One day in August

Here's an awesome video we did with TravelOutThere.
Riders: Lauma Ildena and Vita Valheima.
Camera: Ivars Veiksa.
Boat: Ivars Ildens.
Riding at Udensklubs.

Summer review

Hello, hello :)

I've had a great summer wakeboarding, teaching others to ride, working as a waitress and simply having fun. The heat hasn't been an often visitor and I switched to long suit in middle of August already! (Last year by this time it was still boiling in a shorty!) Since end of Aug I'm riding in my new Billabong Synergy 5/3 2013 Winter wetsuit which keeps me warm for an hour easily so I can continue longer trainings as the Autumn sets in.

This year I opened the season extremely late, around June 12, so I'm willing to have that bit of extra riding before the long (I mean loooooooooong) winter comes. Also to extend the wakeboard season a bit me and my friend & student Anna-Maria will be going to have a week of riding at Xtreme-Gene, Spain this October. It's been 4 years since I was last there and I'm anxious to meet everyone and see the new site!

I've spent a lot of time in the Olympic Gymnastics Centre to prepare for the season and now restarting the trainings to stay in shape for Spain in October and ski instructor courses later in November, a big shout out to www.gymnastics.lv for supporting me the third year in a row now!

This season I'm riding with the 2012 RONIX Faith Hope Love board and boots, it's a brilliant ride I get to use thanks to our local dealer Uģis from Aquasports.

As we counted in the Udensklubs ride register book until August 25th I've been on the water for a total of 13.5 hours, including a set on mono-ski, hydrofoil and wakeskate one each. I've added a few hours as I'm writing this post, but it's still surprising how little it's actually been this year.

Here's an edit my dad made from a set earlier in August.

I've been focusing on learning those backside spins a lot, I've always known how to initiate the spin, but I was never able to land one until this year in a training I just felt the urge that I HAVE TO try them again. Been working on them every set from that day on and finally getting the understanding of where exactly I am in the air. 

Another great week was when I went to have some sets on the System 2.0 with Jonty Green coaching and that being my first week on the System I learnt the air Railey! So excited! I really want to bring it to the boat, but my brain's still saying not to do it. Oh well, later then.

New boat trick of the season is a Switch TS FS 360.

However I'm still very inconsistent with my spins as I work very little on them. It's getting better now, but it's still a long way to go.

I've been trying to get the TS BR back, but I rush it so badly on the small wake there's no chance I could ever ride it away like that. I've tried a couple of other switch inverts, they're missing some pop on the toeside jumps and holding on to the handle on heelside, haha! I'll keep working.

Another news you might not know yet I've started my University studies as a Nutritionist. Should keep me interested! 

My biggest goal now is to save up enough money to be able to go wakeboarding to Florida the next summer. I know already that my salary won't make it within this time (unless I find a much better paid job), but I really hope there are great people around able to help and if it's meant to be then things will sort out.

Starting from Monday they say the weather is getting warmer and the wind is calming down. Can't wait to set up a photo shoot with Eduards Glotovs (www.eduardsglotovs.lv) it's been way too long since we last did one! I'll keep you updated.

Live your passion,

~LI

25th of February from Zell am See

This has been a hard week for my body and mind and I was more than glad to have my day off. Since it’s been warm the last few days and snow has turned into slush, I decided to take my Oxess out for a ride this morning. Went up to Gipfelwelt, through the tunnel along with 4 other crazy German guys I met on the way. As we did not want to walk back up there was no other choise but to take the ski-route. Not a problem on a fine sunny day. The thing is, all we could see was a plain white cloud everywhere we looked.

So, aiming for good luck and laughing that if we go wrong it’s going to be 5 of us climbing back up we started travelling down. That was the second time I got dizzy at the top of Kitz. First one was early in the season when it was storming and the Gipfelbahn was stopped halfway due to wind. But this time I had my board on and was riding down somehow.

Boy, how happy I was to see the first slope marking! It was the only object that wasn’t plain white! The slopes were perfectly groomed and not to mention that we were the only ones travelling down from the very top. I did have a feeling I’m going fast, but since the Oxess board is so stable and visibility still wasn’t giving any clue, I realized the speed when started to brake to catch the T-bar up once more. Took at least twice as much time and effort as I expected to actually stop.

Kept travelling down, still no clue about speed or terrain, so returning to Alpine Center in one piece was a great feeling!

Although cloudy and even rainy in Zell village, went out for a walk, some shopping, went on the lake to watch some kite-skiers, then around the lake back home, met some lady on the way offering to tell my fortune to which I declined. 

Looking forward to next week!

See you soon,

Lauma

15th of February from Zell am See

It’s been an exciting month! Much fun working and improving skiing. For a while had a really nice evening job, waitring in a restaurant. Too bad they have enough staff, I’d like to continue it!

In the beginning of the month had a 6 year old Russian boy who I had to train for some competition back in Moscow, that was a nice week, we were able to start the morning with going down a black run.

The last two weeks I’ve been changed from private lessons to intermediate children groups. First week was an impressive test, had a tri-langual group: German, Russian and French!

This week began very intense, Sunday morning I had a group of 14 kids! Good thing I had someone to help me, because when I was nearly at the bottom of the baby-slope, the last kid had just barely started moving from the top, haha! In the afternoon the group was split and with 9 kids we already went up to the real slope.

