Challenge is good. It’s how you improve. But unnecessary challenge is just naked risk. Should I challenge myself by trying something risky, or should I stay in an easy, comfortable environment and try to do more there?

I’ve been riding small parks lately, getting used to the jumps, doing boxes, and trying out the pipe. I’m comfortable with the jumps and boxes now, and I’m thinking: where next? How do I progress? My two choices are to continue in the easy bits for a few more days, or to try something steeper, longer, and scarier.

Fear is obviously a great motivator. I don’t like falling hard. Most of my falls are soft enough that I don’t even feel sore, but a hard injury (like a bruised tailbone) is annoying enough that it makes me not want to try anything risky for a few weeks. That’s what’s kept me out of the more difficult parks. Plus I could be doing more even in the beginner parks, like spins — I haven’t even done a 180 yet.

I did challenge myself a bit more today. Not much; just some boxes I had avoided before, mostly because I had to come at them with speed after already having hit a few jumps. There’s a semi-pipe in the park I rode in this morning and I tried that a bit.

Bleh. Really, the question is: should I push myself to do more in the comfy place, or go try someplace new and see what happens? I guess it really doesn’t matter where I go as long as I’m pushing myself, and learning something.

I’m off to go hit the park, then. Maybe 11 (Disco Park) then 12 (for some blue runs), or 7 (for a more difficult park). I’ll decide between here and the bus stop!

I’ve been here on the mountain for four weeks now, and I’ve been on the hill for twenty of those. Twenty-one, maybe, but I’m going to round that number out. Over the last ten days, I’ve hit a little more terrain, worked on turns, rode some powder, and spent some time in the parks.

My first day out since the day 10 review, I realized I was having trouble making turns. I went to June with a friend, and right turns were just spooking me. I wasn’t making the transition from left to right turn smoothly. My board is set up goofy, but it’s fairly neutral. I frequently ride switch. Actually, I’d ride switch to give my feet, ankles, and legs a break — ie to work both legs equally. Plus, get used to riding switch. So I was having trouble transitioning heel to toe when switch, and toe to heel when regular: ie right turns. Which was weird, because it wasn’t a heel-to-toe thing, or toe-to-heel; it was right turns. Anyway, despite the fact that I had been going down blue-black slopes, I decided to return to gentler slopes and start making a bunch of right turns. It took me a couple days to figure it out.

That’s one of the fun things about snowboarding to me. It’s all balance. Lean forward, lean back, lean right or left, tilt the board, pull up on the nose, whatever. Riding well requires a good sense of your own body and it’s a feeling I really enjoy.

I want to get into park and pipe riding, so after a couple days of just making simple turns, I rode into one of the newbie parks. My first day, I just went over the rollers (a mound of snow with a fixed cross-section left to right and a rounded profile when going over it). It took be a couple days to get used to hitting the rollers straight on, and with speed.

Then we got some powder, and I spent a day riding through the trees and the ungroomed bits on the side of the trail. It was a ton of fun! I hunted for untracked paths through the trees. I rode a bit of powder before, and this wasn’t too deep (about 6 inches), so I wound up working on making turns in the powder, especially on steeper slopes. I know I’ll need more practice in steep powder, but it was great to head through the trees, dart across a trail, then back into the trees again!

Then it was back into the park. At this point, I was more comfortable going left-foot first (which would normally be called a regular stance, cept for my board being mounted goofy means that this is actually switch). So on the non-park bits, I’d ride right-foot first to get better at those turns, then back to left-foot-first for the jumps and whatnot. Terminology is confusing; I wish there was an accepted term for riding left-foot first, for riding mounted-forward-foot first, etc. Really there’s just “goofy” (board is mounted backwards) and “switch” (riding reverse to how the board is mounted), and everything else requires a lot more words…. I figure most people rarely ride switch. It’s a big deal in tricks, and evidently not something most people do much, but … meh. Anyway.

I hit the rollers for a couple days, then started hitting jumps, then got more comfortable hitting jumps at speed and getting air. I’m still not jumping much over the jump; ie pumping my legs to get a boost. There’s a couple small parks; one (Disco) has smaller jumps on a shallower slope, so easier to learn jumps. The other small park (Wonderland) is a bit steeper, and the jumps themselves are shaped a bit more aggressively. I’d usually ride one for a couple hours, head across the mountain to the other, then hit that one for a bit.

