First Blog:

Hello to all! Happy New Year!
This is my first blog on my website and I’m stoked about it. Thank you for checking it out! I hope you have fun keeping track of where I am through my season!

Well, after an amazing two weeks off for Christmas break hanging out, but more so, getting picked on, with my brothers I am back on the road, and pumped! We arrived on the 1st in Europe, don’t ask me how my New Year’s Eve was please, I spent it on a plane, and drove to our European residence. We rent out a hotel for the year in Kirchburg, Austria where we can leave stuff there, come and go as we please. It’s pretty convenient actually, home away from home. We spent a night there, then were off to Malz, Italy to train for three days before my first World Cup in 2010!

I drove with my teammate Emily (Brydon) in her rented Fiat Bravo. For the rally car racing driving style that Emily has, the Bravo is NOT the ideal car. So the drive was an experience in itself. I am still getting used to these crazy Europeans and their driving! We stayed in this brand new hotel that had recently opened. It was suuuper nice! Although, we all realized when we sat down to dinner the first night together that the hotel must be very “open”, in more ways than one.Every room, after discussing it amongst ourselves, had no blocked rooms where one could take a shower or a bath in privacy. Emily’s and my room simply had a bath in the middle of the room! We had to coordinate bath times with our physio so one could have some privacy in the room while the other was having physio. I do have to say the hotel DID know how to make a mean, and I mean mean, cappuccino! I don’t know how those Italians do it, but they have got that skill DOWN.

We trained at the mountain up on the hill from the town, called Watles, (which made me laugh every time I saw it written on a sign, I pictured a duck walking about) and had two days of awesome Super G training. After day two we packed up right after training and hit the road. Well, the Bravo has some troubles starting so it took a few minutes for the car to stop having seizures, THEN Emily and I were on the road. We made a pit stop in Samnaun, Switzerland before heading back to Kirchburg for the night. Samnaun is super posh little town that is tax free for some reason, so people go their for one reason only. And that’s not to ski. Although the mountain looked sweet, they go there to shop! Emily had to get her recently purchased watch fixed, I hadn’t visited before, so I came along for the ride. It was small, cute, very posh, and worth the detour.
We got to Kirchburg that night to see the 6th member of the Canadian team in two months, the leader of the Tech team, Anna Goodman on crutches after tearing her knee the day before in a World Cup Slalom.It was heart wrenching seeing her with those crutches. At least the other tech girls bedazzled her crutches on the ride back to Kirchburg.We got up in the morning, did a workout, and hit the road again in the Bravo. We drove to Haus Austria, a 3 hour drive, which is where I am now. I am here with Emily, Britt Janyk and Shona Rubens, and the rest of our team, the 10 member staff. Training runs start tomorrow morning and I’m looking forward to being back on the long boards! I’ll be checking in soon!

G