The Beginning

Here I am, I made it & I am making it.

I am coming into my third week being here in Fort Collins, CO and I can not believe how awesome Colorado is. There is so much to do, so much beautiful scenery & so much snow!!! These are all fabulous things but moving to a new city is also hard. Luckily, I have had some help with my friends and family who have contacts out here & I couldn’t be more thankful.

Being in a new place by yourself, pretty much, gets you thinking a lot… Good & bad. Right now I am still looking for a job, which I should of had one like yesterday, but with all this free time, besides school and homework, I have really gotten the chance to focus on myself. What I need to work on as an individual, finding out who I am more and more, what goals I want, where I see myself this year, next year. You really get thinking. I know I am not perfect. I learned a lot in NC and now I get to work on those things here. It isn’t bad thing, being a lone. I can’t deny that I get lonely sometimes but that is just for the time being. I have taken some chances out here thus far  to meet people and it is funny cause you give yourself a little pep talk in your heard before reaching it out. But then I think about and say to myself, “What do I have to loose?” Nothing cause no one knows me yet!! It almost is a beautiful thing!

Anyways, my first week here I HAD to go snowboarding. What better day than the day before school starts, Martin Luther King Day. My aunt’s friend told me of a “small” mountain called Eldora. Now small to me and small to Coloradans is a bit different. It wasn’t that big but it was the perfect size to put the board back on since it has been over a year. I even went by myself & honestly, I had a great day by myself. I talked to many people on the lifts, got some advice about certain mountains, where to go, heard about how awesome Fort Collins is, I had an awesome day! That is what I came out here to do, to adventure, to experience life in a different way and here I am doing it!!! …And school of course.

Funny story about this day actually…

Since it is a smaller mountain and my first time back on any type of mountain, I took a pretty big tumble coming down a black diamond. For you snowboarders, I was on my toe side trying to switch back to my heels and I caught an edge. Granted I also hadn’t waxed my board or sharpened it in forever so that did not help the fact either. So I caught the edge and as I fall backwards I tumble twice, seeing my board above me then below me. It was a crazy fall. I am laying on my back and in the distance I here, “WOOOOO!!” Ha! I fell right near one of the ski lifts. I picked myself up and said “WOOOO!!” right back to let them know I was okay. I flip onto my knees and see my hat about 20 feet up the mountain. Luckily, someone was coming down a little after me but if you noticed… My hat color in the first picture… It’s white… The guy kept saying I don’t see a hat anywhere…. He was a skier (not that I am saying anything against skiers haha) but he finally got it and gave it to me.

But wait, the story gets BETTER. So, I boarded down to the one lift cause I was on the left side of the mountain & rode it up. As I snowboarded down to the same lift, I get in line & the lift guy was talking to another employee. He says, “I think that was the girl..” and points at me. I literally almost turned around to make sure he was talking to me and not someone behind me. Then he says, “Did you just take that gnarly spill last run?” I couldn’t believe that he saw it, this cute chair lift employee. I didn’t know to whether be embarrassed or pumped that he saw it happen. I said “Oh yeah, that was me two runs ago, I haven’t fallen like that in awhile.” As I get on the lift with another gentleman the lift guy gives me a high five and says “That looked pretty cool, glad you’re okay.” As I sit on the lift the guy sitting next to me says, “Well that is a pretty nice compliment.” I replied, “Yeah it was ha.”

Although it was a fall, it made my day.

Towards the end of the day it was getting super windy but coming up on this chairlift with the sun, it was so magical. It felt like Elsa, from the movie Frozen, was near me controlling the snow cause it was swirling around making little tornados and reflecting the sun. It was beautiful!!

The mountain closed at 4pm and I got home around 6:30pm and was in bed by 9pm. The first day of school of 8ams Tuesdays and Thursdays begun and I couldn’t be more high on life.

It was a great start to being in Colorado.