Although I’d ridden a box or two before, today was really the first day I did boxes. Still haven’t hit a rail.

View from the top

I also went back to the steeps today. It’ll take me a couple more days to really get used to it. And I also took the gondola up to the top of the mountain. It was incredibly beautiful. They have a great center in the station at the top of the mountain which points out nearby peaks and has a bit of history (both human and geologic) of the region. I peered down the slopes and… couldn’t see it. It’s not a cliff, but it’s effin steep. I got back into the gondola and rode that down.

Next weekend, I’m taking a park-and-pipe camp. Should be interesting. Before that, I’ll be working on both steeps and the park, going for rails, longer boxes, and bigger jumps. They do split the camp up according to skill level. I have a feeling it’ll be me and a bunch of 13-year-olds, but what the hell! hehe

See ya on Monday.

Burton Cattleman's Rail Jam

There’s a rail jam here in town on Saturday. I’m not competing, but one of my roommates is. Until you get to the big pro competitions, they’re really structured for entrants, not spectators. I think the rail jams are a bit different; footage and photos I’ve seen of other rail jams look like parties with some snowboarding going on nearby. There was a Gatorade Free Flow Tour event here a couple weeks ago, which is an amateur event for the 21-and-under crowd. Spectators? Feh! Spectators can go f themselves!

When I played “pro” chess, it was the same way. There wasn’t really room for families and friends, and of course no effort made to draw the public in. But chess isn’t much of a spectator sport. But is that because they don’t try? I played in some video-game competitions and they were the same way, even though there was a much larger group of spectators — usually friends and clan-mates of the competitors.

Online coverage of tournaments is mostly the same. Some info for competition entrants, tables of results, but no flavor, no reporting, no hype, no info for spectators or people that just want to follow the sport.

Magazines like to push personalities. This was one of the keys to the success of poker on television: drama. They turned the players into characters (or characatures), then pit them against each other and exaggerated past conflicts, as if there was something personal going on behind the scenes. It worked for the Travel Channel; they were able to make money from it.

Money would be the obvious reason why it’s difficult to be a sport enthusiast. No-one’s figured out how to make money from it. No-one wants to offer me coverage of upcoming snowboarding competitions, competitor profiles, behind-the-scenes looks at training and tournaments, and info for spectators that want to go watch a competition live. As with poker coverage, I think that it’s a Field of Dreams thing: if you build it, they will come.

The “obvious” answer would be to go offer that stuff myself. Sadly, I don’t have the time. Could I outsource it, 4HWW style? Hmm.

The past few days I’ve been spending time in the park, going over rollers (mounds of snow with a smooth, circular profile) and jumps (which are shaped with a lip and a knuckle). It’s been my first time getting air on a snowboard and I thought I’d capture some of what I’ve learned.

I see a lot of people in the park that don’t know how to ride; that are barely staying up. Going over the jumps is a bit much for them, I think. At least they’re getting used to the jumps, but I don’t know how useful it is. One of the key bits that I’ve heard and seen about tricks is that you want to control speed, takeoff, and landing. If you can barely ride, you might be getting air but you aren’t likely to be learning to do it in a way that you control, can repeat, or can improve on. I really think it’s important to be able to link turns first.

Part of the reason I say that is because of my experience on the rollers. Before I tackled the jumps themselves, I went over dozens of rollers. They’re like an intro to jumps; there’s a ramp up, and ramp down, and you’ll feel a little less gravity (but not quite weightless) as you ride over the top. Trying to carve over the top of a jump tends to mean making a sharp turn right after the crest of the roller; I’ve heard that riding flat (ie not on edge) over the top (unless you’re spinning) is crucial, and all those rollers helped me not just practice riding flat but to see first-hand what happens when you’re not. Snowboarding is a balance sport, like surfing and skateboarding; the key ‘trick’ to learning to ride is getting a feel for balance. Where to put your weight, how hard to lean, etc. And jumps are the same thing.

Between jumps, I also scrub off a bit of speed and take a line for the next feature; that means good board control. It’s forced me to be ready and able to make quick turns; I can’t sit and traverse and take my time waiting for a turn; when you’ve got to get lined up within yards to make the next jump, and don’t want to be cresting over it at a crazy angle, you’ve got to turn quickly.

