Flying into the unknown with the feeling of uncertainty of leaving the safety and warmth of being at home. Flying with people who will have a different perspective of how things should be done. Basically flying with people that might like to live a different lifestyle to me. Although these thoughts were roaming around inside me like a car racing around a track, I took the opportunity and I went to the USA for 4 weeks to go ski some amazing new terrain.

After 24 hours of travelling we finally arrive, walking through the gate with a massive sign above, welcome to denver. By then i was full of so many emotions, i was scared, anxious tired, sick, jet lagged  but most of all excited. We arrive to one of their friends house, i go into the bathroom and all my emotions and the last 24 hours catch up to me and they hit me like wave.

I was tired and scared, i was a whole days travel away from my family with people who i had only ever skied with 10 times. I had vomited on the plane and it felt like i was going to then.  I was 13 year little old boy thinking why the heck did i come of this trip. So anyway I was travelling to Breckenridge, Colorado in the US with Greg Harrington and Luca Harrington for a sort of ski holiday/coaching.

Breckenridge is known for great skiing and is also a central place for other nearby ski fields like A-Basin, keystone and Copper Mountain. For the first day we were skiing at Breck. It Was a normal ski day, pack lunch, load the car, head up the mountain, ski, have lunch and ski more, head down, unpack and chill and munch on some food. Well at least that’s what I thought a typical ski day was.

However some things changed, so imagine this, I was been woken up where I had to drag myself out of the warmthness of my bed earlier than before. Before I could have breakfast I had to help around with a few things. After having breakfast it was time to load the car but in a different fashion then what I did at home as there was no roof box. This meant that who ever got the unlucky seat would have skis bumping into their head.

Once skiing was finished and we were back at the house, where I was keen to chill but things that I never usually did had to be done like grocery shopping and keeping the house clean. So when we went to the local supermarket, we got the usual things you need in the pantry, fruit, snacks for skiing, dinner ingredients and bread. We went to the bread corner, looked at the loaves and decided on what we thought was just normal white bread.

The next morning we start making our lunch, I get the bread and as i handle it, the bread crumbles to pieces because how artificial it is. When you find a slice that did not crumble, it was disgusting and you wouldn’t want to take another bite. This meant that for that whole trip I never ate another piece of toast or a sandwich. Never eating another slice of bread was a poor decision on my behalf.

This is because since we were on a tightish budget, we didn’t want to spend money on much snacks so a sandwich was supposedly the “go to snack”. But this wasn’t going to be the case for me so i ate bare to nothing the entire evenings we were there until dinner. So what I learnt from this trip to the states and the experience in the bathroom right at the start was that never take things for granted.

In the bathroom, it made me realize that even if you living your dream, not everything will be great. You might be in america about to ski  some of the best skiing in the world with a headache and a uneasy stomach and feel crap. It made me think of the times where i had been healthy and full of energy and eagerness when skiing the slopes up Tc. I might have not been in america, but at least i was feeling 100%.

This experience of going to the states and not having a parent’s shoulder to lean on and get support from made me realize that i took many things for granted in my everyday life like a full pantry, my health even a simple as a piece of bread and the quality of it. I took what my parents did for me for granted like us having a roof box to make life easier or even simply having the skis and poles loaded in the car the night earlier by dad.

But why should you live life with the thought of never taking things for granted. I think you should because of how in America it was almost like a taste of what leaving home will be like. When leaving home you’re not going to have the support that your parents would give you and it’s gonna mean your life is going to be a lot busier with not much sit around time.When in america, it was like trying to learn how to ride a bike all over again, it was a whole new level of skill that is needed.