Sarcasm and directness are both part of our working relationship  and as I said in my leaving speech for her earlier today it’s sometimes very useful to have people around you who will say “No”, especially when the person doing the asking is someone as pushy as me. I am genuinely grateful to her for helping me to steer our service in the right  direction over the last 4 years and I recognise and appreciate that she’s often picked up unglamorous  process and procedure while I’ve been blithely forging ahead. She’s also instituted hugely important changes that have stuck, for instance, holding weekly team meetings which now happen, without fail, every Tuesday at 10am.  That’s going to be one of her legacies.

Worth mentioning as well that she’s a grafter, quietly and without any fuss – unless it’s a SDC Platinum problem (which have been known to turn the air a vivid shade of blue) – she get’s stuff done. Even now, on her last day, she’s set her mind to sort out installation of a Bloomberg outpost at the Economics library. You spend a helluva lot of your life at work so I’m also grateful that she’s been so damn easy to get along with. It’s going to be very weird that she won’t be here next week but I’m very pleased for her that she has a new challenge ahead of her in a new environment. I think we’re both agreed that change is good and it’s high time she was making all the decisions.

Kirsty recently relented a little in respect of a debate that has raged between us ever since we first met. I consider myself to be a Northerner having been brought up from 3 to 16 in Newcastle and Northumberland and having a Geordie mother, but Kirsty – a Geordie born and bred – has never accepted my claim (typically greeting my assertion with scorn). Recently she admitted for the first time that at least ‘I behave like a Northerner’. I think I’ll take that (it’s all I’m gonna get).

One final memory is of a party thrown by Kirsty at which, needless to say, the drink flowed well, so well in fact that afterwards, in the early hours of the morning, the wife and I were briefly apprehended by the police while playing shoot-em-ups in the street. Perhaps the fact that we were dressed as Lara Croft and Superman respectively persuaded the officers to let us go after just a few words of caution?

Until the next time our paths cross…

With a 5am start, brews all round and the car packed we drove off into the sunrise.  First stop Mammoth Mountain.

The views were breathtaking as we meandered along the east shore of Lake Tahoe.  We drop down out of the snowline and are instantly submerged into the arid desert scape.  We get the foot on the gas – 4 hours later and after some crocodile chat and interesting pig facts, we arrive with excitement at Mammoth Mountain.

Keep your eyes peeled for our Mammoth Edit – hitting a screen near you soon!

With a long straight 6 hour drive ahead of us, it was all back in the car and onto the long straight road ahead.  As the sun sets the road goes on and on and we drive into the darkness.    Blurry eyed and jaded we pulled into Victorville, a very industrious town with a sparkly illuminated airport that could be seen on the horizon  for miles.   We stop for the night at Motel, not a hotel or holiday inn.

The next morning we wake up in a place that looked more like Majorca or somewhere on the Costa Del Sol – without the seaside.   Are we really getting up for a days snowboarding?  Or did we take a wrong turn?  Quick start (well as quick as 6 girls can be) and on the road again – next destination Bear Mountain!

Two days were spent at Bear Mountain, shredding, soaking up the southern cali rays and taking some spectacular slams.  Unfortunately the Red Bull Butter Cup Rail Jam was full so we couldn’t enter but we all enjoyed watching from the sidelines.

Last stop: one night in Vegas! - What goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas!  But we’ll give you a peep…

…Heres a glance at what we’ve been up to:

The Stash is a really fun and innovative run full of jibs, logs, tree runs and road gaps all built out of wood. The comp was based around 3 zones, each being a step up from the last.  Riders were judged on style, creativity and line choice.

The first hours jam session got underway with the line consisting of an up-down log, to kicker, to log stall.  Hiking back up after each run was pretty tiring!

The next zone was in Shredwood forest!  Here we had a rock bonk followed by a wooden pole jam to road gap to play with. We all started stepping it up with front 3’s and cab 1 taps over the bonk and back 1’s, front 1’s and back 3’s all being thrown off the end of the pole jam as well as a few fairly spectacular stacks!

The final zone was the Craig Kelly memorial cabin which had a combination of lines you could get really creative with.  There were various options to take over the cabin roof itself or you could ride the hand rail of the stairs to the side.

We all made it to the finals and it turned into a battle of the brits.  By this point we were all pretty beat up from hiking for hours but we pulled some tricks for the finale with Kirsty Taylor busting out some huge gaps over the cabin and some sick stalls on the top from Charli Witts and Kirsty Smith.  Katie Blundell was throwing herself into sick front boards on the down rail taking some gnarly tumbles down the stairs and Lynsey Ashdown stomped blunt to fakies and 5-0 front 1’s out of the down rail.

The end result was a clean sweep for the Heel Edge crew with Lynsey Ashdown taking 1^st, Katie Blundell 2^nd and Kirsty Taylor 3^rd.  Not sure we made too many mates out of the American chicks though – showing up to a comp on their turf and taking a clean sweep!

Got there way too early, it wasn’t even set up yet so we went and rode heavenly for a few hours while we waited. First visit there and we were all pretty impressed – the park was awesome and we managed to get a few pow turns after a good few inches overnight! You get an amazing view of the whole of Lake Tahoe all the way down the home run as well which is sick!

With the legs warmed up those of us competing headed back to the American Legion for the rail jam while Charli and Kirsty T carried on putting lines through the trees of Heavnly. The rail jam was scheduled to start at 2pm, turns out the americans aren’t too hot when it comes to time keeping and the over 18’s category didn’t start kicking off till 5.30! Good job we had Taco Bell to fill the time!!

Katie, Lynsey, Kirsty S and Soph all entered the comp and the rest of the girls supported from the side lines and took photos and did some filming! It was a scaffold setup with 3 hit options of a down box, a flat down rail or a strange off angle down box. Practice got underway we all attempted the flat down first hit, only to stop dead over the kink, fall off the side and bail down the stairs!! Everyone was struggling with speed so they got a couple of blokes to stand at the top doing pull-ins which helped! The comp wasn’t really a jam – you all had 3 runs and were judged on each run with the scores added together which meant trying to stick 3 different tricks well rather than going all out for the one crazy trick!

The girls all rode awesome against the American chicks, it was a much higher standard than rail jams we’re used to in the UK and we finished up with Lynsey Ashdown taking 3^rd and Kirsty Smith taking 4^th, an awesome result for our first comp out here.

Stoked on us being there the organisers gave us tickets to the after party in the American Legion – so we checked out how the americans like to do it! After hanging around for what seemed like hours waiting for it to kick off, the party didn’t disappoint and there was some amazing local hip hop bands cranking out. Met some interesting characters – Gandolph, Bryan and the trailer crew to mention a few, needless to say the americans know how to do an after party………

Gandolf: Shall I plait my beard in one plait or two?