Hey everybody,

    Sorry I haven’t updated you sooner on what’s been going on with me lately, it’s been a pretty crazy last few weeks. I’ll start with the last dew tour stop at Northstar on February 18-22. Even though I didn’t end up getting a result at the event, I ended up placing 3rd in the overall and feel like I really made an impact on halfpipe skiing. I crashed on both my runs, my first run I decked on my first hit then my second run I went down on my fourth hit attempting a unnatural double flip. I think I got more exposure from doing two double flips in one run than I would have, had I skied conservatively and got 2nd or 3rd place though. The next day we hopped on a flight and flew to Colorado to do the US Open.

In the past few years the US Open has been going downhill and becoming less and less of a respectable event. This year however, to our surprise, the event was awesome (besides the fact that it is the only event in the history of our sport where they charge an entry fee for invited athletes… and the prize money is about 1/3 the amount as the dew tours). The weather was terrible for qualifiers but it cleared up for finals and the pipe was in perfect conditions. Seeing as Tanner, Simon, Kevin, and Xavier were not there I wasn’t expecting the level of skiing to be nearly as high as any other contest this year, but was I ever wrong. It seemed like everyone in finals was putting down podium runs, which made it extremely hard for the judges to do their job. Due to a bad crash in training I only did my first 2 out of 3 finals runs but landed both of them and ended up getting the two highest scores of my life, a 95.4 on my first run and a 96.6 on my second. It was the first contest I have won in 4 years so I was STOKED! As soon as the contest ended we jumped in our truck and drove to Denver to fly out to Japan for “World Championships” that same night.

I had never been to a “World Championships” so it was a really cool experience to go there and see what they are all about. The event was very well organized and the weather for comp day was amazingly hot and sunny. I stomped my first run but by the time finals came around the skiers left wall started deteriorating and it got the best of my on my second run on my second hit tossing me into the flat bottom. My first run score was 45.3 (out of 50) and I was in the lead until Kevin Rolland put down a really sick run scoring a 45.5 bumping me into 2nd place. Even though I wasn’t the “World Champion” I am still pretty happy with 2nd and probably got more press coverage than I ever have in my life so it was definitely a worthwhile trip.

I was planning on flying home immediately after the contest but they convinced me to stay and do a quarterpipe event in Tokyo where I met the Governor of Tokyo and at more sushi than I thought was humanly possible. The whole quarterpipe set up was made of scaffolding and manmade snow but it was pretty fun. The event was an exhibition event, it wasn’t a contest so we just put on show for the crowd. By the time I did my last hit of the day, the quarterpipe was in pretty rough condition and had a big kink in the wall. I decided to do a cork 5 but popped a little to hard and got tossed into the flat bottom on my shoulder breaking my collarbone.

I went to the doctor today and he said it is about as clean of a break as they come and I should be good to go within 5-6 weeks putting me back right in time for WSI. I will be at home for the next little while trying to get organized and healed up. I now have some time to kill and want to stay productive during my downtime so please don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything from me. Thanks for your support this season, talk to you soon