Two 7 year old cousins are Danish, one 4 ½ year old Russian boy and 6 English kids. They are such an amazing group together, when someone falls down they help each other to get up, even the smallest one did it! He gets picked up earlier from the group, because he still needs to have his afternoon nap :) Everyone’s doing the exercises, hitting the bumps and half-pipe, willing to race and even behaving on lunch time!

The best thing I heard today was one of the girls saying „no, daddy, I don’t want to ski with you, I want to go with Lauma, because I feel safe skiing with her!” I’m really looking forward to tomorrow to see who is going to win the race, they’ve done such an amazing work during the week, I can’t stop smiling! :)

18th of Jaunary from Zell am See

The previous week has been very fun and interesting! 75 % of the lessons have been on snowboard, so I might demand a green uniform!

Friday the 13^th is always a lucky date and this was no exception. I had an amazing ski training, starting off with carving and short turns. Later on as the others had to leave for work, at the end it was just three of us hitting off-piste and moguls! Off-piste is still a mental challenge, but I really love moguls now! Although it was an exhausting morning, that was the best day of skiing in the season so far! Thanks to our amazing instructor Anthony!

Friends from Latvia drove over and brought a package from our Mom. Some good Latvian food & beer, yummmiiiiiii!

Sunday was a fun day, had a friend from Kaprun visiting, so we hit Sonnenalm slopes with our snowboards. Tried out the Ski-Movie, although on snowboards, haha! Right after that took the T-bar with 53% steepness. That was the hardest lift I’ve taken in a long while! We nearly rolled down in the powder snow just getting started on it, haha! The red uniform gave a motivation to hold on, but I for sure know which lift is crossed out of the map now. Still have a bruise on my leg! :D And Liva had a great laugh, because she was going behind us and on skis. Ha-ha-ha.

A perfect noon to ride for ourselves!

A cold wave had stopped by, one morning the car termometer said it's -18 C. No wonder it felt chilly outside! :D

 

 

The car used to be blue, but someone re-coloured it!

 The next afternoon went to visit Blizzard ski factory in Mitersill. That sure gave a lot of insight! A lot of the work is done by machines, but even more is actually hard work. And the costs of the machines are insane, now I can understand why the ski costs that money and no less. Did you know that some skis have up to 100 layers of different materials? Having this insight of how stuff works was really cool and definitely going to be useful!

Yesterday and today had very cool guests snowboarding, quick progress and at the end of the lesson both got confused and struggled to remember which one is their front foot, haha! And also both days have been in English, which made the whole thing super easy!

For tomorrow morning have a complete beginner snowboarding, so let’s see how that turns out. Too bad that the weather is getting bad again, I would sure enjoy more of these sunny days! Hopefully it’s going to be some fresh powder and not rain as some forecasts say.

Fresh snow and sun, can it get better?

Come visit Zell am See/ Kaprun!

Greetings,

Lauma

11th of January from Zell am See

I can’t believe it yet, but it stopped snowing! The sun was out bright today for the first time in a long while. 

 These few days have been very challenging and examining. Difficult students to work with and two emergency calls within the last three working days. Hopefully there won’t be any in the future, thank you, that’s been enough.

Yesterday went out to Diesel Kino, watched Carnage. A good movie, although serious, some of the phrases were hilarious. After that our little company agreed to have a drink in B17 which also turned out to be a very nice place. We nearly agreed to sing karaoke, but couldn’t choose the song, so left that for the next time, haha!

Let’s see what tomorrow brings, hopefully it will go good.

Zeeee Russian speaking instructors

Cheers,

Lauma

7th of January from Zell am See

It’s been snowing impressive the last two days! The snow piles in front yard are nearly over my height, the slopes are amazing soft. The funniest thing today was doing turns on a narrow slope down from Cafe back to slope and on the side the powder snow looked exactly the same as the packed one. Within 0.1 seconds my skis disappeared under the snow and I found myself lying head downhill and hopelessly trying to figure out what happened!

When the day seemed to be never ending it all changed up in the meeting point, so I worked with a very frightened woman in the beginning (thanks to her two amazing friends who inspired her by telling how they broke their leg and hip when skiing). However, as the day continued we increased the speed so it started to look like skiing. I was very satisfied with how she worked and she loved my company, so we’ll continue tomorrow. :)

The day before yesterday went to Saalbach with my three amazing black-piste kids. Had an awesome time doing exercises all day long, what they loved the best was the price for being so awesome on skis, we just took them off and went to have fun in the deep snow! They wouldn’t care that it took like 10 minutes each to get the skis back on, haha! So I got invited to their house for Russian Christmas, first in my life. They had put enormous effort to make a concert, three kids took our attention for at least 20 minutes telling and showing a fairy tale.

The only thing I don’t like is the fact I’ve caught a bad cold and bit of fever too.  Don’t feel it when skiing, because there’s so much else to think of, but once off the skis and have to carry them around feels like they’re going to take me down to ground. Other that the fever and being misjudged as hangover it’s going good! Day after tomorrow is for sure a holiday, maybe that’s going to get me back on feet properly.

Warm and soft greetings from snowy Zell am See,

Lauma