Summer times!

It’s been quite a while since my last post, but yeah what can I say.. time flies when you’re having fun! I’ve been super busy with way to much stuff, but I just cant choose what to drop to make a little bit more free time.. So I try to plan it all as good as possible and just enjoy it. These are the last weeks of uni before my holiday starts, so I had to finish up some stuff. It’s going allright and with just 2 weeks and 4 exams left.. I can’t wait till I’m free!!

In between school I am helping on the dogschool where I also train with my own dog. A couple off months ago my sister and I where asked if we where interested to help out with giving lessons in agility, search and hunt training. It’s super fun and interesting and every time we’re learning more and more! Check out http://www.werkhondentraining.nl for more!

the G

Since 2 months I am also training an arabian horse. He had a tough youth with some problems and he isn’t really easy in the trust off people, so a real challenge. As he started to work more, we found out he had a problem in his back, cause of a lack of muscles in his ass.. sooo last weeks I’m doing really intensive ground work with him to make him use his backlegs and his ass more. He’s already improved so much and within a week I can easily start riding again. Starting bareback and than back to the western saddle! 🙂 His halfsister and his uncle are really good western competition horses.. so who knows.. maybe one day! 😉

Keisho and me training on groundwork and trust.

I am living 10 minutes driving from a perfect lake where I always windsurf. Cause off my knee I couldn’t surf last summer.. only did some teaching. So I guess I want to make that up for myself! When there is wind, everything has to be rescheduled so I can go surfing! 🙂 I love being outdoors, hanging out with friends and learning new stuff! And this summer most of my time I will be working as a windsurf teacher, wich means.. being outside everyday, getting tanned, and surf whenever there is wind!

Me surfing! 🙂

It might be June.. but it’s still pretty cold some days!

Giolo wants to be a surfing dog too!

Further I try to keep on skiing once every week. Still going good! 3 Weeks ago there was a fun competition called ‘ Jib&Janneke’. You had to ride in pairs and make the best and most original run. It was super much fun and in the girls skiing category Isabelle Hanssen & me got 1st! 🙂

Last week I had an interview with a student who is working on a project of ‘Topsport Amsterdam’ together with ‘Projectbureau Olympische Ambitie’ and ‘Sport Science Unit VU’. She had to do some interviews with a few student off the VU university who are having a topsport arrangement on the uni. As soon it will be published I will put it on my blog. I also made a small edit, from most of my footage from the year before my knee injury and last season, for the interview. You can already check it out here!

Tomorrow there will be THE Skullcandy Railbattle. It’s a sick railbattle, with a sick setup outside which is different every year. Unfortunately I only had the change to ride it once, 3 year ago.. But now.. I can do it again! I hope the weather will be allright, cause with too much sun or rain.. the take offs will be gone in no time, which will make it all really sketchy. I hope it’s gonna work out and I am really looking forward to it! I will keep you posted how it went!

Dutch Championships

A new MacBook and some free time, so time to tell what was ON in that one week of the Dutch Championships!

Saturday:
After an easy drive we arrived in Laax, Switserland! The week I would spent together with my sis, Tina and Vincent. And only after one look in our apartment, the week already was a succes!! There will come a littl ‘Cribs edit’!

We packed out our stuff and went straight to Burgers! The best place to eat after a long drive! There we meet up with the Big Boy Tall D, who is spending his season in Laax and is making some extra money with flipping those burgers!
We did some eating, some chilling, checking out our pool, sauna and went straight to bed! Good start of the week I would say!

Sunday:
Training day, bluebird, Dutchies all over the place, slushy snow conditions, sick slopestyle course and the whole crew together having fun! Check out the edit in my previous post for the skiing action! Basically an other perfect day!

Monday:
Waking up at 7, getting ready, being up on the mountain at 9 and what we all already thought.. no sight, wind gusts , snowing and icy slopes.. so not the perfect conditions for a slopestyle contest.. So cancelled and chill time! Or maybe not.. We went straight down and to the Freestyle Acadamy. A big hall with trampolines, trampolines into foam pits, jumps into foam pits, skate bowl.. so just paradise! I tried to keep it a bit easy and wanted to get comfortable with spinning for my knee.. as I didn’t really tried that yet haha! But after two hours we where completely dead and the rest of the week I had sore muscles haha :D!
We had a few hours left to relax, eat some and to get dressed before the evening duty called.. Party time with FLINKE NAMEN! Damn that party went crazy!! Luckily it started early and luckily it was so good you didn’t needed any alcohol to enjoy yourself! 😉 After a few dancing, pushing, jumping, screaming, singing hours we where all done and it was time to go to bed..

