This is Our LifeSTYLE.
When I started snowboarding, my first kit was a Nitro snowboard from the early 90′s that weighed double what I did, matching bindings, a terrible pair of Killer Loop boots, snow pants that were too short and a bright orange Florida Panthers jacket. Things have changed since that first season, but the progression was slow, largely because snowboarding is such an expensive sport to get into.
My luck, and coincidentally, my style, changed when I managed to get hooked up with Special Blend, Forum and Circa. Bam! I could actually keep up with the trends. All that seems way in the distant past now and looking at me riding today, you could never tell that I was THAT kid in the ridiculously mismatched gear.
It’s easy to keep up with what’s good and what’s not when you have the connects. I get stoked on new gear. Saggy pants? I got ‘em. Tight pants? I got ‘em. Tall tees and jackets? I got those too. Then came cap straps and I jumped on board. Boa lacing systems, I was all over that. Reverse camber on snowboards? Well…I’m still working on that one, but as the following conversation shows, the new tech got me stoked.
Sam: Last season was just one of those seasons where I wasn’t progressing and wasn’t really motivated to ride.
Dan: Then reverse camber showed up…
Sam: (laughter) Yea man! That was totally it!
That’s a little over exaggerated, it was more about finding new people to ride with that push you to ride better and have a good time doing it, but you get the idea.
Living in my little bubble of awesome style and gear, or so I like to think, I used to find myself judging others on how they look. I totally feel like a jerk. The unfortunate thing is, this is the attitude that scares people from riding the park or progressing, since they’re embarrassed to go into the park and try something new because of their style and lack of trick list. It’s even worse because ALL of us were once at that stage, but we seem to have forgotten that. I remind myself of my ridiculous getup and all the times I felt that way when I was starting out. Hence, this post.
It’s like my friend and fellow blogger Charlie put it, “That’s (fashion) all skiing and snowboarding is. If you have the tricks and the style, you’re set.” Definitely, you can have your style. You can have your tricks. You can progress, you can get hyped, you can ride with your buddies, be loud, exchange high fives, but don’t be obnoxious or a straight up dink. That kid with no toque, sunglasses for goggles, jacket tied around his waist and a second hand board or pair of skis is going to be the same kid in fresh new digs and a skill set to back up his style in a couple years.
Basically, my point is stay stoked on your style and gear. I’m sure the pros get antsy when they get their new gear too. But! There’s always a but. Instead of being a jerk, hype other kids. You see someone trying and bailing only to get up and hike the feature, give them a high five or a cheer. Spread the hype. That’s how we spread our lifesytle.
‘Nuff said, let’s shred.
Sam
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Just some thangs to talk about…
Coming at you today with a quick one for your viewing enjoyment. Alright so first thing is a music related topic. I was watching MTV news last night and I heard something crazy that kinda blew my mind: Lil Wayne is coming out with a Rock N’ Roll album titled “Rebirth” that is set to drop April 7th/09. The first single “Prom Queen” has been leaked onto the internet and you can find it on downloaders such as Limewire. If you are open to new things, check this out, I think its super cool and I can’t wait for the album.
On another note I got a nice little Facebook message from Mr. Rod Caula, owner of Choice Apparel, and he sent me a quick edit he made from the Quiksilver Park. Just so you guys know, once I have my camera back I will be doing a profile on some smaller companies such as Choice Apparel, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
[video]
I know there have been a couple of build days in the park which led to closures but keep in mind it is a good thing, just cause you can’t ride that day doesn’t mean the end of the world. With Shaw Butterworth in the cat, magic is being made in the Quiksilver Park and I have a feeling he has some amazing stuff in store for us, so don’t complain about closures cause the park is just going to get twice as sick, and you have to give up a little to get a little.
Keep it fresh and eat your veggies,
Chuckles
SIA!
I would like to take this opportunity to say that Line skis has officially upped the ante when it comes to ski graphics and design. Weather you like em or hate em, you have to admit Line has gone above and beyond on all their 2010 models. I’m going to go ahead and claim sickest graphics in the industry.
I’m particularly partial to the Anthem…
Line Anthem
…and the Prophet 100.
Line Prophet 100
You can check out Line, and all the other new 2010 gear for yourself courtesy of the boys over at newschoolers.com.
The Vancouver Inversion in Photos
So last week with the inversion happening, I got to snap a few shots before my camera randomly stopped working. Along with photography, you get many different ranked shots. Many people dont ever end up seeing what 95% of a photographers shots look like. Well I would like to show you some of mine that dont end up making the cut. Basically some fun shots of people riding some tables. Alot of friends come over to see what shots i have of them which dont get released, and alot of other people dont ever get to see them. So heres a few i got from last week on Jan 14th.Remember though, along with these snaps no editing whatsoever has been involved.
