I learned to snowboard about 10 years ago. Brett was the best man at my wedding, and also my snowboarding mentor.
This picture was from 2002, not long after he got me onto a snowboard.
A couple of years into it, I moved to hardbooting and started racing.
I’ve gradually gotten better at it, and now am one of the fastest snowboard racers at the local hill. However, Brett has always beat me.
Now, I don’t mean “usually” or “almost always”. I mean ALWAYS. A year or two ago I finally looked it up and put together a spreadsheet to track the races.
Between 2005 and yesterday, January 24th, 2011, Brett and I had raced head to head in a NASTAR course 48 times. I’ve had good days and bad days, but my good days were never enough to beat him.
FORTY-EIGHT races. That’s some pretty amazing consistency, especially since my only real goal for the past few years has been to beat him. He is truly my white whale.
Finally, last night, his run came to an end. In our Monday night race (in Tyrol Basin‘s Double Diamond Race League), I laid down an excellent first run, and he didn’t. I was ahead.
Now, I’d been in this position dozens of times before, but every other time when I’ve been in the lead out of one run (out of the two we get), he’s always shit out a great run to take me down.
But last night, for the first time, he did not.
The record is now 1-48.
