Saas Fee: Blind pow riding mission

Thanksgiving weekend I was lucky enough to have a full traditional thanksgiving feast at the apartment of a few of my friends. In keeping with tradition, I devised a plan to go shred for turkey weekend, just as though I was back home. The following events that ensued were nothing less than epic. At 1:30 AM after our feast, I boarded a train headed toward Milan with our final destination being Saas Fee Switzerland. Saas Fee is a famous ski area, tucked a way in the Saas valley in southern Switzerland. Being only two valleys away from the Matterhorn, it is obvious that the mountains there are quite large. With the help of a storm system that dropped 2 plus feet of fresh on the Alps, I wasn't just delayed 3 hours getting there, but I was able to T-Bar lap the upper piste area of Alallin all by lonesome, gorging myself on insane amounts of fresh powder. One factor made my powder pleasure a little less pleasurable however. My dumbass didn't bother to bring goggles to europe and was to cheap to purchase any. So I was cruising the steeps with nothing but a pair of sunnies to block a little bit of the snow and wind. Presumably I was riding blind a good chunk of the trip, but the way I look at it is that it will only make me that much better at getting pitted (or just hard of sight for the next two days). Three days of pow, fondue, naked spa time and good beer left me feeling like a million bucks...but I think that would be the case for most people.

Jordan approving of the Thanksgiving feast.

Kayla's booty approves too

Saas Fee Village

Alallin Piste area

The "Hot Lap" Zone

Video grabs from a mid-run face shot.

Riding blind right now...Good shit.

The best fondue EVER!

Late night chocolate mission 

More shots from Firenze.

So, seeing that the last post had noting to do with my travels here in Europe, I am getting back on track. These photos are of some of the things I will see on a daily basis here in Florence. The city is pretty small, so to have all of the things packed into one tight space is pretty amazing. Hopefully I give you a decent idea of what these things look like, because I could never do them justice. 

Night view from Il Ponte Vecchio over the Arno.

Florentine whips. 

Piazza di Singoria and the Rape of Polyxena (name of the sculpture, a lot of Italian sculpture has to do with rapes. Don't ask me why). I like how the guy in the bottom left is just pondering the beauty of what he is looking at.

Binocular POV of the city from the Piazzale Michelangiolo. 

Giardino Comunale di Firenze.

Diggin' through the hard drive, founds some gems of Big T.

Getting in the snowboard mode, I was looking at some photos from my Alaska trip I took last winter. I stumbled upon these photos of my homie Travis Anderson. We went up to his home turf and tore it up for a couple weeks, getting into all kinds of sticky situations. These moves are anything but sticky, however. Trav greased these like Gino the Guinney's hair. Big ups poppa T. 

Firenze: My town.

This is the view that best captures the florentine skyline. The main building in the center of the city is the Duomo, which is one of the most impressive cathedrals in the world. It took over 300 years to construct and has the biggest self supporting dome roof in all of Europe. Anyway, this is where I spend most of my time; in Firenze: the capital of Tuscany. As you can imagine, the food and wine here are insanely good and the Florentine people are very hospitable. It is much smaller than rome, so you are able to walk everywhere, and see the same people out on the street. It truly is a great city to live in and look at, for that matter.

As a lot of you know, I am currently living in Florence, Italy and have been for the past couple of months. Being In a new country, learning a new language and traveling to dozens of new places has been so amazing that I haven't kept everyone up to date as well as I should. Through the medium of this amazing blogging site, you will be able to see what I am up to and what I have been photographing. As a photo student, I will try to put up as much of my work as I can from here on out, continuing when get back state side.

Anyway, as of right now, I am in Florence going through my normal activities of going to school, eating, skating, photographing, loving and learning (a little bit of drinking here and there too). I have been traveling like mad, however. I since arriving in Europe, I have been all over Italy (Rome, Venice, Verona, Genova, Cinque Terre, Chianti and throughout Tuscany), went snowboarding in Switzerland, drinking beer at Oktoberfest in Munich and Two weeks seeing London and Ireland. The travel will not stop either, I just got back from Paris last night, I am off to Malta in a couple weeks and I have a snowboarding trip to France in the works as well. 

As you can Imagine, all of this travel has helped generate a lot of photos. So from here on out expect to see a heap of images from my travels and other crazy things I have gotten into. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the  content.

Ciao!

Um...Hello. This entry commemorates the birth of my blog: Failte baile (welcome home). Stay tuned for more.

Patrick