Getting air isn’t really difficult. It’s a matter of speed and direction. Learning to make jumps just means getting a feel for how fast to go, and how to get lined up. That’s what I’ve been doing for a few days; getting a feel for the speed, getting used to going over the jump, getting used to air, and getting more familiar and comfortable with speed. Which brings me to the second big thing to learn: speed.

When I started riding this year, I worked on making turns, staying on my feet, not getting tired out or lacing my boots to tight. At the same time, I worked on going faster. I eventually realized that I really wasn’t comfortable making right turns, either normal or switch. So I slowed back down and worked on making turns, over and over. (And on powder days I worked on getting used to powder, which is hella fun!) Now I’m speeding back up again. One of the things about jumps is you need a certain speed at the takeoff, and once you launch you can’t slow down until you land. Speed happens. If you’re not comfortable at speed, then I suggest working on that before you hit too many jumps.

There’s a couple great areas to learn to get air here at Mammoth. One is a bit steeper than the other, but has a bunch of rollers; the other has jumps that are very easy to work into. Sessioning these two has been great, a bit of variety to try one thing or another. If you don’t have options, you do what you can, but if you do have options, then go for it. I feel like it was easier to get air on the lower slopes, but I learned more about speed and takeoffs from the steeper slopes.

Of course I’m no pro. I’m not even doing any grabs or spins yet. But I feel that the rollers have taught me a lot — not just in words, but in feel. And now I’ve got a feel for air. I plan to hit the same areas tomorrow, maybe I’ll actually be doing 1s.

and it was good.

My first trip down a run in Colorado on December 22nd, I stopped about 14 times — about every 100 yards. My first run down Round Robin here at Mammoth, I stopped three or four times. Today, I made it all the way down Easy Rider/Comeback without stopping.

I feel more fit, at least on the slopes. My legs don’t burn as much, my ankles don’t hurt. As I talked about in the Ten Day Review, there’s a virtuous cycle there: I’m riding faster, making more turns and slipping less. As a result, I get down the mountain faster with less time spent straining my legs. I’ve dropped 14 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 in December, so that helps too; less extra mass to throw around the mountain.

I’ve heard a number of people say that snowboarding (and skiing) aren’t great workouts, but they’re fit people. If you’re overweight and/or unfit, walking up stairs can be a great workout, so I think snowboarding really does count. I remember back in December when I stopped, my heart and breathing was fast; I was obviously working hard. I haven’t done any weight training while I’ve been here but I’d like to start.

Today was my first real day in the park. I sessioned Wonderland yesterday, mostly hitting the rollers but also rolling over the small jumps a couple times, not getting air. But today I rode over to Disco Park and hit the rails, boxes, and jumps, getting some real air. There’s an “eighth-pipe” down at the bottom that I consider a gentle introduction to pipe riding. I like Disco; I find it much easier to ease into park stuff there than at Wonderland. Wonderland is much less crowded, however, and it’s easier to get some speed going into the jumps. Forest Trail, Main Park, South Park, and Jibs Galore are all a bit above my pay grade at the moment.

I also think I injured about every part of my body today; my knees, left wrist, and left shoulder. I found a stat (from 2000) that says that skiers have about 2.6 injuries per 1000 visits, whereas snowboarders have nearly 7 injuries per 1000 visits. Yeah, that was me today. (I didn’t visit ski patrol tho, so I guess this my injuries are uncounted in that total.) Luckily one doesn’t actually use their upper body when snowboarding!

We’re expecting about three feet of snow between now and the end of Saturday, so I plan to ride for a couple days, getting more powder experience. I might hit the park tomorrow morning, maybe not, but even tho Saturday will be crowded I do want to learn how to ride powder better. Sunday will be bluebird, but prolly groomed. Hmm. Choices!

After ten days on the slopes here on the mountain, I’m reporting my progress and plans.

I’ve been snowboarding for eight years now. Kinda. I actually first started snowboarding eight years ago, but I only went about six times each of those first two years, only about twenty times the last time I was up at Mammoth, and just a few times outside that. I didn’t go at all last year, and I think I didn’t go any the year before that… so back during xmas week was the first time I went snowboarding in three seasons. These past ten day have been kind of like starting from scratch – minus the first couple days of falling on my ass all the time.

