I’m twenty two so I’ve been driving for a few years now. I’m no veteran, but being a pro skier I spend a fare amount of time in my car driving to mountains all over the Northeast. Actually, I pretty much live in my car during the winter. Driving to contests, photo shoots, and demos are a big part of my job. My sponsor pays for gas, but I’m usually driving myself to events at new locations. I prefer driving myself to contests because the drive gives me some time to mentally prepare and allows me to think through my runs. I still am as nervous for contests now as I was at my first one.

To calm my nerves, I usually grab a coffee and crank some mellow tunes for the trip over to the mountain. But on the way to my last competition my check engine light turned on. “Great, just what I need," I thought to myself. I pulled over, turned my car off and on again, and the little red light was still illuminated. I was still fifty miles away; fifty long miles of twisting, desolate mountain road. The last thing I needed was to deal with car problems. If my car broke down, it would have taken hours for a AAA truck to find me in the mountains. Not to mention, I was supposed to meet with potential sponsors. My relaxing, early morning drive turned into a stress filled trek. Skiing was the last thing on my mind. I couldn’t stop worrying about my car breaking down and making it there on time. Despite all my anxiety and visions of worst-case scenarios, I made it to the competition on time, but ended up placing horribly. I’m not going to make excuses, but the added aggravation definitely didn’t help. On the chairlift, I was telling another guy in the competition about my drive up, which he found quite comical. Anyway, he told me to look into getting a chip programmer. Apparently these little ipod looking things can decipher your car’s check engine message.