Chris Dedinsky on his off time (Park Crew)
Liam Casey
Shaw Butterworth on his off time as well
Daniel Jonas BS 7?
Jayson Deguesseme
Sylvain Paradis after a day of school
So after some fun and warming up on the lower tables, the sun started to go down.
Liam and I went to go take advantage of it, and ended up with this:
Liam Casey
This is another shot but with Dan Jonas on the day before. As you can see the sunset wasnt exactly the same so we ended up with more of a flat light which I then turned into a silhouette.
Dan Jonas
Well now im off to go ski some Grouse Mountain. See ya up there.
Scott Titterington
Surprise Spencer Watson Visit!
The other day, Grouse Mountain Pro Team Member Spencer Watson came to Vancouver from Whistler for a surprise visit. Spence did a couple of laps of the Quiksilver Park with none other then Mr. Dan Jonas and Mr. Rod Caula owner of Choice Apparel and said he was impressed with the setup. Hopefully when the jump line is up in the park he will grace us with his presence and we can make a sick edit with some good jump footage. For now though just a couple of photos from the NIKON COOLPIX!
Smile Spence!
270 out of the up-rail.
Pre-450 out of the up-rail with some snow.
Having some fun on the 40 foot box.
Ta ta for now,
Chuck
Did that just happen?
Did that really just happen? January is just about wrapped and I’m in a daze. The past 2 months have felt more like an entire season crammed into the span of 60 days. December started with absurdly cold temperatures which rolled into some epic dumps of snow in early January. But almost as soon as it started, the snow stopped and the sun came out blasting with some unusually high temperatures in mid January.
Now that January is almost wrapped and the snow is back, it seems like the season is just getting going again…
Good day?
Here is a little video of a couple of laps through the Quiksilver park with the usual crowd on Juneuary 22.
Grouse Laps from cj on Vimeo.
Park City Edit: Some Inspiration
Howdy Cowboy’s and Cowgirls,
Just a quick one coming at you today… I found this super sick edit of a dude at Park City in Utah. Whenever I find a sick edit I’m gonna post it cause nothing makes me wanna hit the mountain more then a sick edit. So here’s some inspiration for you guys…
[Video]
Keep it artsy and poppin’,
cHuCkLes
Food For Thought
Holla Seniors and Senoritas,
Today is a very special update for me and I hope that you guys enjoy it too. This is the “Chuck’s Favorite Lupins Food Extravaganza!!!”. Basically what I did was I went into Lupins (the best place to eat on Grouse in my opinion unless you have a nacho craving) and ordered a bunch of my favorite dishes and decided to show you guys what I do to make them better and just to kind of open peoples eyes a bit because Lupins actually has more then just a delicious burger and fries. Now a key to a good shred has to start with good gas in the tank and Lupin’s does just that, fills you up good and full and provides the fuel needed to have you ready to go. Without further ado, the first dish…
Penne Pasta with Marinara Sauce
Penne Pasta with Marinara Sauce and a breadstick. One word: AMAZING!
The penne was simply amazing, it comes with a breadstick and some delicious graded parm cheese. They give a great portion and the sauce is to die for. The part that I liked a lot was that they give you a little extra sauce and it is perfect for dipping the breadstick in, big thumbs up from me!!! Another great thing about the penne is that it is a nice alternative to the more greasy foods such as fries and pizza, so for all you health nuts out there, this one’s for you, I know, thank me later.
The aftermath, I demolished this dish.
Cheese Pizza
Lupins Pizza (especially cheese) is always a favorite.
So the cheese pizza is my slice of choice for 2 reasons, I have an addiction to cheese, and because it is genuinely a great piece of cheese pizza that will rival all others “best” piece of cheese. For bonus points, grab some ranch dressing at the condiment station and use as a dip for optimal performance. Pizza and ranch is very, very tasty… nuff said.
The FAMOUS Lupins Poutine
Poutine: You can never go wrong with this from Lupins
Alright so last but not least is a great dish that I have been eating since my early days at Grouse Mountain, the poutine. Nothing beats fries, cheese curds and gravy; any Canadian can back me up on this especially if you hail from Quebec.
Now what I am about to tell you is a little secret of mine, this is exclusive to grousepark.com and you won’t find this anywhere else and some of you may think I am messed in the dome, but if you’ve seen me, trust me, I know food inside and out. Take your poutine and head to the condiment station and pick up some ranch dressing, put the ranch in the poutine for a tangy twist on a classic dish. I know, I know, you think I am a crazy person who belongs in a straight jacket in a room with no corners but bear with me and try it. It changed my life and I know it will change yours!
