So, this was a fun little adventure!  Two weekends ago was the Boreal Grand Prix.  This was a very fun little event put on by the people of USSA.  I just so happened to win this one, which was great since X didn't go quite as well as I had hoped for.  But it's cool.  Boreal was a great time.  The pipe started out to be not that great, but luckily the crew from Boreal and USSA made sure that things were near perfect for the final event!  Pretty much everyone was bummed when we first got there.  The first practice was like going back in time, airs and spins were at a minimum.  But like I said, everything turned out just fine by the finals.  The weather was another great part of this one!  It was sunny and so warm.  This was great considering it was the end of January!  

So, from there we headed straight from Reno to Turin Italy.  This is, as you may remember were the '06 Olympics were hosted.  The FIS world cup was at the same site where USA totally dominated the snowboard world back a few years ago.  I had never been, since i missed the 06 team by a measly 2 spots.  But that's neither here, nor there.  The pipe here, made the Boreal pipe look like X!  That's how awesomely bad it was.  I swear this was a 12 footer.  It was so small!  Oh, and they had more snow than in the previous 12 years or something like that!  We had some of the best POW i've been able to ride all year!  It snowed like 30 inches during the week.  So as you can imagine, a halfpipe comp was not really on anyone's mind.  Though, we had a job to do.  We basically had to get a number of top 30 finishes so that the USA has 4 spots for the Olympic team next year.  Luckily I ended up 7th, so that's a good start, though i would have much rather been a little higher on the ranking, oh well.  Can't complain about a top 10 when the facilities were so bad.  Though my fellow ladies of the US completely dominated everyone big time.  Kelly C, Hannah T, and Gretchen B, swept the podium which apparently hasn't happened at a world cup for some 20 years on the ladies side.  CRAZY!  well, that's what's been going on with me lately.  Now I'm off to Vancouver for another FIS world cup.  This one is at the new Olympic site, where the 2010 Winter Games will be held!  I'll let you know how it goes.  here are some sweet photos from Europe though... Enjoy!