Tradeshow, Round 2: Keystone, CO.

Only one week after the insanity of Las Vegas, NV with Rome SDS, it was time to do it again. Rome invited me out to Keystone, CO for the on-snow demo show.

Once again, this show had a bit of a rough start to it when we had no idea how we were going to get there. We wanted to be there by Sunday night because we thought we had to help set up the booth Monday morning which, as it turns out, we didn't have to do. But we ended up convincing Corey and Tyler to drive us to Silverthorne on Saturday, since they had stuff to do on Sunday, and hang out in our hotel Saturday night. An awesome thing about this tradeshow, is that the school provides the students who go to this show with housing, so we only had to pay for a hotel for two nights, then we stayed in an awesome condo with a few other students from CMC Monday through Thursday.

Our day Sunday was spent cruising around the Silverthorne outdoor outlet mall, followed by some chillin in the pool/hot tub, then a little jib mission which ended up being busted by the cops after the best set-up was finished, so that was a bummer. Most of Monday was spent getting to Keystone and Steve, Boston (Kyle), and myself trying to clip someones day ticket so I could ride since I don't have a Keystone pass. Finally, some really nice ladies let me have one of their tickets and I got to experience the intimidating awesomeness that is the Keystone terrain park. From there, we spent a long time hanging out in the Keystone square Starbucks while Steve and I waited to go out to dinner with some Rome guys and Boston waited to check in to our condo. Finally, Steve and I met the Rome guys at Dos Locos for some Mexican goodness and after some confusion as to which room we were in, we all crashed, trying to get ready for the demo the next day.

We woke up bright and early, around 7am, on Monday morning. Thankfully, the room we ended up in was within walking distance of the Peru lift, which is where the show was taking place. We got there around 7:30 and helped set up the tents, board set-up tables, and displays. From there, our day consisted of talking to people who were looking to demo boards and bindings and setting them up on the gear. A really cool part about this trade show as opposed to Vegas, was that Steve and I actually got to give a sort of mini pitch to buyers about the products they were trying, so in other words, we got to act as reps in a way. After a long day of that, we hit Dos Locos and once again passed out, ready to wake up early and do it again the next day.

The next two days went the same, even the part about going to Dos Locos afterwards. On top of helping buyers and demoers, I got to ride Rome's boards for next year as well. I was able to try the Postermania and Pusher, which both have rocker technology, as well as the non-rocker Artifact and the Graft. On a seperate note, I decided to get the Graft for the board and the 390's for bindings as the set-up Rome offered me for working in Vegas. That, however, is another great part about Keystone as opposed to Vegas; you get to actaully try out all the product.

So after another fairly hectic week, we headed back to the Boat Thursday night. I unforunetly had another three days of waking up early to look forward to since I had a weekend class which I just finished up today, and am currently catching up on homework still, but check back soon because I do plan on blogging about the class as well. Also, sorry again for the lack of pictures, but no one had a camera out at Keystone. Peace.