When I was in Colorado, I’d take a run, then take a 30-minute break (with my boots off) to recover. I stopped a dozen times during each run. I stopped for several reasons: boot pain, fitness, altitude, and leg burn. Eventually I got used to the altitude, but the other problems persisted.

The first problem I had to get over was boot pain. I eventually figured out the trick — I don’t tighten my lower boots at all. My boots have three sets of laces: one for the inner liner, one for the foot, and one for the calf. I don’t tighten the inner liner at all and leave the foot alone. I still occasionally over-tighten a boot, and usually that means I wind up taking the boot completely off and re-lace it. Larger boots would help, but with sufficiently tightened upper laces and bindings, and I don’t get a lot of foot movement inside the boot while I’m on the slopes.

Despite running up to two miles a day before I came out, I’m still not that fit. This is a combination of being overweight and unfit; snowboarding is a hefty physical activity and I’m a hefty guy. Losing weight will help, I’m sure. It’s hard to tell how much it’s helped so far, but if I continue my current losing streak (about .4 pounds a day) I should be at fighting weight… about when the season is over. Anyway, every bit helps. I’m thinking of sprinting up stairs on my days off to try to boost both leg strength and fitness.

Which brings me to my next point: leg burn. There’s a virtous cycle in snowboarding: the faster you go, the less time you spend on a run, the less you stop, the less tired you get, the less your legs burn. And the less I stop/etc, the faster I complete a run. Fatigue and leg burn build; a trip up the mountain resets that fatigue clock, allowing me to make the next run fresh. Because of this cycle of improvement, it’s hard to tell how much better my legs are doing. Plus I’m kinda working around the problem by riding switch for a few turns, then swapping again. This way I burn both legs, not just one, plus get more experience riding switch. I’m only marginally less adept at riding switch than normal and, as I’ve improved I’ve gotten better at both.

Although I’ve recently been riding blue-black slopes, I still spend most of my time on blue-green trails. “Blue-green” and “blue-black” seems to mean that the slope has characteristics of both; a blue-green is a green trail with some blue-level steepness in some parts. I’ve only ridden a true green slope once and I was surprised at how shallow it was. The steep bits on the blue-blacks aren’t too long, and are wide, too. I can handle the steeps, but not at speed.

On a few days I’ve sat in the lodge watching people come down the slopes. I’m surprised at the number of unskilled snowboarders that attempt the “true blue” slopes, slip-sliding their way down, falling every hundred feet, crouched down and bent over and arms splayed — or all of the above. I think either ego or a friend convinced them to try the more difficult slope, and I wonder if they’re getting anything out of it other than bragging rights, which to me seems stupid. I’m content riding the blue-greens, over and over. There’s tons of paths I can take so I don’t get bored of “the same trail,” especially if I venture onto nearby lifts and hit a blue-black now and then. I do fall; I fell once today, in my brief two hours of riding. I don’t like falling. I can look back at my path and figure out why I fell; lately, I’ve been working on cases where I roll from edge to edge but my board isn’t pointing straight, ie I roll onto my downhill edge while trying to link turns.

We had tons of snow last week – about 8 feet of fresh on the mountain. I wish I was a better rider, because there was tons of powder to take advantage of, especially with new snowfall every day and living local to grab it. As it was, I spent a bit of time in the powder, getting somewhat used to it. The powder-hounds tend to hit the top of the mountain, but one of the great things about Mammoth is that you can ride through the trees nearly everywhere; the trees have about the same base depth as the trails. Whereas many of the resorts out east tend to have trails that are built way up above the surrounding areas, some of the trails here are *below* the level of the surrounding snow, due to grooming packing the snow down.
As hinted at in Wednesday’s post about progression, I plan to keep riding the blue-greens until I’m much more comfortable in my turns. I need to get used to turning when I don’t have an easy, perfectly straight downhill path, ie when a turn might not put me perfectly across the fall line. I’ll hit the blue-blacks on occasion, to add variety and to test out my tolerance for steepness. I also plan on hitting rollers, a few rails, and maybe the eighth-pipe set up in Disco park.

See y’all next week, enjoy your weekend. I’m spending tomorrow morning watching the local Gatorade amateur event, and planning on going to June on Sunday.

We had a gathering (not quite a party) at the house last night, and a girl I was talking to mentioned that she was bored with snowboarding. I suggested that might be because she had achieved her snowboarding goals, or had reached a plateau and
wasn’t getting better. A goal can be a great motivator, and when you’re learning something new, a goal (even a small one) can give context to your attempts.