Tuesday:
All good the slopestyle was cancelled due to the bad weather from monday.. but that ment.. tuesday slopestyle day! Everybody was having a hard time to be up at 9 for an hour of training, but as soon as you where riding.. the sore muscles and the less hours off sleep where all gone! Blue bird, nice course, slushy but allright conditions and everybody was having the time of their lives!!
We had 5 girls in total for the slopestyle comp, which wasn’t to bad at all! At 11 o clock we had an other hour of training with all the skiers and the snowboard girls. In that hour you managed to take a maximum of three training runs through the course.. if you where fast! So I hooked up with my sister and it got more like a hyperactive, racing, freestyle course. 😀 After I decided I’ve been a damn pussy for way to long now, I started spinning again on the jumps. I got sooo stoked to be able to really ski normal! In that same run, behind me, my sister somehow also decided to try some spinning after I don’t know how long!! So we ended up in some screaming happiness racing down the lift run, which pretty much stayed during the contest.
I got the run I wanted, minus some stupid mistakes haha 😛 I wasn’t to sure if I would land my 270 out of the downrail, cause I only did it one time before on that rail.. So after I landed it in my first run, the pressure was off, and so was my thinking.. I landed switch but reverted to normal, which pretty much downgraded my whole rail section points. Even though.. I was still stoked on that run, cause during training I finally tried a lipslide on a downtube, which worked out good in my contest run, and so did my frontside switch up on a lill flat down box. Came up a little bit short on the jumps, but yeah! 😀
My second run I got my rail part all good.. but the guys who decided to salt the jumps (to get them more icy/faster) didn’t told us they only did the big line.. So we all thought our  medium jumps would be faster too.. and we reduced our speed a little bit. This made my plan to do a 360 on the first and a 540 on the second jump.. into just a 3 and a straight air to a wonderfull knuckle.. Not so good haha!

After all, we had a sick day riding in the beautiful weather, the conditions where difficult, the guys where throwing down sooo many sick tricks and the crowd was cheering all the riders up! Amazing day and an early bedtime!

Wednesday:
Halfpipe, training at 9, contest at 9.30, flatlight, icy pipe in the beginning, no edges on my ski’s, still exhausted from the day before.. perfect! Well I gotta say, riding halfpipe is not exactly my thing, I’ve never liked it and I think I will never like it, but yeah.. First time Dutch Championships.. not to much girls.. we gotta keep the sport growing.. so oke, I will compete in halfpipe..
Luckily Robina does like it and I think for coming out of the Netherlands, she ain’t so bad at all!! And even for the boys, we got some unknown halfpipe talents!

After halfpipe we had the whole midday free, so we decided to ride the jump for the Big Air contest. It has been over 2 years that I jumped a good sized big jump, but after the guys told me this one wasn’t to bad, just real poppy and the speed was allright I decided to give it a go. Kinda shaky, but all stoked about the feeling of flying again, I had an other perfect day in the pocket! And the day wasn’t even over!

Late in the midday we spent some time in the Freestyle Academy again and the evening was booked with an other good party made possible by the SFFRMKRS! As I wanted to use my ‘free’  Thursday for practicing big air, I pulled it through the night on RedBull which worked out just fine!

Thursday:
After a little sleep out I went up the mountain, to find out that this day was insanely hot! Something like 25 degrees on the hill, which turned the landing of the big air jump into some kind of waterpool. After one nasty but soft (due to a lot of water) crash I decided to chill out the rest of the day and enjoy the sun.
Robina decided to come up a little bit later, but ended up chilling out in the gondola for a quite a while. They had to get rescued out of the gondola by a chopper! Pretty sick and I think she will put the footage of her flying trip online somewhere soon!

As the day passed by, we stayed up the hill with a little group of skiers and boarders for a little barbecue and a sick sunset shoot thanks to Ananda van Welij.
After that it was straight into the shower, getting dressed and ready to go for an other party. This time with The Opposites! It was sick, but with the Big air contest on Friday and all the less hours of sleep the last days.. we ended up in bed quite early.

