Wakeboarding Shenanigans.

With the 10,000 lakes claim to fame, Minnesota is an excellent state for some serious time out on the water, so I wanted to write a blog about how great it has been wakeboarding a ton this year, a share some pictures of the ridiculous times.

My family owns an old 70's style boat but unfotunately the motor doesn't work, so summers for me are spent on my friend Ben's boat. It has a smaller wake but is still fun to butter around behind and try new tricks. It is especially fun to butter because the wakeboard I have is designed to be a snowboard on water. It is a Hyperlite Roam and has no fins, rocker camber, and the shape of a short, fat snowboard as you can see on the right.

There are many lakes for us to choose from here in Minnesota, but the one we always go to is out by Ben's house called Linwood Lake. I think it is in East Bethel, MN but I'm actually not sure.

Sunday was a particulary nice day, so we headed out to the lake early (we planned on being there at 10 but didn't get there til 11). The usual crew of people were there, Ben and my friends Lorrie, Ryan, and Joe. The day started off with me wakeboarding and Ben trick skiing, when Joe had the ridiculous idea of two person wakeboarding... on one wakeboard. The following pictures are of this ridiculous endevour. Enjoy.

Joe and I

Getting Situated

Attempting...

Again...

And again...

And again...

Epic attempt

It finally working

After CMC Endeavours.

I realize I have not yet graduated from Colorado Mountain College, but I wanted to write this blog about how I have already been using some of the things I have learned from the Ski and Snowboard Business Program.

Right now, I am putting the final plans into action to print some new t-shirts for the company I am trying to start; Rill Snowboard Clothing Co. For those of you who've read my previous blogs, Rill was originially going to be the snowboard company, but after taking the Product Design class and coming up with the snowboard company Able, I have decided to pursue that and make Rill the clothing brand.

One of the main lessons I took away from my Intro to Sustainable Business class with Jeff Troeger was the importance of businesses taking on a green initiative and take strides to be completely sustainable. Because of this eye-opening class, I am doing what I can with my small budget to make Rill a green company. After some research, I found a wholesale t-shirt website that has great prices as well as a great selection of t-shirts, including recycled organic cotton shirts. I am currently waiting on an e-mail back from Jeff Troeger to get his opinion on organic cotton, but once I hear from him and do a couple test prints, I'll be ordering either 25 or 30 of the organic cotton Anvil t-shirts and be off and running.

And now for the shameless pitch. In case you haven't seen any of my previous shameless pitches, see The Winter Break Blog from January for the first shirt I produced. Besides that, the following images are the graphics I plan to print this summer on the organic cotton t-shirts.

These moon graphics both go on the very bottom of the shirt and go up about 10 inches.

Front:

Back:

I came up with this next design awhile ago but am finally able to print it. The graphic goes on the lower left side of the shirt so it looks like the dinosaur is walking around to the front of the shirt.

The rest of these are some graphics I have come up with over the course of the school year and some this summer.

So there you go, my shameless pitch and what Colorado Mountain College has inspired me to do. And feedback is always welcome if you care to comment on any of these and if any really strike your fancy, let me know and I'd be more than happy to get them to you.

On a completely different topic, I hate to ruin anybodies plans but it turns out that the off campus dorms I wrote about a while ago are not happening this year. CMC didn't think the place would fill up so they cancelled it. They may do it in later years, but unfortunately, not this year. Peace.

Summer 09.

Hello everyone! Hopefully summer has been going great for all of you out there. I realize school is out and I'm in Minnesota so I can't exactly write about CMC/Steamboat life, but I thought I'd let you know how my summer's been so far and some things I'm excited for in the coming school year.

Summer is great. Unfortunetly right now its about 60 degrees here, as well as cloudy and rainy. But luckily we've had some amazing days here in Minnesota, full of all the awesome things summer has to offer.

So far, I've already been wakeboarding more in my first month of summer than I usually get to throughout the entire summer. My friend Ben, who has the boat we use, was unfortunately not able to get out snowboarding as much as he wanted to, but that just made him that much more all about wakeboarding. We've gotten out on the lake around 3 times a week so far, which has been awesome. I've already learned some new stuff and can't wait to keep progressing. Plus the wakeboard I have, the Hyperlite Roam, is shaped like a short fat snowboard and has no fins, so basically I get to snowboard on the lake all summer, so I'm very stoked about that.

Continuing with the board sports I partake in to fill the void of not being able to snowboard, I have been longboarding almost every sunny day this summer. There is a pretty long, kind of steep hill by my house, that I used to longboard down everyday after working at a daycare right by my house (that job I unfortunately did not get back but I'll talk about that in a bit). After breaking my collarbone longboarding down Bob Adams Dr. by CMC, I was very sketched out to bomb that hill once again. Lucky for me, when I set out to conquer my fear, the familiarity of the hill eased my nerves, and I have bombed that hill almost everyday I've been longboarding.

