Going into the season I felt strong and really excited. I got 6th place in Ruka and was super happy with that start to the season and the excitement continued. While we were in Finland we were worried about the lack of snow all around the world. There was much less snow in Finland than there was last year and there was almost no snow in France. We were worried about the event in Meribel begin canceled. Thankfully it got cold enough and a big storm hit the mountains. The first day of training was canceled but we got some good training in. On the comp day it dumped on the course. It was really fun having soft snow there as opposed to last years ice.
Since the event at Meribel was late at night the lifts were closed and we had to take the bus back up to the hotel. Everyone that watched the event wanted to take the bus back up too. I had to wait a couple of buses and they were all super packed. I got jammed up against a seat and my arm was between my ski and the seat and my sirculation was getting cut off. I was in a horizontal position because people were leaning against me and my feet were stuck up agains the stairs so I could not bring my self to a normal standing position. I was relieved when it was finally our stop. After the event in Meribel we headed home for a couple weeks around Christmas. It was nice to spend some time with my family then. I also coached the Vail kids at their Christmas camp. After Christmas we headed off to Canada, Lake Placid and Deer Valley.
Deer Valley was great this year! I was so happy to put down a good run in qualifying. It had been a while since I had a good one and it felt great to finally feel happy with my run. Training for the finals was not exactly what I had expected. I went out of the gate first since no one else wanted to go and I got the jumps with a ton of snow in them. I came up short on a full for the first time and hiked back up to do it again. On the hike up I nearly got run over by one of the boys that was out of control. He took my ski with him so I had to hike back down and get it, then take it back up. The second full was better since there was less snow in the transition and I could carry my speed better. In the gate I was ready to go. My run was great, I had so much fun skiing down that course. The judges rewarded me with third place and I headed back up for the super final. I went a little too big off of top air and could not control my exit and fell. I skied down the rest of the run but it was not what I was hoping for. I ended up 4th and was really happy with the way I skied that night. We had drug testing after the event and it took me so long to get out of there. It was 11:30 by the time I was finally heading back to the condo. I went to physical therapy after that and had my back worked on since I popped a rib out when I fell in training. I can't believe that out PT actually treated me at midnight thanks Doug!
Duals at Deer Valley did not go so well. I caught my edge going into the top air and barely made it off the jump. Did a huge layout and did not land it cause of the unusual takeoff. I fell on bottom air too since I caught my edge on top and just was not having a good day. We headed off to China and Japan a few days later.
We were all trying to be optimistic that China might have been better than last year but I don't know why. It was the same gross hotel and polluted air, lady bugs crawling all over the place spring boards as beds, toilets that don't work. Food that I had no interest in eating and a super long lap time for the course.
Lets just say that we were all relieved to get to Japan. We stayed in Tokyo for a day in-between and It was really cool to see the city. I descided to go with the rest of the girls hoping that we would go see things around the city. But they went shopping ug, I hate shopping. I was at least hopeful that they would only shop for a little while but they took forever. I decided to sit down by the escalator so they would hopefully see me as they walked by. That was short lived cause one of the Japanese security guards came up to me and tried to explain to me that he did not want me sitting there. I could not understand what he was saying at all and he was just smiling and laughing at me and putting his hands in an x. One of my teammates saw this and was just cracking up and taking pictures of me and the security guard.
Finally they are ready to eat lunch and I try to make plans to meat up with the guys since I am so sick of shopping. My phone does not work there so I have to have one of my teammates who has a working phone call the coaches and they tell me to go to the information booth at the train station. They would meat me there but there are tons of information booths the train station. I stood at one for about 25min tried to see if my phone worked but it did not so I went back upstairs. Thankfully I found the girls and they helped me find the others. I was really not even close to them in the huge train station so I was super lucky I ran into the girls again. Once I found the boys we went and saw the Tokyo Tower and it was cool but the top was closed and it was foggy so we could not see that much. We took the train back to the hotel and then we went to dinner at a ninja sushi place. It was cool they had ninjas as waiters and they even had a ninja magician.
The mountain in Japan was cool. They had a huge hotel at the bottom, it was like 1/4 of a mile long and really tall. They got a ton of snow while we were there so the course changed a lot every day. The snow was great but it made it really hard for every one to see athletes, coaches, judges and spectators included.
