CASI Level 2 Snowboard Instructor Course Diary Week 5 – 2015

When the sun comes up on a new day, it reveals light on countless opportunities that the day has to offer. Even more awesome is the fact that NothinButSnow walked out fresh into the new week with level one instructor qualifications under our belts. The celebrating from the weekend had left a few of us slightly absent minded, however that would have to be all put aside for now. Level one for me personally is just the first step to a stair case of being able to snowboard every day, and for that to be easily pursued I would have to get my CASI level two. One great thing about the instructors here at Big White is that they have a slight difference in opinion to the students. We came out on Monday morning expecting to start our level twos, but as we would find out later on, our instructors wanted to push us even further and use this as a stepping stone to our level three! Once again I was put into a group with Dom…He’s got to have had enough of my by this point surely! So level two was an awesome opportunity to further develop our riding, no more Happy Valley for us, we would answer to one power and one power only from now on, our urges to shred! We were shown the standards of level two and what was to be expected of us from this point onwards. In addition to this we were shown some interesting runs. Very interesting runs. As a snowboarder, from day one I was taught to hate bumps unless there was a flat or some pow after it so I could huck myself off of it and ride away feeling like Travis Rice. However a full run of moguls…erm how about no! Well this week has surely changed my outlook on life! I walk away a changed man. We learned the proper way to ride these previously untameable beasts, and honestly I now love mogul pitches. Things are about to get real ZEN and deep right now so if not skip down a few lines. For those of you that are still with me, let’s begin. Seriously through the connection that you get with your board as you push through with your front foot, flattening your board as you turn into the trench… it truly is an experience. Think of it as marriage counselling for man/woman and board. I truly have a new found appreciation for my snowboard this week.

Anyway if you chose to skip that bit, welcome back! Level two got us to experience harder terrain as well as push ourselves more, challenging what we could do with our boards. To top off the start of a great week I managed to buy what was the last board wax for all conditions left on the mountain, so I definitely must have done something good last week for karma to be on my side. Wait I’m getting all zen and deep again, apologies, il get back to the shredding.

The standards for what we needed to achieve for level two had been made clear to us on Monday, but Tuesday was a different story. Not because we had been tricked or confused in any way, Tuesday it was just impossible to see anything. Which in a way was good. If you’ve ever seen Daredevil then you will understand what I am about to say, however, if you haven’t then you may not get the nerdy reference. I’ll try and explain for both levels of understanding here. Basically Ben Affleck (Daredevil) gets some stuff in his eyes and becomes blind and his other senses are heightened to superhuman level. I wish that was the case with me and my snowboard, as due to the lack of vision I fell over a fair few times. So not really anything like Daredevil. Also it’s totally fine if you haven’t seen it, it was only given a 5.4/10 on IMDB. But there is this pretty rad scene where Colin Farrell kills some dude with a paperclip which is pretty awesome. But in a nutshell Tuesday was hard!

In the evening I waxed my board and a few of us went to Sessions for TACO TUESDAY! Nothing to do with Lego (if you haven’t seen The Lego Movie, sort it out, this movie is a lot better than Daredevil), but a Mexican themed night where you eat Tacos…On a Tuesday… Don’t think I’m missing anything out here, and you could have probably worked that one out.

Wednesday was an even worse day in terms of visibility, but got even worse as the day went on. We had our first level two lesson, which was awesome to experience, but unfortunately due to feeling a bit under the weather I had to head in in the afternoon. But wait. It gets worse. I had to skip out on wings Wednesday due to my illness. I know, it tore me apart inside, but sometimes sickness just takes over and you are rendered helpless to its power. I felt like Frodo did while watching Gandalf fall in Moria. Wait another nerd reference, I’m sorry, I WAS VERY SAD THAT I MISSED WINGS =( =( =(

I was ill the next day as well, but Thursday had a silver lining. My family had applied for a living visa to move to Canada, and an excited skype from my mother revealed that I WOULD SOON BE LIVING IN CANADA!  So swings and roundabouts really. One bonus of having a cinema room in your basement is that whenever something like a sick day puts you on your butt, you can stay sitting down, in a comfy chair, watching awful films all day…in your cinema room. So pretty much a good day. Oh and we watched Lord of The Rings in the evening. Hence the previous reference to the movies…See what I did there!

Funday Friday was a much better day, I was back out on my board and I was able to ride again! The basis of the day was focused on carving, but we shredded in the park for a few runs and penguin slid down some of the steeper runs due to the icy conditions which was amusing. Imagine falling flat on your face and sliding down a pitch. It’s a lot less daft than it sounds, and is actually very fun! We ate dinner in Globe that night, which as usual was a very civilised affair…which escalated quickly into a night in Sams.

To conclude another great week in paradise, we have Monday off as a bank holiday, something to do with a president or something or other, but either way we are off to Sam’s again shortly to broaden our connections within the industry!

As usual…

Stay rad

Jaymez