I haven’t really had specific goals so far this year. I don’t think I went out at all in the last two years, which means that xmas week was the first time that I’ve been snowboarding in three seasons. I might have spent 30 days on the snow before that, but that’s definitely not full days — the last season I spent up here, I had bad boot problems and tended to only ride for a  half day.

What are my goals for this year?

I dunno. Have fun? I want to take a lesson, possibly this weekend or next week. I want to take the 3-day park and pipe workshop next month. I want to ride more of the mountain — the blacks and the steeps.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know how long it will take to get good at riding. How long til I’m riding blacks  comfortably? Should I take a lesson to learn some advanced techniques before hitting them? It’s foolish to think I’d be doing double-corks before the end of the season. What wouldn’t it be foolish to think? Threes? Fives? Sevens? Flips? Blacks, double-blacks, chutes?

I think the only realistic plan is to have long-range goals (without a time schedule attached). I tried searching for a good timeline for learning various snowboarding skills, but had no luck. Since most people aren’t riding five days a week, and most people just ride on the weekends a few times each season, my experience is way outside the norm. I found no good guide for how many days of riding each step of advancement will take.

What I did find is a number of people that claimed that, once you’re linking turns, you can move from greens to blacks very quickly. I know that’s different with skiers, since advanced (black-diamond and double-diamond) ski turns are very different than what you learn on the green slopes. Snowboarders, evidently, learn to carve turns … and then go down blacks.

I’m already carving turns. In fact, I was carving turns before this year, but I started on the blue-green trails mostly cuz of boot issues. (More on that in a couple days.) I’ve already focused on gaining comfort going down steeper terrain. I guess I ride blacks tomorrow?

So: My plan for this year comes in two stages. First, ride blue-blacks comfortably then ride blacks comfortably. Second, work on tackling harder terrain while simultaneously moving over to the park and pipe. It seems that I have the skills (except maybe for jump-turns) to ride the blacks, just not yet the confidence.

Also, I plan to keep improving fitness, so I can stay out longer, and to lose weight (for the same reason). Plus, having to bend over my belly makes it harder to reach my bindings.

Tomorrow, my plan is to ski across the mountain, from Canyon to Mill to Main to 12, and ride the blues all day. On Friday, I might stick to Canyon lodge, which tends to be less busy than Main in general and especially on the weekends.

I was waiting in the lift line yesterday, and this guy was getting exasperated at his wife, who had fallen down (on skis) and couldn’t get up. It was obvious to him how to get up, but not to her — and skiing and snowboarding is more than “just do it.” There’s learning, execution, and …. fitness.

One of the four corners of this blog is fitness. I started running 14 months ago, to get in shape in general as well as to get in shape for snowboarding. Being aerobically fit is a prerequisite for lots of sports, and it’s a big part of enjoying those sports, and I think snow sports especially. Getting tired while you’re out on the snow having fun just sucks.

14 months ago, I could run 200 yards before I ran out of breath. Over these months, I’ve realized that running faster will ‘empty’ out my breath faster, but fourteen months of running have also helped me finish 5k runs without stopping. At a slow pace, alright, but I’m still running a lot further.

My first time snowboarding this season was December 22nd, the Tuesday before Christmas. It was a tough day, since the run was really long (about mile), at altitude (compared to Houston!), and I’m still not that fit. I stopped about a dozen times that first run down the mountain, which was a combination of running out of breath, my feet hurting, my legs hurting, my ankles hurting…

Here in Mammoth, I’m making much longer runs. I’ve figured out how to tighten my boots so that they’re snug, but don’t crush my feet. I’m getting used to the altitude, improving my fitness more, and building up snowboarding muscles. I wish I had run more last year, but I’m still glad I got in as much as I did — nearly every day for the past six months.

I’m making good carved turns, but I still feel fatigued before I’m all the way down the mountain. Tired muscles, or out of breath? I think it’s a bit of both, plus I’m also fighting a cold. I see improvement, and getting better is awesome. It’s a tremendous motivator. Plus, snowboarding is fun as hell!

We’ve got big fluffy flakes falling right now, and tomorrow is gonna be sick. (See, I’m a snowboarder now, I gotta use the words “sick” and “stoked” as often as possible.) See ya on the slopes!

