Yes, it is that time of year already!! Can you believe it? SPRING is HERE!! Spring skiing at the resorts equals all the fun festivals, the funny costumes and the crazy contests. Every April Sunday River has their Parrot Head festival and their Bust and Burn contest. What this entails is 4 days of party, party, party. Everyone busts out their wild shirts, grass skirts, crazy hats and hits the slopes to the sounds of Jimmy Buffett cover band after Jimmy Buffett cover band. It is a lot of fun. The weather is always warm, the sun is shining, good spirits everywhere.
I haven't been to Parrot Head in years, I had been in either Sugarloaf at their Reggae Fest or in Colorado for the last five years. It was fun to be back and do it all again. They had a HUGE turn out. I heard some people say it was the largest they had seen in years. I think it was the amount of snow that we have gotten this year that had everyone coming out of the woodwork. Look at the crowd! It was amazing!
The Bust and Burn portion of Parrot Head weekend is a Bumps contest and the famous Pond Skimming contest. This is my favorite part!! I cannot believe how crazy these people are! This water is FLIPPIN cold - complete with mini icebergs floating about....NO THANK YOU! You are in your gear and you get soaking wet! I can't imagine hanging out in icy cold, sopping wet snowboard boots. Ick! It is hilarious to see some of the costumes and the belly flops that happen at this event. Full, double ejection of skis, "yard sales", the whole nine. This one guy, (below) was one of my favorites...... in "hindsight" I had wished I was uphill for this one. He started off with just shorts and no shirt...so I am thinking, "that isn't much of a costume"....until he pulled his pants down to expose nothing but a banana hammock thong! NICE!!
He had a nice belly flop finish....
If you look closely in this picture, you can see the thong string...... LOL! NICE! He was very entertaining. ;-)
Only a few people made it all the way across, which was really cool to watch. Here are a few of them...........
There were actually a lot of little kids that did this too.....they were brave little kiddos...but I can't believe their folks let them do it. You should have seen the instant shock and fear that was in their face the minute they hit the water....they were FREEZING!!! Some of them couldn't even talk when they finally got their skis and got out of the water. Poor things!!!
My other favorite part of the Parrot Head weekend is partying with friends, of course! ;-) My good friend Skippa came down for the occasion!
Doesn't Skip look like he was in Brokeback Mountain in this picture? ;-)
Sorry Skip....I had to! I mean, the shirt, the hat....C'mon!!!
This is Mikey getting down on the floor, this kid has the moves!! SERIOUS!!! He can dance!!
Mary and Chuck........
Paul and I.......
Posing? Dancing? Not sure.......
Typical Skippa face...............
This is Tracy getting PISSED! There was a girl who approached she and her husband, Mikey with her friend and wanted to play doubles in pool with them. Tracy is good and this girl kept F'n around and blabbing to everyone in the bar and wasn't paying attention and playing 100%. Tracy was pissed! It was hilarious!!! Tracy is a FUNNY girl! I love her, she cracks me up every time I hang out with her!!
This is me showing off my favorite new T-shirt....my Retallack, BC CAT vacation shirt that says, "Girl Powder" on the back. "THAT'S RIGHT!!"
Sully and I.........
Okay, I have to tell you this story.....this is HILARIOUS. You would have to know my friend Bobby to get the whole picture, but I will try to explain it....I think this is one of those, "you had to be there" moments. So, we were on the chairlift talking about tattoos for some reason. I think it started when I was telling them about my boyfriends tattoos. Bobby has a very thick Mass accent and is very sarcastic in general. So he proceeds to tell me, "Yeah, when I was 18, I wanted to get a tattoo and I went in with no plan and picked something out. Back then, (he's 45) all they had to choose from was an eagle, the Grim 'Reapa' (Mass accent) and a unicorn. So I got the unicorn. Everyone makes fun of it and one of my buddies calls it, 'my little pony'." I was laughing my ass of because I thought he was totally kidding and being sarcastic. I mean, who the hell gets a tattoo of a unicorn unless you are a little girl? Not a man for sure!! So, I started giving him shit, "That is so gay" and, "Your kids must love it, especially your daughter. Who gets a mystical creature tattooed on them? You may as well get the Liger (Napoleon Dynamite) tattoo as well!" etc. etc. I was cracking up. Mikey was with us and was laughing his ass off at this exchange and then Bobby was like, "I am serious, I have a unicorn". It was like a record scratched to a halt...."What?! You have to be F'n kidding me? LET ME SEE IT!!!" I yelled. So, he unzipped his jacket and pulled down his shirt over his shoulder to show me the flippin unicorn tattoo!!! OMG!!! I was stunned and started cracking up even harder and yelled, "WHAT THE 'F' IS THAT?!! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ACTUALLY HAVE THAT!!! OMG!!" We all laughed so hard. I was shocked!! Bobby is a super cool guy, he makes fun of people all the time - but can take it just as well too which most people can't. He is a riot. He makes fun of me for being a boarder all the time because he telemarks. But what is funny about that is when I first met him 9 years ago when we were both Ambassadors, he snowboarded as well. Steve told me a great jab at telemarkers one time which was, "free your heel, slow down your friends". I said that to Bobby one time and he didn't like it at all!! It was so funny. Actually, he did think it was funny and a great jab, but he acted like he was all offended. He says, "gay's on tray's" to me all the time. So....we are even now!!
