Motivation

I just had a moderately deep conversation with one of my best friends; we'll call him Tom Jones. Anyhow, we just finished playing some of the lamest pick up basketball I've been involved with for a long time. There were a couple of kids there who are a lot younger and faster than us and they were douching out on levels difficult for human comprehension. They weren't even playing ball. Just grab-assing up and down the court like inbred cousins or something. That's kind of besides the point, but a little bit relevant as it led to Tom expressing that he should quit playing basketball. Now, I know this statement from Tom was 70% joking, but there was a look from Mr Jones I hadn't seen before. He really didn't want to be on the court at that moment.

That is a terrible yet magical place to be.

Where you realize you used to have something special that is now slipping away, and unless you make a change, you're gonna lose it completely. This is terrible because it sucks realizing that you, at one point in time, were invincible. The magic is when you use that gut-dropping feeling of shame, remorse, embarrassment or whatever the bad feeling is, to fuel your fire for change.

Tom Jones... I implore you; use the douches to motivate a change. Every time you want to do something that isn't going to propel you closer to where/what you want to be, remember the moment you experienced at basketball tonight. Use it to better yourself.

I've had several Tom Jones moments in my lifetime; some I wasted, some I took advantage of and leveraged change from them.

So I guess the moral of the story is: haters gonna hate... or something.

Since it's a snowboarding blog...

Why I Love Snowboarding

Almost 5 months since the last post... guess that's the nature of a snowboard blog. Anyhow, no fancy title for this one; I'm just going to explain why (at least I think why) I have so much passion for snowboarding. This post blew up into some sort of journal entry/weird blog-therapy session for me... ha ha. So now, real quickly I will explain why I love snowboarding; and over the next few weeks I will post the background on the experiences that granted me such passion for it.

Snowboarding is one of the first things that I stuck with. It didn't come naturally to me. I had to truly work my ass of to even learn how to link turns. I didn't get into it from watching 'Subjekt Haakonsen', or any other one of those films that premier each fall. I never really learned to skateboard. Maybe that means I'm not "core" or whatever, but I guarantee I have more fun on the mountain than a lot of those "core" riders. It was the first time I had started something that was outside of my comfort zone and followed it through to the point of I-don't-suck-at-it-anymore. The bruises, sweat, tears and frustration I poured into teaching myself have made me cherish every cliff drop, pow slash and park sesh I have the joy of experiencing. People call me crazy for going back the the sport that put me in the hospital for three days... they don't understand. As long as I can stand up, I'll be shredding.