I <3 box.

Snowboarding is starting to take over. Its all I think about and all I want to do. Unfortunately, im not that good at it, so for now I just take pictures until the actual mountains open. Last weekend I went to a competition at Out of Bounds Snow shop. They were hosting Romes "I [heart] box" competiton. Mother nature didnt want to cooperate though and it rained most of the day. Luckily it dried up with a little daylight to burn. Heres some of my 100+ photos I shot.

chris nose pressin

blatt frontboard

chris front board

blatt steezin

chris frontboard

blatt

conor front board

All in all it was a good day. We met up with some people there and our friend Conor was riding too. I made a new friend, a fellow female rider, and hopefully we will ride this winter together. Chris, Conor, and Blatt all got free swag for throwin down. After the comp was over they let them stay and keep hitting the box as long as they groomed the snow and kept it rideable. So we stayed for another hour or so. Too bad my camera died. More snowboarding to come this weekend hopefully! 

New Jersey to Vermont

Have you ever done anything really spontaneous? Just out of the blue, decided to do something? Well, thats what happened to me this weekend. Around 8 pm on Sunday night my boyfriend, Chris, text me and asked me if I wanted to go to Vermont with him and our friend Pat to snowboard. I said "Yea! lets go! When would we leave?," and his response was "Oh I dont know, like 4am." So I drove home from work, packed all my gear and headed over to his place til around 5am when Pat got there. We loaded the car, filled the tank, and headed north to Vermont. Of course I fell asleep for the most part, but what can you expect? It was a pretty interesting ride. Chris drove the first half, and then Pat took over for the second half. Boy was that a mistake. We got lost a couple times because none of us, myself included, thought to get directions. (We have all been to Vermont a couple times before, so we thought we knew where to go -- not so much.) Chris turns on his navigation on his phone and boy oh boy did Pat take is seriously, "Dude! it said left, left!" "Yea, but I dont think it meant make an illegal u-turn back onto the road we just got off of!" So needless to say it was quite the adventure. We eventually got to Mount Snow, our destination, and it was pre-season paradise. 

the set-up on a patch of snow. 

Driving at 5 am.

Chris on the corrugated tube.

park crew.

corrugated tube.

pat pressin hard.

They had about 7-9 features set up on a patch of snow. Since this is only my second season I could only hit one of those features, which I gave up on after a while. I was getting very frustrated, but I took over 200 pictures, so I had fun doing that too. The corrugated tube was by far the best feature. Everyone was throwing down on it and trying new things. I know Chris and Pat landed a few new tricks and had an awesome time. The trip was well worth it. We left around 4 and I drove all the way back because the other two were veryyyyyy tired and needed sleep. For one days early season fun, it was amazing. Hopefully more spontaneous adventures will pop up this year.

Abandoned

Growing up in North Jersey twenty minutes outside of New York is way different than growing up in South Jersey. It really is two different worlds. Where I grew up we didnt have any abandoned farm houses, or any abandoned anything for that matter. Not all the green pastures, farms and yada yada yada.We are all gung-ho Giants / Jets and the Yankees.  So coming to school in South Jersey was a very big change for me. All the open fields, long roads, and Phillies / Eagles stuff was a culture shock. On my drives from north to south I always saw this one creepy looking house on route 322. Im not sure what town it was in, but I always passed it. It was always hard to see bcause of all the overgrown bushes but you could tell it was abandoned. I decided to explore with my camera and a friend (lets face it abandoned houses are creepy). Upon my arrival I discovered it was way more than just a house that was abandoned.

There was three abandoned cars, a house, a mechanics garage, a collapse shed and just a lot of overgrowth. There was also a barn behind all the trees, but it was too creepy and we couldnt get through the trees. I went back again a second time to see if I could get more pictures, but the cars were gone and the door to the house was open. So I guess its not gonna be abandoned for much longer. Im glad I got there when I did. I found more abandoned houses that I am scoping out. More creepiness to come!