Thursday, August 4, 2011

Is Winter Here Yet?

Peter Nowak, Beaver Creek, CO
       I'm not really sure how to start, more like restart my blog, but I've been dreaming of winter lately so I thought I would begin with some old stuff.  If you have already seen these...sorry.  I will be posting more recent material soon. Anyways, most of the pictures and footage are from Beaver Creek and Vail this past winter.  I also went and got stuck in some sierra cement at Lake Tahoe for a weekend. The riders in the video are Bjorn Johnson, Aaron Johnson, and my brother Peter Nowak. And that's me with the yellow thrift store skis trying not to smash my then, brand new camera, into a tree.
     
     I was lucky enough to fly back from Vail to San Francisco on some guest first class tickets.  I was the only one in first class so I boarded by myself and was able to sneak a quick video on my phone. (I usually get yelled at when trying to film outside a plane) You would think flying alone in first class would be nice. Nope. The flight attendants wouldn't leave me alone.  I knew everything about them once I got to California.  The constant stream of bloody mary's and warm cookies was a nice touch though.

Beaver Creek At Night
        Upon arriving in San Francisco, I headed straight for the coast with my girlfriend to meet up with some good friends at Pismo beach.  We arrived on the beach at 4am in the pitch dark and could barely see where everyone else had set up there tent sites.  So we picked what we thought was a good spot, shared some wine, set our tent up and fell asleep listening to the crashing of waves.  Well we soon found out that we were sleeping in the middle of an ATV, dune buggy, and dirt bike highway.  I crawled out of our tent to find all kinds of off-road vehicles kicking up sand and circling us.

The Island
     Then, I spotted the ocean, tuned out, forgot about the noise and started boiling water.  I quickly poured the water over some disposable coffee, stirred it, took a sip, looked around, and got a certain feeling of comfort. I felt at home, like I never left this place. I felt that we, human beings, belong in nature and nowhere else. We are not designed for anything but nature. And as soon as my mind felt at ease, an obnoxiously shiny dune buggy flew by our tent site reminding me of my not so natural surroundings.  By the end of the day, I was also charging up and down the dunes...