So I am officially a black belt! I'm pretty excited. I would say it took me about 2.5 years from when I started to get the belt. Which I believe is considered pretty fast. It's kind of a funny thing, because as the main instructor, Mr. Santillo was explaining, I'm not actually a better martial artist just because my belt is now a different color. Outside of the days of practice since then. The belt doesn't make me a good martial artist, but my practice during all those years leading up to it has. But for me, the recognition that they believe that I am good enough to deserve the black belt is what makes it so cool.
And then the next day I went to Colorado! We got a big house, and we filled it with 18 people lol. Most people had bedrooms that they could share, but some ended up on the couch. But overall it worked out pretty nicely I though. The house was pretty amazing, it had a hot tub that we could soak in after a day of skiing. Sadly though I didn't end up taking any pictures of the house. I didn't really take too many pictures in general mainly because it was cold out, and I had to take off my gloves to take the picture. As well as the fact that I was mainly focusing on getting better at skiing.
For the most part it worked! I feel like by the begining of the trip I was doing well on Blues (intermediate levels) and could do some easy blacks. By the end of the week I feel like I could have done pretty much any black (advanced) course. Not be pretty as I do it, but at least be able to get down the slope without embarassing myself too much. The double black diamonds though I still very much avoided.... That all being said though, it was on a black that I ended up falling, and lost a ski lol. But to be fair we were slightly off course, and doing some slightly more wilderness skiing at that point.
The pictures above and below were taken on the Breckenridge Ski Resort, which was the closest one to where we lived. Basically we could walk about a block to where a shuttle picked us up and dropped us off on the lift. Below is a picture of a black area ski lift. The trees are part of the fun, as you get so ski around them, and then there were also a lot of mogels (mounds of snow that you ski around) that kinda killed me that day. I think I fell down those mogels more than skiied down them lol. But by the end of the week I was doing a lot better.
Below is my favorite picture. This was at the highest lift on the mountain. Behind Rachel there is the back side of the mountain, and you could see for miles on end. It was pretty cool. Technically speaking this area was a double black diamond area (expert) but there was a ridge ski path down, that while was technically considered a double black, was really only steep enough to be a black I think. So I had no problems getting back down.
So in short the trip was quite a bit of fun! And Rachel is already thinking of next years ski trip! She is thinking next year will be in Utah I believe.
