The Snow is Back.

I realize I just wrote a blog about how great it has been riding slushy spring conditions, but Steamboat decided to pull a fast one a bring in two big snow storms within a week.

The first one was Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, leaving for epic powder riding on Thursday. Admitedly, I was ok with the season winding down and getting really excited for summer, but Steamboat wasn't done yet. I really hadn't ridden that much powder this season but Thursday was awesome. I really couldn't even tell you where we were that whole day since I almost never leave the park, but cruising through the trees and heading all the way to the peak to take some turns was awesome. I got to see some of the best views of the season and ride some new terrain that I had never experienced.

If that wasn't enough, mother nature decided to do it again as I type. Right now it is puking snow on the town and especially up on the mountain, making for some great riding for tomorrow.

So now I'm going to bed so I can wake up nice and early (for me anyway) and ride as much as possible before class. Peace.

Off Mountain Shred.

With the increasingly warm weather and the end of snow getting closer and closer, I thought I'd share with you some of the awesome off mountain shredding that was had over the course of the season.

The first spot some friends and I started jibbing was the Steamboat skatepark. With nicely set up drop-ins and moveable boxes (until they got frozen to the ground), we were able to set up some features to butter on and practice a little for riding the terrain park at the mountain.

These two pictures are of Pat and Corey hitting one of the set-ups we had at the skatepark. Also I have to say thank you to Chelsy for taking the pictures featured in this blog.

Alright so after some fun times in the skatepark, and once there was enough snow for it, we headed to the rail yard for some after mountain shredding. The rail is located right on campus, just below Monson Hall. It features a flat box, down-flat-down rail, two rounded handrails, and a battleship box. If features were set up in the right spot, they would stay fairly well lit from the lights outside of Monson, which was nice because they you wouldn't have to try to use car lights.

These next few pictures are shots of Corey and myself enjoying what the rail yard has to offer. As a side note, I have to thank Corey for representing Rill Snowboard Co. in these pictures.

This last spot I unfortunately do not have any pictures of, but it was argueably the most fun off mountain spot. We refered to it as "The Stache" (yes like a moustache) and it was basically a crazy, random set-up of different features not found elsewhere in town. There was two quarter pipes, a down rail, a couple sizeable jumps and random bonks and stalls placed on the smaller of the quarter pipes. The Stache could be found by going up the hill to the right of the dorms. It was hand built a little by myself, but mostly by Steve, Jaryn, Jeff, Josh, Boston, Colin, and Alex. The Stache is unfortunately gone now with all the crazy melting that has been going on, but rest assured I will do my best to rebuild it next near when all those guys are off to the Breckenridege campus of Colorado Mountain College.

So there you go, hopefully this blog gave you a glimpse of the winter fun to be had off the mountain while still shredding. Peace.

Vegas Pictures.

Thanks to my dad, I've recently figured out I can text pictures from my phone to my e-mail in order to get them on the computer. In light of this, I decided to write this blog to finally give you some visuals from my trip to Vegas with Rome SDS, since I took a few pictures on my phone.

I took this first picture while at the booth. This was the display for one of the new boards to be added to the line next year, the Postermania. This board used to only be available on a special website for people who work in shops that carry Rome, but they decided to add to it their public line for next season.

This next picture is Rome's most popular freestyle board, the Artifact, except this is the Artifact 1985, which means it has Rome's rocker technology. Rocker is a new type of camber that has become really popular. Basically the board is shaped like a banana if you are looking at it from the side. This board has Rome's Jib Rocker, which means it is designed for riding park.

This next picture is a new really cool thing Rome did called the Addictive Collection. What Rome did was give complete freedom to their graphic designers to design special graphics for three sizes of their Rome Agent, which is one of thier most high end boards, as well as a special edition of the Libertine boot, which is their freestyle boot, and a line of their 390 bindings, which are their most popular ones.

This last picture from the tradeshow was one of my favorite parts of the booth. They made only three of these special Agent's that were all white on top. While we were setting up for the show one of the graphic designers, who was actually from Minnesota, dipped a paint brush in a bucket of black paint a splattered this wall along with the board and a special one of a kind all white pair of the Targa bindings. This awesome display was to show Rome's new graphic direction where each Agent and Targa bindings are uniquely splattered in the factory after they are made.

These next few pictures I took on my last night in Vegas when all the Rome guys and myself walked the strip and went up the Eiffel Tower out in front of the Paris hotel or whatever it is called. The first one on the left is the veiw of the Belagio and the one next to was looking to the right up the strip towards the Palms, and the last one is the other way up the strip towards the Excalibur and the Mandalay Bay.

This last picture is the incredible view I got to see every night from our room at the Excalibur. It was pretty sureal to get to look out and see that every night after working with Rome for the day. So there you go, sorry it took awhile but hopefully you got a little better idea of what it was like rockin out in Vegas with Rome SDS. Peace.

Free Time.

So I'm just chillin in my room right now since my 4:30pm Business Communications and Report Writing Class was cancelled and I thought I'd share with you all some of the things to do nowadays when one has free time to kill.

By far my most favorite thing to do, especially after a good day of riding is watch The Office, which I happen to have all four seasons of on DVD. For those of you who don't know about the show, it's pretty much the greatest TV show. It features Steve Carell as the idiot boss and actors John Krasinski, Jenna Fisher, Rainn Wilson as the other main characters Jim, Pam, and Dwight, although there are actaully many characters in the show since it features everyone who works in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of paper supply company, Dunder Mifflin. Now, I'll stop there, because I could go on for awhile about The Office, considering I gave a 13 minute presentation on it in the very class that got cancelled today and prompted me to write this blog.

