I’m back in Carlsbad after a whirlwind of bro downs, face masks, weiners and winners, a huge quarterpipe, a not quite 22-foot halfpipe, really bad judging and unequal prize money! Oops, was that last part out loud?!

Overall, it was a great event. I’m like a new woman out there. Seriously, I feel like Madonna, you know? I pushed myself in all three events. I was really excited about the way I rode during the QP event. However, the judges did not agree. That’s fine. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you get robbed. In the pipe, I decided not to do any of the tricks I usually throw in a contest in order to get to the top of the podium, and I substituted smooth tricks, amplitude and bit of style (what I’d been working on all spring). It paid off, and the judges rewarded me with the first-place prize of $5,000. Unfortunately, this figure just so happened to be exactly half the amount the guys were getting! This came as a shock as most legitimate contests these days reward equal prize money: The X-Games, the entire Grand Prix circuit, The U.S. Open. Why all of a sudden is the Burton Abominable Snow Jam treating the women differently?

It’s ironic because I was just chosen to be a part of a Nike campaign where I was talking about how fortunate I have been to have grown up in a sport where the pioneers, who were both men and women, fought to lay an equal playing field from an early stage, something that not too many other women athletes can claim. And here it’s July 2007, and Burton’s handing out $5,000 less to the women than to the men.

I guess even snowboarding is still living in the “real world,” where this is somehow accepted. It’s too bad. This is exactly the reason why people need to get behind foundations like The Women’s Sports Foundation, which is fighting and has been fighting to make a change in this world, because this mentality is just not right or acceptable. The women are riding the exact same halfpipe, they’re pushing themselves just as hard, falling just as hard and are hiking just as fast as the men to get back up to the top in order to try and go bigger and spin faster than they did the run before.

In other news, I got to ride a Harley V-Rod while I was up at Mount Hood! Now the V-Rod is a serious motorcycle, my friends! Actually, it’s so serious I think you have to go check it out here because I am still proud of myself for riding it!

Not bad for the first bike I’ve gotten on since my Rider’s Edge Course in Grand Junction, which consisted of riding a light, sporty Buell in a high school parking lot! But it really blows my mind how these bikes are so beefy and mean-looking but once you get on it and ride, it’s smooth and so easy to manage and maneuver. Definitely hooked on the biking thing, especially when you can go out with friends! Thanks Ann and James for the ear-to-ear smiles!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under gretchenbleiler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.