Friday:
Ofcourse the skiers had to ride Big air first, so one more day of waking up way to early.. It was a bit windy and kind of icy, so I decided to ride the small jump for the contest. None of the other girls where riding the big one, so I thought it would be smart to stay in one piece and go for safe too. I managed to land both my runs and that was enough.
The rest of the day I watched the ski and snowboard guys going crazy and I even did some snowboarding myself!
The last night the party went on with DIO and The Flexican, which started not to crazy, but ended up in the best party of the week!!

Pic by: fotograferen.net

Saturday:
Sore muscles, extremely tired, but all happy with some nice memories we went back home to the Dutchielands!

All the data from my old mac book was still there, so Robina is working on the last edits! Stay tuned!

Contest time!!

Last two weeks have been pretty hectic. I am completely over-scheduled with school and try to ski as much as I possibly can.

Two weeks ago there was a lill contests, Jibsy Kings 3,  in the Netherlands at the indoor dome called Snowbase. It was a pretty sick park, with just rails and jib things. Even though we where just with 5 girls, we had a good comp! Isabelle Hanssen who also just came back from an acl injury, is doing a pretty good job to make me stay focussed on skiing 😛 She’s just 2 months back on ski’s and killing it! We had a sick day riding and Isabelle got 2nd and I got 1st. So we both walked away with some sick Nike 6.0 shoes and nice goodies!

Last week was the main event for the freeskiërs in the Netherlands. It was the first year that the freestyle skiërs where allowed at the Dutch Championships! We managed to be there with a pretty big group and showed them what we can!

Because of some bad ended pre-drinking my beloved MacBook ended up drinking the beers.. and drunk himself into a coma. Thats why we couldn’t finished up the editing from last week. I hope I can get him fixed this week and I am praying that his harddisk is still alive, so nothing of the footage will be gone… I’ll post a new update as soon as possible with all the details and footage from last week!! I can already tell you one thing, it was the sickest week of the season and shit went down on the slopes and in the club!

Down here are the 3 edits my sister managed to make from the first 3 days (Before the Mac crashed). Enjoy and stay tuned for the rest that’s coming up soon!

Riding laax!

My sister made a nice edit of the Dutch crew riding in Laax. The sun, the rails and the bunch of friends made it a perfect skiing day! That’s how you want everyday to be like!! The edit is on the site of a dutch surf/boardshop close to my place, so check it out!!

http://eurofun.nl/freestyle-ski-edit-by-robina-romani/

Down here is a picture of my old horse. Last Saturday all of a sudden she became really sick. Even though she pulled it through the day on medicines, that night she was in big pain and we had to let her go.. She basically was my best mate for the last 9 years, so I’m gonna miss her like crazy.. But with her 25 years on this planet and the best life a horse could wish for… it’s allright..

It’s all coming back!

The whole month of february I’ve been in the Netherlands. Had three exams to do for school and decided get extra fit in the gym. I’ve also spent a lot of my evenings in the indoor dome, Snowworld, we got out here. It has some nice rails and a small jump. So just perfect to keep on skiing and to learn new stuff while I am at home.
The fact that my physiotherapist told me that as long as it felt good I could do everything I wanted again and that I was all good to go, really helped me to push myself forwards. Cause after those 2 years of injury/rehab time I’ve been forcing myself to keep it real easy. This now makes it hard to turn around that little shitty button in your head and start riding like before. Stoked, motivated and not thinking to much about the risks and injuries.
It was good to ride in Snowworld again, thousand of labs on an evening, riding with my friends who are all helping me a lot and just a knee which is feeling perfect and never get swolen!!! It’s the best!

Last week I went to Laax, Switserland together with my sister, she was there to write an article about the European Freeski Open. This is now online on http://www.twintipz.nl/?p=1981 so check it out!! I was just there to ride the normal park and didn’t competed. It’s not really about the competing for me at the moment, but about staying fit, having lots of fun and learning as many new tricks as possible!!

