Tailfish

It’s been a lovely weekend, and although I’d like to say it’s been a nice and relaxing one after a pretty stressful week at work I’d be lying if I did….what I can say is that it’s been brilliant and great fun!

Friday kicked off with a drive across the back roads to Milton Keynes ready for a night and day of shredding, SNO!storm was on on Friday night and then I had my second Maverix One Day Camp session on Saturday.  We’d decided to stay in a hotel to try and save mileage on the car and also to save us having to get up at 6am on Saturday to get to the slope in time and miss the traffic.  It was quite a smooth trip for a change and after dumping our stuff at the hotel we headed to the slope for the session.  This was the first night that an MK event has gone up against an event rather than a board night at the new slope over at Hemel Hempstead and I wasn’t sure how it was going to pan out, the majority of chat on the forums was about the FBBB event at Hemel and it did sound as though MK could be a wash out.

Thankfully it wasn’t! Steve Revill and his park builders had done a blinding job and with both of the main slopes and the lesson slope completely given over to freestyle toys of all levels it was definitely better on a direct comparison basis from the slope plan advertised by Hemel (half the main slope and the lesson slope).  Hemel did apparently have more people, but given the fact that they’d dedicated less of the slope to the toys I was glad I’d stuck with MK.  It was by no means quiet, by my reckoning there were about 150 people there but the mix of toys from basic ride ons, to mini sides ons with some pretty gnarly jump on rails it was for me the perfect set up. The only downside for me was the kicker which was just a touch out of my skill range, a whippy gap kicker built for spectacular inverts!  I’m too chicken to go inverted so gave that a wide berth but spent plenty of time playing on the newly refurbed jump on straight rail, spinning on the bench and working some presses over the kink.  I also had some fun on the mini wall ride, I always struggle to get my head round wall rides so it was good to have something a bit smaller to mess around on to try and get a feel for it next time I come across one at a comp.  The run ins and exits stayed in good nick all night and there wasn’t an icy patch to be seen.

Arriving back the next morning ready for the Maverix One Day Camp it was good to see Steve was out on the slope regrooming all the toys ready for the evening Park Strife session, the Maverix crew had also been hard at work over night and had built a double take off kicker for our course.  I had another great camp with them and this time was coached by Phil rather than Lyndon, it was great to get a different perspective on things but I’m pleased to say that both he and Lyndon are great coaches and both are really good at spotting your faults and helping you to correct them.

I was also lucky enough to get some time with Maverix’s founder James Streater who did some drills with me to help me with my attempts at side on rails, ollying a ski pole balanced on a couple of mini cones and doing jump ons on to a row of low cones or upside down snowboards.  It became apparent that not only am I pants at ollying (I have a tendency to lift both feet at the same time rather than lifting my nose followed by the tail, I also have a tendency to land nose heavy) but that my much loved Forum Craft may be just a touch too aggressive for learning rail tricks without me coming a cropper.

Although I didn’t learn as many new tricks on this session as I did on my first I had the chance to work on the tricks from the last session, trying to iron out my errors and avoid getting in to bad habits.  The coaches are good at pushing you but also bringing you back down to earth when required.  After landing some really nice FS180s Phil had encouraged me to go for the 360, unfortunately the panic set in a bit and rather than keeping the smooth style I’d had earlier in the session I started spinning like a ballerina, with my arms in a perfect circle above my head.  Rather than letting me struggle on spinning like this J and Phil took me back to doing the 180s while trying different grabs to try and get me more confident and settled with my arms in the right place.

To counter the over aggressive board issue I’ve got a Forum Manual on its way to me from Sputnik, a bit shorted and more flexible I’m hoping that it will allow me to get the technique of ollying on to rails and spinning on and off on a slightly more forgiving board before switching back to my Craft for the mountain and for bigger set ups.

So a great weekend, brilliant park setups to ride, a shiny new snowboard on order and a nice roast dinner and a glass of wine to finish it off with.  Thanks has to go to Steve Revill, Maverix & Sputnik for making it as good as it’s been!  Jools has got some photos from SNO!storm up on Flickr