By the way...if there is anyone reading this right now and is in anyway offended by anything I am writing in my blog....guess what....it's my blog and you don't have to read it....so in summary, I don't really care. Simple solution......go to the upper right hand corner of your screen and click on the red X. Good bye!
Okay, back to the party.........
Chuck and I......
I also met Chuck while I was an ambassdor. I was an ambassador from 1999 to 2002. It was a lot of fun and I met a ton of people....all of them are STILL at the River and I reconnected with them all which was great! It has been a really fun winter. When I first saw Chuck again for the first time in 5 years at the beginning of this season, he said to me, "I can't believe you are here right now. I JUST came accross an old picture I took of you back when we were Ambassadors. Remember when we saw a snowboard that had the funny sticker on it that said, 'smoke crack & worship satan?' and I had you pose with it?" I was cracking up because I had completely forgotten about that picture. I posed with a strangers snowboard all happy and smiling with such a crazy message. It was a funny sticker. Chuck just emailed the picture to me last week, here it is....isn't it funny? This picute was taken in 2002...so I was 27!! I wish I was still that young!! :-(
Skip had fun messing with this girl who had the EXACT same hat as me. (Skip was rocking my hat all night). He loves to mess with other people, especially the ladies. ;-)
Booty dancin.......
This is my game face.....Tracy and I were so ON! I kicked her ass....well, by maybe two seconds. ;-)
This is Bobby and his wife Stacey. She is super nice as well. They are a really cute couple and have two really cute kids.
Mikey and his wife Tracy.....they are the perfect match. They are both soooo hilarious and just goof around all the time. I love hanging out with them. All I do is laugh.
I was so lucky to catch this off the chairlift. We were sitting on the chair watching people going off jumps and this poor guy had a shocker after lift off. I don't know if you can see it from this picture, but I blew it up below.
Look carefully, DAMN!! His frigin ski blew off mid-air...see it BEHIND him??!! Drag. That wasn't a very fun landing for him I am sure.
Speaking of crazy jumps.....so check THIS out!!
Skip and I were riding around over on Aurora peak. We were sitting on the chairlift an saw this CRAZY amount of snow being piled up on one of the runs....one of the steaper runs on the mountain. We went and checked it out and had no idea what was going on. No one was really talking about it, so we hadn't heard anything about it. Most of my friends at the River are Ski Patrolers, so I called one of them to inquire what was going on. As it turns out, there is a pro skier, Simon Dumont, who wants to break the world record for highest jump out of a quarter pipe. The current record was being held by a pro snowboarder, Terje Haakonsen, at 32 feet. So his goal was 34 to 35. In order to do this, he has to come flying at this HUGE jump at over 50 miles per hour and sky out of it almost 7 times his height. Can you say, INSANE?! The plan was to pull this off during the week - after Parrot Head, so unfortunately, I wouldn't get to see it. Here is an example of the jump size and a picture of Simon in action. I would have loved to see this in person. Not only because it would have been incredible to witness, but also in doing some research on this kid, (21 years old!!) I noticed that he is kind of fun to look at too! ;-p
These are pics of the jump they built at Sunday River........
FRIGIN HUGE!!
Simon in action.....and.....um.....hello! ;-)
After I started working on this post, a few days have gone by and I kept an eye on his progress to see if he pulled it off.....and as it turns out....HE DID! Congrats Simon! That rocks! Good for you!! 34 feet!!! Read the full story here, it is good: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=843034
Here's the money shot! He pulled it off!!
One last thing I wanted to share.... One night, my girlfriend, Regina invited me to go see the Harlem Globtrotters with she and some new friends. I went along because I had never seen them, I thought it would be fun and I always love meeting new people. I had a lot of fun, but the funny thing I didm't realize is that this is an event that is actually geared towards little kids. Ummm....yeah, I think I was the only one there without a 4 year old. "My kid is in the bathroom!!"
It was fun though and I got to meet Jill and Gabe who I think are really cool. Jill actually is in the Portland Sympony and we are all going to go see her play one night. I am excited about that. As it turned out, Gabe and Jill were going to be skiing at Sunday River the following day, (after the Globetrotters). As was I, of course. So we eneded up meeting up on Saturday as well as the following Saturday. We have had fun skiing together. They are really nice. Here are some pics from that night and of Jill and Gabe.
