ciao 

Morgan