As a professional athlete, spending time away from family comes with the territory. And it’s sometimes difficult spending so much time on the road away from my wife and kids. I’m not going to lie, I sometimes wonder if my wife and kids even remember what I look like. Time differences, nap times, and marginal cell service and Internet can make it difficult to stay in touch. While I’m so grateful for today’s technology, sometimes it just never feels like enough.

However, my wife and I have discovered some unique and simple ways to make spending time apart still feel like a team effort.  So this month I’m sharing some of my favorite ways to stay connected while traveling.

Short video messages

Between busy schedules and time differences, it can be difficult to connect in a meaningful way on the phone. As such, our family’s favorite solution has been to send short phone videos back and forth of what is happening in our day. That way it’s almost like we’re there, getting a glimpse into each other’s day instead of trying to describe it later. Not to mention, it’s like a chronological video playlist, making it nice to replay videos when I find myself missing home. According to my wife, Alexandra, each video I send gets played at least 10 times.

Wi-Fi calling

Wi-Fi calling is perhaps my best-kept iPhone secret.  If you are an iPhone user, simply go to the “phone” section of your settings to switch on Wi-Fi calling.  This then enables you to use your phone similarly as if you were on your cell phone carrier network. However, you typically have to have a strong Internet connection for it to work smoothly.

Header photo by Emily Tidwell.

I often feel like my job is equal parts rewarding and challenging. The reward: Competing in destinations around the world, some of which people dream of vacationing in, and others, destinations that people have never even heard of. This year a significant portion of my season will be spent in Europe and Asia, including France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, and South Korea.

But trips like these don’t come without their challenges. During my Europe and Asia adventure, I’ll be spending seven consecutive weeks traveling. And one of the foremost challenges is jet lag. We often spend little more than a week in one place competing before we’re off to the next place. That is just enough time to almost get adjusted to one time zone before you’re on a plane and starting all over again in a new time zone. If you don’t learn to overcome jet lag in my business, the constant travel and fatigue can inevitably mean illness. So having traveled around the world as a competitive skier, I’ve picked up a few tricks and lessons to combat jet lag. You’ll find my jet lag travel tips below.

Meanwhile, see a few photos from the past month on the road to the Winter Olympics.

Jet Lag Travel Tips

Stay up late the night before the trip. I’ve found that staying up late the night before a long-haul flight makes it easier for me to sleep the next day on the plane. As a relatively tall person, I know the struggle of sleeping on an airplane, but I also know how important that sleeping on the plane is. I’ve found that the more I sleep on the plane, the quicker I adjust to the time change, and can hit the ground running. I also suggest a nice neck pillow, earplugs, and noise-cancelling headphones.

Don’t nap or go to bed early on arrival day. No matter how badly you want to give into napping on day one, don’t do it. I’ll even drink a couple extra cups of coffee to make sure I stay up throughout the day upon arriving to a new destination. Then, by the time it’s bedtime, I’m often so exhausted that I usually sleep through the first night. And that same rule applies to the following couple of days. By the end of day three you should be well on your way to adjusting to the time change. Early evenings, between 6 and 8 p.m., are often when you will feel most sleepy, so planning an activity or spending time being social during those hours is a good idea.

Eat and drink healthy. I know how easy it is to eat unhealthy while traveling. The easiest, quickest food options, however, can often be the worst for you, especially when you’re dealing with jet lag. Thus, make an extra effort to eat healthy and stay well hydrated, drinking plenty of water.

Exercise. This one sounds simple, since everyone needs to exercise, right? However, jet lag often ruins any urge or motivation to exercise because of the fatigue you’re often feeling by the time you reach your destination. Nonetheless, exercising will help you stave off the urge to nap, while often making it much easier to fall asleep at bedtime (and stay asleep).

Don’t overindulge. Trust me, I know the draw of a good German or Austrian beer. However, nothing makes jet lag more severe like a hangover. Enjoy good food and drinks, but do so within limits. Your body will thank you.

Now you know how to travel like a pro, so get out there. Tune in next month when I’ll have more travel tips from the road to the Olympics.

Header photo by Emily Tidwell.

The plan was to get a couple weeks of good training in while at Copper Mountain, Colorado before making my way to Aspen for the X Games. From there, I had all intentions of winning the X Games, traveling to Mammoth Mountain for the first qualifier for the Pyeongchang U.S. Olympic team, winning that too, and then heading home to kiss my wife and hug my kids.

I liked that plan, but reality was a little more “real,” as I’d put it.

We had a really hard time getting much done at Copper Mountain because of the continuous snow, and then when the weather finally did clear up, things turned from mediocre to bad, rather quickly. I was feeling good (really good!). I was starting to get my rhythm and flow, and my confidence was high. Then the next thing I knew I was waking up at the bottom of the transition, feeling dazed, dizzy, and not entirely sure about which part of my body hurt more. Apparently I had missed a takeoff on a switch double cork, side-checked the coping of the halfpipe, and launched to the bottom, knocking myself silly. That was definitely not part of the plan.

But I’m a natural optimist, so I did my best to look on the bright side of the situation.  Fortunately I hadn’t broken any bones and had only sustained a minor concussion that the team neurologist thought I would recover from quickly for the X Games in a couple weeks.

My first training in Aspen went perfect and I was getting my confidence back. That is until the tail end of our second practice, when I had a heavy landing that prompted a major muscle in the core of my back to spasm and cramp uncontrollably. Thus began a process of treatment and management on my back by our team physical therapist, chiropractors, and massage therapists to try to get my back better before the contest. Some things helped it marginally, but it never went away.

I had to have an all or nothing approach to the competition.

While it’s a position I’ve been in before, difficult circumstances only define you if you let them.  To add more adversity, the conditions of the pipe were the worst I have ever seen for X Games. Temperatures were hovering around zero degrees, and the previous week’s rain had created glare ice and a pipe that has a natural tendency to send riders out over the deck.

As such, only one guy from the 12-man field landed a first run. But there was hope, since if I could just land a run, my chances of a podium were good. My second run was going well until I got to the part of the pipe where the rest of the field had been crashing. I knew that I had to use all my strength on my takeoff to stay in the pipe. I managed a solid takeoff, but as a result, my back couldn’t handle it. I could no longer reach down and grab my ski, an essential part of the trick. I tried in vain to settle for a different grab, but it was too late and the rotation wasn’t going to come all the way around in time.

I skidded out and skied down to greet my frozen family and friends who had traveled to cheer me on. Both of my kids were crying, though I think from cold as much as disappointment. There was nothing more I could do other than say that I had tried, and then move onto the next one. And up next was the first Olympic qualifier.

In 2014, the U.S. Team chose their 4 halfpipe spots based on results from 5 U.S. Grand Prix events during the season leading up to the Olympics. This Olympic cycle, however, they decided to ease the burden by putting one of the events during this season. The Mammoth Grand Prix, therefore, became much more than just another contest. Do well here and you were on a great track to make the U.S. Olympic Team.

Yet I was still dealing with back problems. My hope was that I would have just enough time to recover that I could do a big run by the finals on Friday. However, the weather forecast didn’t look great for the week. This meant that we may only be able to compete in qualifiers, and not finals, which if so, would mean that qualifying results would be considered the final results.

I had truly been doing my best to get my back fully functional, but by the time the qualifiers rolled around, I still felt like a broken old man. I had a fated conversation with my coach. His ominous words were, “We’re going to have a final.”  So I scaled it back, and I qualified for finals in 8th place. I usually try to qualify in the top three, since they are the final three to compete. But with my back the way it was, I was happy to qualify at all.