Wow, what a crazy day... Started off awesome, got my Cork 5s back, which is nice. I decided to go with a style day on rails, not many spins in or out, just presses and taps. Learned a new butter I've never seen before, nose butter 270 hop over to tail butter 270 (540 total). And then it got dark... and for whatever reason the lights were screwed up, which cause some chaos in the park. This is when things really bad, since it's a school day there were after school buses there, which is fine, I used to love ski bus when I was in school, but it was like they all decided to go into the park, which again, I'm fine with - where else is the next generation of park rats gonna come from, that is until they start doing dumb stuff, not look where they're going, cutting people off, and standing on landings/lips without looking around. That mixed with the darkness created a very unsafe environment to the park riders, in fact I LITERALLY almost killed some little girl today, and it wouldn't have been my fault at all. I was approaching the Unbow at a decent speed and some little girls comes out of nowhere (at least I couldn't see her cause it was dark where she was), all I saw was Jeff (Ski Patroller) yelling at something and then I realized why...the little girl was skiing TOWARDS the Unbow...WHILE I'm on it! There was nothing I could do but launch off and hope I don't land on her, which luckily I didn't.
I'm posting this as a public service... I know a lot of the "veteran" park skiers will make sure they tell people (although not always in the nicest way) to watch out or move out of the way, but not all the new kids will. So, if you see someone doing something completely stupid in the park (i.e. not looking where they're going, cutting people off, standing on landings, ect.) make sure you tell them that what they are doing is not safe to them or to the people in the park. I've learned that the best way to go about this is to tell them nicely, and then if they still don't stop, try finding a park attendant or Jeff (some of the other Patrollers will talk to them, but a lot really don't care and think we're the ones that are unsafe). Yelling at them might work, but it usually just ends with small kids calling the park kids assholes and dicks and whatnot, so simply talking to them is probably the best way.
We all want to be safe and have fun, but we need to make sure that everyone, not just us, is safe too. I know EVERYONE hates it when people cut you off to jump off the sides of the rail takeoffs, but try to keep your anger at bay and simply tell them that what they are doing isn't what that's for, and is actually quite unsafe for the people actually using the park, because yelling at people for doing dumb stuff is why people outside the park think we're all just a bunch of "punk kids who don't know how to ski properly" (although I think Mullins proved everyone wrong last year at S7 during the bumps comp...).
Anyways, thanks for reading, I know it was long, and kinda ranty, but this is what is going to make our park more fun and enjoyable, and might even get the rest of the mountain to have a little more respect for us (Although, I know that A LOT of the employees already do).