The final board sport is skateboarding, which I really haven't done very much so far. I had big plans to build a mini-ramp in my backyard, but unfortunately money is a bit tight and it doesn't look like that plan will be put into action.

For those of you seeking a new way to shred in the summer, I recently saw a commerical for just a way to do so. A lot of people on the coastal states do something called skimboarding, which I've had the pleasure of doing in Florida, and it's wicked fun. The company Banzai has come out with a slip n' slide type product made just for skimboarding. It's only $30 at Wal-Mart and even comes with a skimboard. I'm sure it's designed for kids but I think it looks crazy fun so hopefully some friends will want to go in on it with me an we can spend the summer shredding in a new way.

Unfortunately, summer is not all fun and games. I just recently went back to my job at Pacsun in Rosedale Mall (which I am not happy about). Before that, I definitly felt the effects of the economy as I searched for a different job with no avail. I even tried to use my previous experience at Pacsun to get a job in the same mall at Zumiez, but they just weren't hiring at the time. I especially tried to use the courses and knowledge I've gained at CMC to get a job at some local boardshops, but again, they just weren't hiring. As for the daycare job I had last summer, they even have let some people go because so few kids are enrolling in the program since their parents can't afford, so it's been rough for everyone. On the plus side, my mom, who was laid off from working at the St. Anthony Community Center, where the daycare program is, had found a new administrative job with the union she was a part of when she worked at the community center, so we were all very happy about that.

Something I am VERY stoked about that is happening soon is that I will be printing more shirts for my snowboard clothing company Rill. I am sure that once I get my designs finalized and begin production, I will put some shameless plug for my products on here, so you'll get to see them eventually. Something I've decided to try to pursue is actually the company we started in Product Design class. My original plan was to make Rill a snowboard company, but I've now decided to make Rill the clothing brand, and Able (the name we came up with in Product Design) the snowboard brand. I have to go through some legal aspects with everyone in the class so I don't get sued or something if the company gets big, but it'll for sure be worth it.

Another great part of my summer so far that I wasn't able to do in Steamboat Springs is go to concerts. There were some cool local shows in Steamboat, but there was no venue for any of the bands I listen to regularly to come play, so I definitly missed that. So far, I have seen Envy on the Coast, Anberlin, and Taking Back Sunday at one show, and Hey Monday, Metro Station, Cobra Starship, All Time Low, and Fall Out Boy at another show. On top of that, I have plans to see Green Day/The Bravery, Blink 182/Fall Out Boy/Panic at the Disco, and go to the Vans Warped Tour, which has a crazy amount of sick bands going, so it's definitly been/will be a musical summer.

On top of music, art has come back into my life a lot, right now just some sketches and pencil drawings, but hopefully it will expand into more mediums. I have plans right not to go sketch at the Art Institute of Minnesota on Thursday with a friend, so I'm very excited about that and will probably blog about that as well.

Finally, the last thing summer is all about, at least here in Minnesota, is going to cabins. I had the pleasure of going to my friend Joels cabin already this summer, and have plans to go again for his birthday at the end of June. Cabins here consist of pretty much relaxing in the sun, hanging out outside, grilling, and boating, so it's always a good time.

Well there you go, hopefully that gave you a glimpse at what summer's here are like, and maybe even made you want to make a trek to the great state of Minnesota. I'm sure I'll write a few more times over the course of the summer, but if not, thanks for reading and I'll see you in the fall. Peace.

Blog about Blogging.

As of right now, the head of this whole blogging endeavour (Sara Fowler, Marketing and Communications Editor) is planning on hiring on at least one first year student on each campus to be a student blogger next year, so as summer gets underway, I thought I'd write about what it has been like to be a blogger for Colorado Mountain College.

It all started for me in the cafeteria of the Alpine Campus in Steamboat Springs. I was eating late night dinner with some friends when I noticed these signs and posters about a program called iBlogCMC. I figured I'd read it to see what it was all about, and turns out it was a pretty sick deal. According to the cards, you could get paid by the hour to write blogs about life at CMC. I thought, why not, so I found out where to apply and gave it a shot.

I've had a bit of experience writing in high school, but I had no idea it would be enough to become a blogger for the school. The application process was similiar to that of any other job. You had to list previous work experience and any writing experience and things like that, but you also had to write a sample blog to show you're writing style, so I thought what better than to write about what would eventually become the story behind the title of my blog; me breaking my collarbone. Maybe I got some sympathy or it was just a well written blog (probably not the second one) but I got chosen and became an official CMC blogger.

Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of paper work involved in actaully becoming a blogger, but once all was said and done it was very worth it. I was most excited when I found out CMC bloggers got paid $11 an hour for writing, and you had to write a minimum of about two hours per week, but if you had a ton to write about that week, you could certainly write more. I would typically try to write more than two hours per week, one because the money is always nice, but two there just ended up usually being a lot going on around campus. After winter break rolled around, Sara gave all the bloggers at the various campuses the option of staying on for second semester with a generous raise, so as I'm sure you're all aware, I definitly decided to do so.

So there you have it, just a little glimpse into what it's like being a blogger for Colorado Mountain College, and hopefully a few of you out there have some interest in doing this as well. Thanks for reading these over this past year, and if you really liked them that much, you'll be happy to know I'll be doing this again next year. Take care and have a great summer. Peace.

First Year is a Wrap.

I'm back home in Minnesota now after a crazy first year at Colorado Mountain College. This semesters' finals were pretty tough compared to last semester so I thought I'd write about how everything shaped up.

Product Design was probably one of the tougher finals of the semester. The first part of it was a presentation where we had to describe our company and show off our products. For the presentation, we had to have all the pages our our catalog done, so that was definitly a lot of work. The second part was a paper about the company, pretty much taking the info from the presentation and putting it into a paper. Being the president of the class, it was a lot of work organizing everything on top of writing part of the paper and making pages for the catalog, but everything came together and we actually ended up with the best catalog Mike Martin has seen in the class, so that was awesome.

Definitly the toughest final this semester was Business Communications. Throughout the course, everyone had to write a 15 page paper on a certain topic assigned by the teacher. Mine was on healthcare and definitly took a lot of work/research to put together. After that, the final final was a 20 minute presentation on the topic of the our paper, which ended up being almost as much work as the paper. Foruntately, I think it went really well, so hopefully I'll end up with a good grade on that one.

Since I had already taken the Tuning final, the only one left was Microeconomics. Luckily, it wasn't a cumulative final, it was just on the last 3 chapters. Like the other tests and quizzes it was again online, so it ended being the easiest final for me this semester, although it was quite a bit a studying.

On top of final tests, I had to think about going home. It ended up being a lot harder than I thought to get all my belongings into boxes and bags and clean the whole room, which was a lot dirtier than I thought. Luckily my dad drove down to pick me up and help me with the cleaning and packing, so after we were all checked out, we had a great dinner at Old West Steakhouse and headed to the hotel to get ready for the long drive ahead of us.

The next morning we started out early to a much longer drive than we anticipated. Once we were in Nebraska, we realized that since we were sharing the driving, we could make the 16 hour drive in one shot instead of stopping for the night and getting back on Saturday. So by 1:30am early Saturday morning, I was back home in Minnesota. I was really stoked to be home to so I could hang out with friends and family for my birthday.

So now I'm home for the next 4 months after an awesome first year in college. It feels great to be home, but I'll definitly miss Steamboat and all my friends there. I'll try to write some blogs over the summer about how awesome Minnesota is, but now I'm going to bed so I can get up early and try to find a job tomorrow, but thanks to everyone for reading and hopefully I'll keep writing these next year. Peace.

The Final Wing Night.

Last night marked the last time for a lot of guys that they'll be going to the Taphouse for 33 cent wings on Tuesdays, so I thought I'd write about it.

It actually started off with an wings appetizer, when RHA hosted a free Red Bull and Wings study session. As expected, no one was actually there to study, but just enjoy free wings, red bull, and a break from studying. Sorry it is pretty weak but hopefully this picture gives you an idea of how popular it was.

Unfortunately, since it was so crowded, my friends and I only ended up getting about 2 wings each, and most of us no Red Bull, so we knew we had to head to the Taphouse for one last time this semester.

We all crammed into Josh's big jeep and headed down the familiar drive to the Taphouse. We were greeted by one of the waiters we have had many times throughout the year, placed our usual orders, and enjoyed the familiar taste of 33 cent wings. All of the guys I usually go with are heading to the Summit CMC campus next year, so for them, this was the last time they would get Taphouse wings. Fortunately for me, I plan on continuing the tradition next year with whoever wants to go.

It was definitly a nice break from finishing up my final Business Communications presentation, but it is now ready to go and I'm sure I'll blog soon about how all my finals went. Peace.

Pictures to Go Along With Back to the Basics Blog.

Here a few pictures taken from Nate's sick iPhone to go along with the blog I wrote recently titled Back to the Basics about skating now that snowboarding is over. Enjoy.

Josh doing a rock to fakie on the spine:

Josh stomping a fakie ollie to rock:



Nate sticking some tail stalls:
Jaryn throwing a huge fakie rock n roll

So there's a taste of our skating adventure and a nice little break from working on stuff for finals, which I'm sure I'll be blogging about very soon. Peace.