Sand Pits

Sand pits, sounds like fun right? Not so fast, not when they are almost vertical and you have to run up and down them. Down sounds fun right? Wrong again, your adrenaline is pumping so fast you almost puke when you finish the flip 1000 times, get sand all over your face, belly flop course. Not to mention you have your whole team cheering you on, or just laughing so hard they almost pee their pants because you just ATE IT!!!! Point is, it is the BEST, funniest, most entertaining workout of the year, so far.

Burke Traveling

Traveling with 60 kids is not an easy thing to do, heck traveling alone is a pain in the butt. So how many things can go wrong with a group of teenagers with all over the wait bags? A lot, starting with the departure. With burke if you plan on taking a coach bus and three vans, we always end up taking four because we have too many big bags.

We get to the airport with 5 hours to spare, and we have no time to fool around. Our bags all way between 65-100 lbs and with that our first plane to Dallas was over weight. We had to kick 30 people off the plane, they were on the next plane an hour later, and we got rid of all our extra fuel. So what happens, well of course Dallas has bad weather so we get stuck circling in the air. We ran out of fuel and had to land in Austin, by now our plane was supposed to have left 30 min. ago. So we refuel and are in Dallas airport in 3 hours.

Our other plane, to Santiago, had to wait for us because we were half the plane. We then proceeded to sit on the plane for 3 hours only to be told that we couldn't fly because the flight crew had missed their time window, and they had to sleep. So it is now 2 am, we haven't eaten since 10 am, and we are stuck in an airport with no vending machines and no open stores. They give us dirty cots to sleep on and finally all of us fall asleep. We wake up the next morning to find random people starring at us because we are asleep at 7 am in the middle of an airport, half the guys in just their boxers.

Finally, we make our flight and we arrive in Santiago, without losing any bags. It is now 12:00 am and we start heading for Valle Nevado, we get their at 2 am and start unloading ALL the bags. By the time we get into our rooms and to bed it is now 4 am and we have been traveling for 44 hours. We then wake up at 8 am to ski the next day. Ski Academies, aren't they FUN!!!! Traveling with 60 ski racers isn't easy but we all have a blast anyways, we laugh our heads off even when we haven't slept in 24 hours and we bond. Now that is an experience I will never forget.