I personally had one one the hardest winters of my life this past season. I graduated from the University of Colorado and made my way West, back to the homeland of the PNW. Living in Boulder Colorado influenced me to take up the Russian Rouletesque lifestyle of Longboarding. I remember several occasions Thrashing the unforgiving streets of Boulder Narrowly missing UPS trucks at 50 MPH and literally seeing my life flash before my eyes. As crazy as this sounds the closer I get to death the more Alive I feel. So back to the PNW, a buddy Sam Hall, up and coming Oakley Athlete, and I took this sport to a whole new level. The Northwest is known for ridiculous steeps and several freshly paved steep suburban Neighborhoods with little to no traffic. Therefore the Steeper the Cliffs Edge and the Longer the Freefall the more appealing it was. So last run of an epic day, NEVER CALL LAST RUN, we went to a hill I had known of, but it was definately a first descent for us. 1.25 Miles Full S turn with a top speed grade, about 55MPH on my skate. I pulled around the first turn with SAm trailing me in My Pathfinder and hit about 10 rocks, which killed my confidence, so I decided put down a foot and Stop Myself. Unfortunately I had brand new shoes on and instead of slowly my right leag litteraly stopped at 45MPH, I bailed with a tee shirt and shorts on No safty gear Torn ACL, recked Miniscus and The most road rash a humanbeing can sustain. Having No medical insurance at the time I pretende like nothing was wrong, hung up the longboard and moved on to the Mountain Bike in order to regain strength. I got solid and was afraid to see a doctor fearing the worst, and gazing toward the upcoming winter. First Day Summit at Snoqualmie, I made one turn and dislocated my knee. Luckily at this time I now had medical insurance, went throught the procedures and was diagnosed w/ a torn ACL. Talked to my uncle who had torn his knee twice and he suggested I ski for the Winter with his knee brace. Being a pschopath this sounded like a great idea, and I ended up hitting more powder days in 30 days of skiing in My entire life went on 4 trips Sun Valley, Whistler, Scwietzer, and then Colorado and hit pow on all four. Postponed my surgery and got Operated on March 7, 2007. Rehabed the hell out of myself and got into the musical stylings of the Underground HipHop scene, starting a Solo project called "DARCHITECT". peep this at http://www.myspace.com/thedarchitect. So all in all, as bad as I made it out to be it ended up being one of the most succesful years of my life and I even landed a job working for http://www.macphersonconstruction.com designing High end water front homes in the greater Seattle Area. So I finish by saying, you can complain about missing a winter, and get frustrated by losing your form of release, but if you can adapt to your personal scenario and find a new form of release you will only come out even stronger. Look at Marc Andre in Lost and Found! Oh and Music is Freedom!