A Circle

Well time flies when you work 12 or more days in a row with a 3 days free. The reason for some morning hour long skins to the top you see above I am writing this on August 21 and I have lived here in Valle Nevado for 6 days short of 2 months and 6 days past getting fired.

That's right, I got the axe. In the little over 1.5 months I worked here, I rattled some cages for sure. Also made a pretty positive impact on the rental and repair shops as well as the people. But the thing is that they just don't understand how the ski resort business is supposed to work. Most people here just go through the motions and don't care if it is “right” or the “wrong way”.

So, long story short, I work the way I was taught was right and when you try to walk in to another world and tell them that things are wrong, or should be another way....they don't like that too much. So after unintentionally making some bad vibes, I was moved to the Dome rental center in the parking lot which was super fun. People who did not stay in the hotel would rent from us who were a lot more real. We had a damn good speaker for bumping music, internet on the rental computers and a ton less customers.




So I got on the schedule of working in the Domo till 1pm, eating lunch, and riding for an hour or more. Then after that I would open the repair shop, turn on more music, and do some casual tuning until the rush came at like 4:30. Work till 7, eat dinner and that was a rap.

In this month and a half I had three sessions of free days. They went as follows:
1st weekend: Ride Monday, sunny, soft snow and fresh turns on old pow. Met some peeps from the east coast with two high school “new schooler” kids. Shredded with them, parents bought me lunch...nice.
Went to the city with my broski Jorge Pavez to deal with Visa paperwork, saw stuff, rode the metro, ate really good cheap sushi. Hitched a ride back to Valle with a rich dude in an A3, he spoke really good English, rode some more.....Back to work for 12 more days.


2nd weekend: POW POW. It dumped like 2 feet or more on my first day Tuesday. Super stormy day, heard some people speaking English in the lift line, got on the chair with them. It was the Burton family~ Jake, the kids, friends, a crew. We killed powder together.
The next two days were bluebird~ I got first lines on every chair in the resort over those days. It was stellar. I met some cool peeps to ride with and ended up changing rooms to live with people who share common interests and had much more space for all my junk.

3rd weekend: After 14 days of straight work....FUNness~ Good sunny conditions, shredding around, went to the other resort La Parva who re-nigged on my job. Got to tell that guy WHATS UP. I crossed between resorts like 5 time that weekend. Stayed with a friend in Farellones and scored invites to a party with open bar and the works. Ended up at a different disco for Reggae night and vibed out till 4am.
Good days.

This brings me to my last days on the clock.

After hearing that people in the point of sale for the repair shop were being suspected for scamming money, I was trusted with a cross check list for repair tickets. OK, of course in any repair shop in the Northern Hemisphere you do free work for important people and friends. But here in Chile, they can't understand that for some reason.

So I got ratted out by my own kind. Some kid with a nick name Pollo “chicken” And it fits so well.
He went and told my original boss who hired me I had some board with no ticket.
I said:
“Oh shit. Well yeah I'm tuning shit for free or tips. This shop is running because of me. When I got here, you didn't know how to use the Stone, or much else properly, and you were not even using coolant! I work more and more effectively than anyone you have ever had.”

Well no matter what happens the day always ends and another begins. This one ended with the start of a storm. It snowed...a lot. And it's still snowing as I write this. I worked the next day and watched it DUMP. Then went out to brave the almost no visibility and slay some pow. After skiing for way too long I got back to the shop at about 3 and was walked down the Human Resources by my little bitch of a boss only for the office lady to tell me why I was fired.
1.no word on my visa.
2.repair of equipment with no ticket.

I called BULL SHIT on both and pointed out they where breaking my contract. AND on top of that my boss was trying to get me kicked out that day with 2 hours of notice in a RAGING snow storm. So we got the director of the mountain involved, who loves me...and gave me 24 hours to stay no problem. That afternoon was a ridiculous amount of work in the shop. I was laughing as I packed all my stuff.

The next day was BLUEBIRD POW sick. I rode all morning and then went to talk with THE LADY. Head of operations. She apologized more than anything. Gave me a few more days to stay here and just re-upped good vibes. So the next day I happened to score a rout with patrol to open the backside. But we had a crazy wind event and everything was bunk. So we sat in one of the lift shacks for an hour or so while one of the patrollers told me all about Pucon's volcano Villarrica. Full detailed drawing of the the mountain to the T bar.

That night...in snowed a lot! And that next day was supposed to be my last day, but it snowed....a lot! And there was an avalanche on the road that luckily did not kill anyone, but 25 cars were stranded on the road. I skied all morning and then volunteered for a backup rescue team. It was getting dark and luckily we did not get called out. That night we built some jumps around the dorms and finally got shut down by security because there were so many stupid kids being loud. But everyone had a great time. It was cool.

The next morning. It was BLUEBIRDPOW again! I felt in the zone after jumping on the foam pad at the gym and fist line off a little cornice I got a front flip~ felt good first time trying it on the snow. So we killed pow all day and the road never really opened. Plus I had an excuse to stay that I was going to help the park crew set up for a women's comp. on Saturday the 22nd of August. So we worked at that yesterday and it was another sunny day. These kids from Tahoe visiting and filming here built a jump pro style. Really nice...My first backflip attempts..under rotated the 1st just a bit, and over a tad on the second. I wish there were pics but not the case. Next time...

So today marks the day of my last legit day living at Valle Nevado. I'd some it up as:
Love my work-hate my job, love skiing here-hate not skiing here, good people- not good people, good food-free food, had no time-on vacations, didn't speak very good Spanish-speak more not very good Spanish. Lived in Farellones-back to Fare.