Some call me crazy, other call me a pioneer, you decide…
Drank Situation
Iced Tea is a great choice of beverage.
Now when deciding on a beverage to enjoy with your meal there are some things that must come into play. Carbonation in pop can make your tummy an unhappy camper so in Lupins there is a wide choice of dranks. Iced Tea is a personal favorite of mine because it is refreshing and washes anything down well. Another favorite is chocolate milk, it goes very nicely with the pasta. There is also Fruitopia and Lemonade that you can choose from. Don’t be afraid to mix and match with different flavours, some can be terrible but others can be a gold mine.
I hope you enjoyed my review of my favorite dishes from Lupins café atop Grouse Mountain, try the ranch and poutine, it won’t disappoint. Also if you are sick of the regular burger and fries, try the pasta as it was AMAZING and it is a healthier alternative.
Happy eats,
Chuck
XGames Judging
For those of you who caught the X Games ski big air, you will know what I’m talking about. If not, this is a good summary of the night for skiers.
For the first time ever in the X Games, the judging of the big air, both snowboard and ski, was to be done not by a panel of judges, but by the public viewing the event. The votes would be measured by text messages received from the viewing audience. I’m guessing you can see where this is going…
In the snowboard category, Travis Rice, being the sole American competitor in the event, had little to worry about that night, claiming “America’s got my back”. And right he was. An entirely American crowd of teenage boys and girls showed little to no compassion for Rice’s competition, clearly the better side. This article explains how the prejudiced judging went down.
On the ski side, it was the same. Simon Dumont, the lone American, had little to do but show up in order to get his gold medal. The degree of difficulty and execution of his tricks were nothing compared to that of his competitors. In the Jan 24th episode (Big air practice) of Jon Olsson’s videoblog, he predicts Simon will win the contest with a superman double front flip, clearly a crowd pleaser. Sure enough, despite PK Hunder’s amazing double 12′s, and Jon’s switch double 10 (with afterbang thank you), Simon walked away with the gold. Here is another good summary of this debatable topic.
Anyways thought I’d share that with you. Nonetheless, Simon was kind enough to donate his winnings to his injured friend Riley Poor, which in the end was a very thoughtful move. Perhaps a new judging system is to be thought of?
I currently am searching for a petition of some sort showcasing the redundancy of this text-based voting system and will share when found.
CAM
Photo: Bennylin0724 on Flickr
Calgary Trip
It all started when I got an email from my Westbeach guy Jon Cartwright about the “Ante up” contest at C.O.P in Calgary. I did the contest last year and it was a good time, a slope style event with nice jumps, everyone from our snowboarding cirlcle was there, and alot of the industry people too. So I though Why Not?
So we got a crew together, Mark Sollors, Hayden Rensch (filmer) and Russell Dalby (photog), and decided to drive out cause we planned on staying to hit some rails after the contest. We found out a couple days before leaving that the contest was turn into a 1/4 pipe contest… None of us are really into pipes but we had this whole thing planned out and we went for it anyways thinking “what the hell, lets just do it and then film some rails”.
The day we’re leaving the Coquihalla Hwy is closed due to mud slides! so we have to go north through Whistler, Duffy lake road, which is fresh with snow and gnarly. We pulled these aussies out of the ditch with Russell’s F-350. We finally get to Sicamous, and now Rogers Pass is closed due to Avalanches. So we meet up with our pal Jeff Patterson (Photographer). He’s been stranded there for Days waititng on the road to open and he’s telling us all about his crazy adventure. S0 we’re checking the road updates every 20 mins. At midnight the road opens so we book it! Of course it’s snowy and there’s black ice everywhere but we powered through it. Got to Calgary at 5:30 am. Yes we drove through the night.
So I’m super beat from the drive but still going cause of all the red bull I’ve been drinking. We sign up and it’s time to practice… My practice was doing park laps and I called it a day. The next day, contest day, I was feeling 100 times better then the day prior. I practiced on the 1/4 pipe, it was going ok. Mark was killing it in his heat with b/s 7 and going bigger and bigger till he hit the deck and hurt his back. He made finals but couldn’t ride anymore. I just made it through to finals after figuring out how to do b/s rodeos on the QP in the last 20mins of my heat. in finals I just tried doing the b/s rodeos as big as I could. then I started trying to bring them around to 7, but that didn’t go so well. I hit the deck and sprained my wrist pretty good. But in the end I got 5th place and won a little bit of money so I was super happy with that.
We were all injured after the contest so our rail trip didn’t go as good as we wanted it. We brought Jed Anderson along with us to Edmonton and basically watched him kill it on every rail. We drove back on a sunny day, the roads were dry and safe and the scenery was sweet. Now Mark and I are recovering from our injuries.
Thanks Evan Park for the photos!
-Belzile