So this past week definitely has been super much fun and really good for getting into shape. The slopes in Europe are absolutely more helpfull to get your legs trained than the flat hills in the States 😉 This was the first week since my first acl torn (exactly 2 years ago) that I actually felt that I was skiing for real again!! Riding rails is going as I was used to and jumping.. well jumping has never been my best thing, but I am starting to feel comfortabel about it again. 😀
I’ve really got some respect for the girls who have been out cause of injury’s and just drop all their tricks again the first month back on ski’s.. But yeah, I guess as long as it feels good and you’re getting there, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes 😉

Right now I am back home and got to figure out some school stuff, cause not all the exams turned out as good as I hoped.. The months April and May are gonna be super stressful with school, but I better get it done this year, so it will give me some more space next year. The upcoming weeks I am gonna ride as much as I can in Snowworld and in the first week of April there will be the first Dutch Championship in Laax! Really looking forward to his week, gonna be mad fun for sure!!!
For the rest I am gonna enjoy the sun out here and I am hoping on some higher temperatures to get the spring started!

Down here is a small edit I made a year ago for my physiotherapist and gymtrainer to get them an idea about this skiing thing I do. It are just some old shots from a few years ago. I though it would be fun to put it online anyways.

 

And some pictures of last week Laax offcourse! 😀

Laax in the sunshine!

Emma 1st, Maria 2nd, Katie 3th! Best girls podium ever! Big Up girls!!

Elias 1st, Roy Kittler 2nd, Oscar Sherlin 3th!

No Euro Open without a grazy party!

Shots Shots Shot! (Luckily I was driving 😉 )

G enjoying the Swiss sun on the balcony

Holland Times

It’s now been 4 weeks since I am back from France and the last time I skied.. Last four weeks I’ve been pretty busy with school and enjoying my easy time at home. Not a lot of crazy things happened. Spent some time in the gym and did a lot of cruising on the beach with my horse. She’s pretty old and you really start to see it now 🙂

Last week I had my last appointment with my physiotherapist. My knee is doing great and it seems that I can perfectly feel how he is doing. Soooo basically I am now officially able to do everything I want to do!! It’s been 10 months since surgery, so I am proud of myself that I kept it nice and easy all this time. Planning to keep it this way for a little longer and spent more time in the gym until it really feels like old times again.
So upcoming weeks I am gonna start skiing in the indoor dome again. This is less than an hour driving from my place, so perfect thing to do in the evenings. First I had the plan to compete in the Mayrhofen Open next week.. but I don’t want to push things and rather stay in one piece this year. Maybe I will be going to the Austrian Open, but I am not so sure about that either.. Just gonna see how skiing is going and see where the snow is gonna fall.. Because for now.. I think I will catch a whole lot better and more snow back in the States!

Down here are some pictures my sis took this afternoon when we where on the beach. Since a couple of days it’s freezing cold again over here.. I like winter and snow and stuff.. but in the Netherlands.. Just give me goddamn summer! It’s flat anyways around here, so what’s the point of coldness?!

 

Surprise!!

Last week, Tuesday the 4th was my 21st birthday. The day itself was really easy and I went out for dinner with my parents and grandma. Because you only turn 21 once, I wanted to throw a party on the 15th. My parents where oke with it so I send out an invitational. Last friday, the 7th, two of my good friends took me out for dinner in a super nice restaurant, as their bday gift. Afterwards we should go to my place, pick up the car and drive to The Hague for a good old party night in town.
With the dinner they where already giggling a bit, so I thought they asked the restaurant to come up with a cake and candles or something like that.. But nothing happened.. We went back to my place and before I knew my two friends where already inside and my dad told me to leave the bikes outside for a minute. I didn’t get it but without really thinking to much I got in and wondered why there where all chairs on the side in the living room.. Asked what the heck was going on and all of a sudden more than 30 of my best friends came around the corner!!! SURPRISE!! I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening and that they all managed to didn’t say a thing about it to me! An hour later I was still shocked and was having the time of my live with seeing a lot of friends which I haven’t seen for a while!
Big props for my parents and especially to my sister for all the hard work. She has been in complete stress to undo my own invitational for the next week and to make sure nobody said something to me. I still feel kinda stupid I didn’t noticed anything about it, but at least that made the surprise even bigger! Thanks everybody for being there!!

Getting crowded in the corner

 

 

 

 

Hiding in the kitchen

 

 

 

Friends all over the place!

 

 

 

 

Birthday Cake!!

