My internship

During the course of my internship here at SASS I have been thrown some curve balls and I have thrown them some curve balls.

It all started with the first session and how I thought I had a wonderful internship that fit me perfectly. I was supposed to run around SASS with a video camera and interview other interns and make short video clips explaining their internships. Which is a super cool internship and they fit for me perfectly because they read through my questionnaire and saw I wanted to do marketing and I enjoy videography. So they tailored the internship to fit me perfectly.

But as I thought about it, videography was a hobby of mine and I see myself having no future in it... So after going through about half of the internship I chose to change it.

I went up to Travis and told him that I want to do something that I can carry on later in life. So I now work under him in the sales department and I can work my way into some marketing when I am ready. Call some people that are sitting on the fence about coming and sell them as hard as I can. Also, work on the affiliates program with them. The program is where they create incentives for surf shop workers to try to sell people to go to the surf camps in turn for coming at a discounted rate. Last, I have worked at creating a list of surf shops in the US.

Lots of fun and still more crunch time for me.


Just for fun, Some cows rolled through the yard yesterday, and two local strays, Tommy and Rocky

Street Art

There is some serious artwork on the buildings here. Any open walls in the town are just littered with one of two kinds of graffiti. There are some amateurs that decided that it would be cool to put up some chicken scratch on the wall. Some essay just walks up and thinks it will be cool to write the name CeSaR up on the wall kind of shit. But there is also some seriously talented individuals around here that know what they are doing. Crazy artwork that is super detailed and have deeper meaning. They rage from odd looking aliens to mermaids. Full murals on the wall that people such as Cesar wouldn't dare touch. There isn't rivalries of people here tagging over each others gang signs and logos. Walls do have their share of writings, but never overlapping as to discriminate anyones past writings. I think it is astecially pleasing to see around town and adds a bit a culture in a way that is new to me. Yes, I have seen plenty of wall-work in southern California inner cities, but its a different vibe here. No one expressing themselves to bash others. But more in the direction of self expression and doing art for the love of it, the way it should be.

Jamon y queso

It's everywhere and it's on everything. You go to a nice place for dinner or lunch and open up the menu. You see the different titles on each page, pizza, pasta, hamburgers, etc. And then under each title there is a list of what different options are available. In the US you would nomally see the pizza heading then it dives into the different pizza's that are offered like pepperoni or hawaiian. But no, not here. The first thing offered is a pizza with jamon y queso. Then every option below that one is a jamon y queso pizza with more added on to it.

You look at the hamburgers. It doesn't say anything about jamon y queso... So you think your in the clear. But in reality Hamburgers here automatically come with jamon y queso standard. Then you can add things such as a fried egg onto it among many other un-natural options.

In short, I don't really mind ham and cheese. Actually I really like ham and cheese. It is a good thing. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Town is both scary and wonderful at the same time. New places, new people, same language that I don't understand. All the food and drinks here are so cheap, even down to things like cigarettes being about $1 a pack US.

we ended up going to a wonderful dinner and eating lots of delicious food. I make trips to town frequently so as to grab groceries, get out of camp and go to an ATM.

ATM's here are hard to come by. There are only 2 at the mountain and they were out of money yesterday. The ones in town are behind locked doors during most of the day and there is only one place with outside walk up ATM's.

I am slowly finding out some of the best things that Argentina has to offer. Churros are the best, the coffee is good, the tea is great. Matea is a tea that has 5 times the caffine of coffee, so naturally I bought a month's supply of it and a sweet souvenir cup.

Siesta's

I have slowly become a huge fan of the siesta. Here they eat little meals all day then are forced to wait till an extremely late dinner at about 9 or later. So if you go to town between 1 and 5, nothing is open. Pretty much everyone just closes up shop, whether it be a bank or a small street shop. Not much is open.

So instead of fighting it I have learned to embrace the lifestyle. If you can't beat em, Join em, right? So I come home from snowboarding and I get in a nice siesta. Wake up in time for dinner and then have plenty of energy for the fiesta's to come.

Day FoUr LoKo

The sore throat has progressed. Now I can't breath, sore throat, and a headache. But I get up anyway and muscle through the mornings activities, we get tp the mountain and I find that I forgot my pass in my sickened haze. So, I get up the hill soon enough and we start hiking to upper laguna, to the metal monday jump. Its a back country booter that is about 65 ft in distance. On the hike up there it took me much longer than it should have and i puke on the way up. Needless to say I am done for today at this point.

I dont want to talk about it, but the rest of my day was not too enjoyable. We make it home and I get some much needed rest. With all this rest I find I feel well enough to go out for the night and we venture into town. We go to a club called dusk to dance the night away. Right when we pull up I see a line that we walk right by, then straight into the VIP booth. SASS knows how to do it. Definitely one of the wildest nights of my life.

Day 3

Morning wake up at the normal time... 7:15... wake up is at 8:00 but my room mates like to set their alarms for real early and snooze them repeatedly... Real cool. So, I am opting for a change of roomies mid way through the session. We are just on two different sleeping schedules. I tend to be out later than most. But I wake up this morning with a sore thoat...

Anyhoo, Breakfast isn't really a big thing here. They wouldn't normally even serve it, but they are catering to us. Breakfast is usually not too exciting. Lots of tired campers. Next you swing by the front door and pick up the sack lunch they make for us and head out to the bus. The bus ride is rather short and sweet and then we roll up to the monstrosity of a mountain.

It was a little socked in today, bummin about the weather we head up the hill to do beacon drills. Beacon drills are when one of the coaches set up an "avalanche situation" where they burry their backpack with a beacon in it. We must then, one by one, go rescue the "victim". We put our beacons in search mode, follow the arrow, check the distance, draw a box when we get close, probe for the victim, and then dig like hell. Avalanches are serious shit. Not only are they real, we need to be ready. It could happen to me, and I think that we can't ever get too much of this training.

A camper at SASS was trapped in an avalanche not too many years ago... And he is still here today because all of the campers are fluent in this procedure. Randal Stacy is a repeat camper and now an intern here at SASS that I will be doing a video project on. Pretty amazing story. Check out the footage of the avalanche here http://vimeo.com/1868541 its at the end.

But after the drills the clouds began to lift and I sent it up to the top of the mountain for the first time. We hike over the ridge, and find a perfect chornus to build a jump out of and get a solid crew to put it together real fast. We had a special photographer in the group with us in the group today, Nacho. He shoots for most all of the local magazines and says that I have a good shot at making it in it.

The jump is set up and we only have a short time before the bus comes, so we all make the best of it. Kids from Jackson Hole holding it down with some serious cab 5's and 7's, 14 yr old Teddy does his first backie, 5 people hit their first backcountry jump, Tommy gets a concussion, and a girl does her first backie. I just mess around on it, get my flight legs back. Lay one out, get a nice tindy backie, and a switch underflip. Successful day none the less and I look forward to hearing from Nacho, or eating some. Both would be equally exciting.

Get home and I'm beat. I make it to my bed quickly for a nap before dinner which isnt till 9:00. Get some grub, hang out with some dude and gals, see a funnel and tube used to consume beverages. Something that I actually recognize from home. A sense of home is always nice when I feel it's so far away. 7,000 miles away with a shitty internet connection. My connection to the world is lost.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and sick.

Suns out Guns out.