Ya know, after the sprinting vs running vs jogging vs walking post I made last week, I feel like a bit of an ass. I’ve just started running, can’t run too fast, am still overweight, etc etc, and here I am pronouncing for all the world that walking is bad exercise… well not exactly what I said, but the important theme here would be the pronouncement. I don’t really have the expertise for that. What I wrote is my opinion; it’s how I feel about exercise at the moment. I think it’s much better to sprint and run than to walk.

But while I’m giving advice on how to do things that I can’t do myself, then why not write about being a pro snowboarder? I’ve watched a lot of videos, isn’t that enough?

Actually, this post is a response to the videos I’ve seen on youtube and vimeo by kids looking to be sponsored. “How to get sponsored” and “How to be a Pro” are two big topics that come across on searches about snowboarding. So I dug around a bit, and here’s what I’ve got. I think the snowboarding community is a bit like the games industry here: there’s tons of people that want to do both professionally, and both are perceived as hard to get into. So here’s my suggestions.

I don’t mean to be too pessimistic in the following. In both game dev and snowboarding, I think the path to being a pro is straightforward. It requires hard work and dedication, but it’s not especially complicated. But let me repeat that hard work and dedication line, because you need both, and you need them in spades!

First, know where you’re going. Be aware of what a pro is. A pro is someone that makes a living in their area, whether that’s game development or snowboarding. If you still have a day job that pays the bills while you push your hobby every night and weekend, you’re not yet a pro. If your goal is to be a pro, that means making enough to do it 24/7.

There’s not a lot of pro game developers. There’s tons of hobbyists that might be considered pro-am. They make a bit of money from their hobby, but not enough to pay rent — much less car payments, food, insurance, and supporting a family, too. And saving for vacations, retirement, rainy days, and your kids’ educations. They’ve got a day job, maybe working near the industry, but right now it’s just their hobby and they’ve managed to make a wee bit of money from it.

If you want to be a pro, your first step is to be pro-am. There’s enough people clamoring to be at the top that you need to set yourself apart. Filming yourself hitting a couple features on the mountain ain’t gonna cut it. It’s a start, but you need more. Start making money in little ways. For snowboarding, that really means placing in contests. If you don’t compete, how do you know how good you really are?

Take a look at the Swatch TTR men’s rankings. There’s over 3000 guys listed. Are you on that list? The guys down at the bottom showed up at one event and placed at the bottom of the heap. But they did compete! They practiced, they scheduled, they applied, they showed up.

Fifty years ago, a band could sign with a major record label and pump out a few albums until they had to get good and start building fans. Now, there are so many bands clamoring for contracts that they have to be popular before they get distribution. It’s the same way with sports and game development; prove yourself among the hobbyists, and you have something that the sponsors/labels/employers will notice. That doesn’t mean they will notice, but it’s a prerequisite. Contest results get you noticed; videos help.

I think it’s a common fantasy to think that you can just display a measure of your desire and some snippets of your work and have people see your genius and come knocking on your door. The world doesn’t really work like that; your work has to be truly exceptional, or you need to get your name out. The first requires tons of skill and dedication, but luckily the latter is much easier.

Participate in forums. Talk to other hobbyists. Get your friends engaged. Go to social gatherings (like contests & conventions) and talk to strangers. If you’re good and people know who you are, opportunity will come to you. This is making opportunity. Hiring managers in the game dev world tend to spend their time managing, not hiring. When they do need to hire, they don’t surf the internet looking for cool project videos; they post a job listing and sift through the resumes that come in. And many jobs are filled with friend-of-a-friend, ex-coworkers, and the like. The more friends and coworkers you’ve had in the industry, the more positions will be available to you. And that’s why you network: not because these guys will get you a sponsorship or a job right now, but because they’ll remember you when an opening does come up.

As you continue to develop your skills and network, eventually you’ll catch a break. That’s how it happens. If you’ve got a time limit, you might fail. But how serious are you? If you’re dedicated and skilled, it will happen. But those two are incredibly important.

Pro snowboarders don’t hit the mountain a few weekends a year; they live up there. If you’re not boarding at least every weekend, you’re not going to make it. That brings me back to what it means to be a pro. Not only are you getting paid to pursue your passion every day, but you are actually working at it every day. I learned far more about being a professional developer in my first six months on the job than I did in the twelve years before that. Sure, I learned a ton about games and programming in twelve years as a hobbyist, but being on the job 24/7 is a categorically different experience. Pros learn far more about their sport while being a pro than they did beforehand. And that, in part, is what you’re competing with. Are you practicing as hard as they are?

