After a restful night of sleep on Saturday night, I woke feeling very refreshed the morning of Sunday the 21st of August. I had my friend and fellow Shred Betty team rider Randa staying with me as well as our team manager Diana who drove all the way down from mammoth area just to come support. Thanks lady!
We hopped in the cars early at 8:00 am to get up there by 9:00am which was my designated interview time for before the contest. After finding an awesome parking spot in Venice which is hard to do I went and got my interview out of the way, then found Diana again to grab some breakfast.
This contest is always a ton of fun, and it's fun to see people you haven't seen all summer, and what they have learned. After chatting with some friends who were also interviewing, Diana and I went to my favorite "Sidewalk Cafe," for some much needed consumables. With about 2 hours to kill before the riders meeting, we leisurely ate and drank coffee and watched the colorful people of Venice Beach, CA.
Finally at about 12:30pm the riders' meeting took place. We were all antsy to get up to the top of the drop in to practice on the same setup as the previous year which included; a down rail on the right and a skinny down box on the left. I only took a couple of practice runs in order to save energy for the main event. I was in the second heat, so I had a little time to sit back relax, visualize, and support my fellow supergirls.
When it was time for the second heat, I was more than ready to get things going, and put down a few solid moves right away. I wasn't trying to kill myself and the judges said they wanted to see consistency and landing tricks, so I made sure thats what I did. I felt pretty good about my performance, and was happy to hear my name announced into the top ten finalists. It was a hot day in Venice, and though I didn't have all of my snowboard gear on, I was still feeling the effects of the heat. It was awesome to see how much girls have improved and really got after it at this contest in the middle of the summer!In the end it was Laurie Currier who took the title again with her smooth riding, and technical tricks. I was happy to end in 9th place, after all i'm really NOT a rail rider!