With the incredible weather we've been having here in Steamboat, if you've got some time to kill, a lot of students have been skating the mini ramp. Here at the Alpine campus of Colorado Mountain College, we have a mini ramp just down from the cafeteria and right next to Monson Hall. It's always a great way to spend a warm spring afternoon, espcially if you haven't been able to get your fix of the mountain that day. And if a mini ramp sesh isn't enough for your hardcore skater ways, Steamboat has a really cool skate park right by Howelson Hill, just a little ways down Lincoln Ave. from the college.

Another pasttime that I've recently discovered is Mario and Sonic Olympics for the Nintendo Wii. It is awesome, but exhausting. In order to run, you have to shake the remotes as fast as you can which ends up being surprisingly tiring after a few events. In order to do some events such as the vault, you have to move the controllers in certain ways to do specific flips and rotations and it really gets pretty technical. On top of that, they have some crazy made up events that you can unlock if you beat enough regular events. It's up to four players too, so it's really fun to play with a bunch of people.

Lastly, a favorite pasttime of mine is to just listen to music while surfing the web, that is if you're pretty into music like me. Recently, I've been rocking a lot of Motion City Soundtrack, Cold War Kids, Mayday Parade, Kid Cudi, and some 3OH!3. A great time killing webstie is addictinggames.com. They have thousands of free little games to play, as well as they recommend other game websites to find more games on. There is also always Youtube in which I've been watching a lot of Daft Punk music videos and snowboard videos.

So there you go, you don't necessarily have to be in Steamboat to use these ideas, but hopefully you found some new things to do with you free time. Peace.

Urbane Clothing Store.

During my bit of down time right now while relaxing on spring break, I thought I'd tell you all about a really cool new store in Steamboat Springs called Urbane Clothing. I'm not sure why they added the "e" on the end of urban but I think its pretty cool.

Urbane is located right off Lincoln on 7th street, which is right near The Taphouse. It's in a really cool spot right off the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Steamboat so I think it gets a pretty good amount of traffic.

So far I've only met one of the owners but he was really chill. Him and his girlfriend started this store not to long ago and so far only have one employee. When I went in there, some friends and I were talking to him about the brands they carry and he was more than happy to give us some catalogs of brands' new stuff as well as a poster. It's really cool to me to see a small start-up store really going out of the way to show their customers what the store is all about and to get customers stoked on the store.

On top of all that, the products they carry are awesome. They carry a lot of lesser to medium known brands of clothing and shoes. If I remember right, they only carry Circa skate shoes, and as far as clothing, they carry brands such as RVCA, Akomplice, and a bunch of others I can't remember right now.

So that's pretty much Urbane. The store itself has a open layout with lots of cool artwork and just really good vibes. Hopefully when you guys are in Steamboat you guys will check it out. Peace.

Slushboat Springs.

I realize this blog is a little overdue considering I'm home in the MN right now on spring break, but I wanted to let you all in on the awesomeness that is slushy spring riding.

Now, the majority of people (especially in Steamboat) would probably disagree with me when I say that slush is awesome. Some people even hang up the skis and boards when the weather warms up and the snow begins to melt. But I am here today to tell you that even though deep, fresh powder and crisp groomers are great, slush has a magic all its own.

For starters, almost everyday riding this past week before spring break has been crazy sunny and warm, already setting a good vibe for the runs ahead. Sunny days already put me in a good mood, but when I know that I get to slide around in the slush all day, well that's just an added bonus.

So on top of the great spring weather, what makes warm slushy riding so fun? I will admit it more or less depends on the type of rider you are, but being that I ride park almost all of the time, slush is excellent. It provides for soft landings that are easier to hold an edge in after a spin or butter. For me, it makes it easier to judge speed off jumps because, considering it is slower than middle season snow, I know to just straight line it into my favorite jump line instead of having to worry about speed and throw occasional speed checks. And lastly, it provides much more comfort when trying new tricks because of how soft it is. If there's a trick you've been nervous to try all season, throw it in the slush! Any rough landing you can think of will always be softer in the slush.

So there you go, that's my quick little pitch about the magic of slushy spring riding. Hopefully I was able to convert some of you to being spring riding lovers, but if not, it's all good cause I know I'll always love it! Peace.

"Able" to Kill It.

This semester, I have one of the most important classes for me and my career goals: Product Design. However, having it spring semester, there were not as many class periods, but I'll explain.

Basically, Product Design is the class where we learn about the technologies that go into snowboards as well as some marketing tactics and popular graphic trends. We take all of that and put it into our own company that we start in class.

In the very beginning, the class splits up into 3 groups of about 9 people, and those are the companies. Throughout the lectures, we do group assignments to formutlate the direction we want our company to go in and the tasks for each group member. I ended up being picked group leader and our group decided on the name Able Snowboards. We are park riding based company with really creative graphics. We came up with a really cool marketing tool/company image with an Able to Do Something theme. Our main snowboard is called the Able to Believe, and the graphic features a bunch of mythical creatures such as sasquatch, a leprechaun, and on the bottom, a unicorn. Some others were the Able to Garden, which has a flower and a shovel on it, and the Able to Eat, which features a big hot dog on the top.

Once we have a really solid foundation of where our company is going, as well as our boards' graphics and tech specs, it was about midterm time. For the midterm, each group has to give a presentation to 5 local shop owners and people from the snowsports industry about your company and why they should buy your products. After all the groups were done, they left for about ten minutes in order to pick the best group. The point of this presentation was to decide which group had the best grasp of the ideas from class and from there, the one company they pick ends up being the company of the entire class, and for the rest of the semester, the whole class works as the one company.

Well needless to say, Able won it, and when I get back from spring break, I could end up as leader of the entire class.

As a side note, spring break has been awesome and I'll definetly write about it afterwards. Peace.