I guess I can summarize my point by saying that success isn’t hard, but it doesn’t come easy. You don’t need to be a crazy genius talent, but you do need to work as hard as one.

Summary:

• Develop your skills
• hook up with other hobbyists to push and learn from each other
• hang out at social gatherings (contests, conventions, etc)
• put some work out (videos, contest results)
• start networking
• and keep developing your skills!

A snowboard bum (or a ski bum) is someone that lives in (or near) a ski town for the purpose of hitting the slopes nearly every day. If you live near the mountains and you go up to the slopes every weekend, you’re not a snowboard bum, you’re just an enthusiastic rider. Being a bum implies a commitment to being on the slopes as often as possible, and that means near-daily.

The “process” is fairly simple — just drive or hitchhike up to a mountain and you’re set. The trick is surviving, not getting your gear stolen, and feeding yourself. Here’s some tips.

Step 1: pick a location. Chances are, you already have this decided. But picking a good location can make a huge difference in how much you enjoy your season on the slopes. A mountain with a short season means you’ve got to go back to normal life fairly quickly — but maybe you don’t want to be gone too long. Many smaller resorts are limited in their terrain and so you’d want to choose one to match your riding style. Tony Crocker has a bunch of great guides; his Powder Skiing article for Inside Tracks gives a great overview of resorts across North America. You could be an itinerant, car-bound snowboard bum. That fits the profile well. You get mobility, but at the cost of buying a lift ticket every day. You save on lodging, but lift tickets easily outweigh that cost.

Step 2: Find a place to live. If you’re only going to be up for a few months, you might find short-term lodging by crashing in someone’s loft. If you’ve got a bunch of friends on the slopes, you could couch surf. My route will be to find a room for rent, since I’m planning on staying through the season. Six-month (and longer) leases are easier to find than 3-month leases.

Places to check include the official forums for your target mountain, the local newspaper, craigslist, local property management companies, bulletin boards, and word of mouth.

For a longer stay, finding a place ahead of time makes sense if you’ve got the resources and inclination to stay for months. If you’re planning a short stay, you might be able to just get to town and then start looking. I don’t recommend the latter, but if you’re in town and need a place to stay desperation will drive you. If you stay in a cheap hotel or hostel, ask your fellow residents. Ask around on the slopes. Ask in the lift lines, at the local grocery store, and in parking lots. If you drove up, you can crash in your car for a couple days while trying to find a place, but definitely do some research on car-camping, since you’ll want to avoid getting towed, or killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Last time I went up, I found a couple that had moved into half of a 2-bedroom condo and were looking for a roommate. The situation was great; my own room, but shared utilities. Someone was nearly always in the unit, and rent was much cheaper than paying for a 1-bedroom apartment or condo by myself. I found them by sifting through ads in the local mountain forums.

Step 3: Save up some money. In addition to someplace to sleep, you’ll need to keep yourself fed, and bring equipment and clothes. Showing up broke and eeking out a living is possible, but not recommended. If you’ve got six months of savings, you’ll not only have enough to get to town and move right in to a place, but you’ll also have a bit of time to find a good job, plus enough saved up that will last you through an unexpected layoff or the end of season, and pull you through until the following season.

Rent will most likely be your biggest expense; make sure you include your cell phone and utility bills. It’s easy to eat cheap but it does require planning; a paleo diet (including grass-fed meats) can be expensive but it should still come in well under your rent. Don’t forget to budget for a season pass.

Step 4: find a job. If you don’t have a year of savings to rest on, having a job will be crucial. If you do have a year of savings, a job will let that money last much more than one season.

There are seasonal jobs available on the hill but they are, again, seasonal; they could disappear without notice. Even local jobs can disappear if snow is poor and tourists don’t show up. Finding a job ahead of time will give you a chance to hunt for a better wage, better hours, more reliable employment, and work that fits you. Again, check the mountain’s web site and the local paper for leads.

Step 5: plan the trip. When do you leave? Do you need to sell your car, or put stuff in storage? Are you going to visit friends and relatives along the way? Fly home for Christmas?

Step 6: go ride!