Following a late flight from Boston, I got to stay at my cousin’s place in San Francisco for a long layover. We went on a late drive around town to grab some food, and just explore. The next morning the journey to Korea started early on Valentine’s day. After a 12-hour flight, the worlds longest customs line, and a quick 3 hour bus ride, we arrived at the hotel in Pyeongchang. Thankfully everyone was pretty exhausted from travel, so we passed out very quickly.

Thanks to jet lag we were up wide-eyed around 4am. Thankfully that day breakfast at our hotel was open from 5am-8am. We started off the first practice for the Olympic Test event greeted by one of the most diverse and fun slope courses any of us have gotten the pleasure to hit. With so many unique variations in the rail section, to big smooth jumps, this course had it all.

While in the first practice, I kept things very mellow and just tried to get used to the course as much as possible. The second day, I finally started to figure out my rail run, along with having some fun on the jumps. My favorite feature was easily the last jump’s side lips.

For qualification, we had a nice relaxing late start around 11. Following a 45-minute practice, it was go time. I was towards the bottom of the pack to drop, so I kept on skiing till it was almost time for me to drop. Thankfully I was able to put my first run down, and put me in 3rd place for our heat after the first run with an 86.5. During run two the clouds started to roll in creating flat-light conditions. I was able to land another run, but had a few bobbles so I went with my first run score. When Heat 1 was done, I qualified in 4th place.

The night after qualifiers, the US team went out to eat some Korean BBQ, when the shuttle dropped us off, we got to see an awesome laser light show compliments of the Pyeongchang 2018 cube. Following the dinner, we heard a few friends were in the Karaoke room, so we decided to check it out. Needless to say, we went on to sing beautiful music to a sad world. One of the best Karaoke times I’ve had with a solid crew. 

-Noah