Now I've made it to beautiful Bend, OR and I was delighted to ski this morning on real snow in the gorgeous central Oregon sunshine. This is my first time being with the USST while ON the USST and I guess I hadn't really mentally prepared adequately (do I need to reorder those three words?). First, I hadn't really thought about being on the USST in any kind of concrete way so I was a little surprised to show up and realize that this was my new team and these were my new teammates. Now I have a whole new set of people to work with so that will take some getting used to. We also had intimidating things like contracts and USADA and results to talk about in a meeting last night. Don't get me wrong, I've been taking skiing seriously, but having a big ol' team meeting last night convinced me that I'd gotten booted up to another level of intensity. For a second I was like, "woa, am I ready for this? what happened to just playing in the snow?" But then I decided that I could still play in the snow and try to be seriously fast.

Another thing that hit me today was that somehow I'd gotten this idea in my head that now that I was on the USST, I was going to be a good skier. That being named to the team would automatically make me a better skier. Then we skied this morning and I quickly found out that no, I still had all of the same problems with my technique that I've always had and even a few more that I hadn't noticed before. So, USST or no USST, it's still the same old hard work and training.