It’s been a while

It’s been a while since my last update, but now I finally found some time! A lot of things happened over the last 2 weeks.
First of all I had some exams.. which didn’t went to well because learning with a jetlag isn’t a great thing to do! So the weekend after that I had holidays! Christmas morning we had a nice breakfast at home with the family and some little presents! Christmas evening we had a nice meat fondue dinner which was awesome too!

Giolo his Christmas presents. On the right you see the killed Santa Claus which he got the night before. The moose is still in one piece.. for now..

Sunday after Christmas my parents, my sis and I went to France with the caravan. The place is called Flumet and we used to go there with the whole family when we where little. Robina and I haven’t been there for almost 10 years, so it was fun to see the camping and the small ski resort, which they pimped up and connected to 3 other ski resorts to make it look better.
Our aunt and uncle with their children where also there, so I had a good time skiing with the family and taking it easy like a real holiday 😉 Even did some snowboarding for a couple of runs. I really liked it, but my knee didn’t agree to much.. so gotta stay with the skiing thing!
To keep the activity level high, we walked up the mountain for 1.5hour on snowshoes one evening, had a great cheese fondue dinner in a nice old restaurant in the middle of nowhere and the young ones sled down on the small ass/butt sledges (got no idea how you call them in english!) Ended up with a fun night of walking, eating, drinking, screeming and a lot of laughing! Oh yeah and a sore ass from sledding over all the bumps!

Fondue time!

My nephew got a ride in a pistenbully. He was stoked!

The day before Newyear it’s normal for Dutch people to bake ‘oliebollen’. Believe me, it’s the best! So in our case, all the dutch moms where standing outside in the sun with a deep fry pan making oliebollen, while the kids where on the mountain skiing!

He managed to get some ‘oliebollen’ himself!

The winter camping life.

Since Monday I am back home and upcoming 3 weeks I gotta do some school stuff. It’s really good to spent some time in the gym again and it’s nice to be home for a while to enjoy the winter over here (rain and cold, just great!). I am hoping I will be able to go skiing in Austria at the end of Januari to get some good old Euro freshies!

Home Sweet Home

The last days in Breckenridge where pretty easy. We skied a bit, watched the Dew Tour, I did some studying and off course we partied our pants off on Friday and Saturday evening. We where flying out on Monday morning but as the weather forecast wasn’t the best and we didn’t wanted to miss our flight… we took the Colorado Mountain Express to Denver on Sunday. Some guys who where with us in the shuttle got pretty stressed out… it took us 4 hours instead of 2 to get to the airport. They didn’t watched the weather forecast and they didn’t thought about the Sunday afternoon traffic jams.. so they all missed their flights.. Oeps.. Haha
We took a nice hotel and had a good night sleep with a terrible breakfast.. Damn how can you eat that shit?! Once we got on the airport we heard that all flights from British Airways where cancelled and that over 4000 people where stranded in Denver till Christmas. Also all flight to Paris, Frankfurt and Brussel where delayed or cancelled… Luckily we where flying with US Airways and both of our flight to Philly and Amsterdam where perfectly on time!! It’s great to be back home the only down point is that I got some stressful days of studying and exams coming up.. But whatever, there’s snow outside and my dog is the happiest thing on the planet!

Western style and Skiing

It had been on my things to do list for a while and yesterday was the day. Together with Lena Stoffel, Caja Schoepf and my sister Robina, we went horseback riding at the Triple G Range close to Vail. The weather wasn’t the best and the roads where kinda shitty, but we managed to drive up there. The Range was cozy and all western style, with a good amount of Quarter horses. The ride was windy and snowy, but that didn’t really matter. The incredible mountain view, the Texas Longhorn Cows, some Deers, the small trails through old rivers and the well trained horses made it all worth it.

I made a small edit from the ride. (the quality isn’t the best)
Horsebackriding from Robina Romani on Vimeo.

When we drove back to Breckenridge, the roads got even worse because of the snowfall and 1 hour after we got back home, we heard the road by Vail got closed. So we where pretty lucky! 🙂

Today it was bluebird so we went to Keystone for the last time and made some pictures. I don’t know why, but my knee started to hurt and it just got worser as long as I kept riding. So back home, for some blogging, studying and gym time.

Here some pictures of today.