This is where you’ll see the behind-the-scenes product stories, random rants, stories from the road, and different opinions from the employees, riders and reps who form the inner circle of the Rome SDS.
After the worst drive of all times ( exploded tyre in the first hour (2 hours delay for fixing it), snow chaos on the roads in Germany and Austria (another 1-2 hours delay), ending up at a mountain pass between Italy and France that was closed (4 hour detour drive, at that point it was past midnight), getting 2 speeding tickets in the mont blanc tunnel (30 kmh too fast on the Italian side/210€ fine an 33kmh too fast on the French side/90€ fine; the tunnel itself was 35€ – i paid 335€ to go through a fucking 10 kilometer tunnel) , getting to Tignes at 4am after 18 hours in the car!!!) i made it to Tignes for the first Euro X Games ever.
The course is somewhat crazy, 6 jumps in one run and 2 speedy jibs. The first day there were still some true gaps in there, but somehow they changed that within one night completely – they made everything poppier, filled the gaps in and made step downs instead. Then the weather was shit and practice was pretty sketchy today. Lots of people got hurt. I´m not sure if its a smart idea to ride this course after just coming back from a knee injury. I guess i will just go with my feeling and be sponteanous when it comes to qualifiers.
Jump number 4 and 5, a speedy rainbow thing and jump number 6. Actually you can even ride the take off next to the rainbow jib as another jump, then you got 7 jumps in one run. Probably the most jumps in a contest run ever. crazy shit!
We have a ton of snow here in VT and the nice weather doesn’t want to quit…
The snow stake is at about 8 1/2 feet
Don’t get caught in a NIMBY mindset…you may have grass in your back yard but winter’s been happening… and now for the best tim eof the year: spring, with parking lot BBQ’s to match sunny park laps.
With Spring days at Tucks in mind, I hoped that the sun would bake the Rock Garden so I headed up…
...but I got there about an hour early...snow was still pretty solid when I headed down.
Anyways, what I mean is: get out there the snowboarding is as good as you can ask for here in the East.
EB just posted this commercial they had on TV 10 years ago on their blog. Good friend, Rome team manager, filmer, movie maker divulged to me with unspoken trust I wouldn’t spread it around that he was the man in the video at about 17 seconds…well, that’ll teach him to trust me I guess.
Yep, this weeks selection for Rock and Roll Tuesday is Ice Cube. I know his music is not classified as Rock and Roll, but his attitude sure as hell screams Rock and Roll! If you have to deal with the cops this week (like I had to today), blast some Ice Cube to get a smile back on your face.
Conditions are about as good as they get in Vermont right now. So there was pretty much no question that I was headed to the mountain this morning.
I started getting my gear on around 6 am to head to the mountain. A benefit to living in Waterbury is that you are close to the mountain, so most of us will get fully kitted out at home: boots and all. Dr. Fung has been having me test his latest creation: The PureFlex Libertine.
The snow we are getting is pretty wet and heavy and has really been wrecking havoc in the towns. So of course I lose power right before I need to put my boots on.
(In case you needed a photo for reference)
I can attest the Pureflex boots passed the test and were simple to put on in the dark. Nothing could stop me from getting to the mountain today.
If you haven’t seen the video on how the boots work, check it out…
(As Ian describes in his piece the orange lace goes in to the internal cuff so it is tightening the internal ankle cuff, as well)
Rock and Roll Tuesday has been on haitus for a while but hopefully today’s selection makes up for it! First off, big ups to fellow shred Scotty Lago for keeping it real after winning the bronze, rock and roll Scotty! Anyway, I’ve been reading the book ‘Hammer of the Gods’ so I dusted off a bunch of my old Zeppelin albums and have been diggin on them alot more than usual lately.. Enjoy these two classics from one of the greatest bands of all time!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song performed by Zeppelin before, and I feel like we’ve all heard everything they’ve done at least 5 times… but check this out live performance from Australia in 1972..
Thursday, a bunch of Rome employees were doing what we try to do as much as we can…get our snowboard on.
Generally, this is a good week for us working stiffs; we start the week blacked out, but the rest of the week the mountain opens at 7:30. If you can get your ass out of bed, this pretty much means you can get just under two hours of riding in and be at your desk in Waterbury before 10 am.
So i was riding with Toohey, Anna, & Brendan and got a little ahead of them and rolled up on Josh. So instead of waiting, I hopped on the chair with Josh and headed up. Then…the lift stopped…abruptly. We were not quite half way up the hill.
Anna getting lowered...
We sat there for a little bit with some shit chat, when a patroller rolled up and declared that it was going to be a minute and they were going to have to evacuate us from the chair. Years ago I learned how to do evac when i was an instructor…I knew “a minute” was the understatement of the century.
Well the guys who rolled up to do our section needed some practice in the little things but safely emptied the chair ahead of us. Watching them empty the chair Josh & I decided that it was bad steez to have your hand on the chair while you were getting evacuated.
Mike Toohey. Having your hand on the chair is the equivalent of missing your grab
While waiting for the patrollers who evacuated the chair ahead of us, an extra patroller rolled up and this guy was pro. His rope was over the cable on his first try and we were down in no time.
Once we all had regrouped at the office most of us were pretty okay having had the experience; our curiosity well outweighed any frustration or inconvenience. I had never had this happen before (for real), and no one else in the office had ever been evacuated either.
Not much to report lately. Tradeshow season is over, and i’ve just been grinding on the new collection. Slowly chipping away at it, but fear not, you’ll be getting photo teases in no time*
To prove that i’m not dead, here are 5 images from recent web lurking that are worth looking at. Dont fool yourself kids, this stuff was most likely done before you were born. Timeless indeed.
*and by ‘no time’ i really mean sometime this summer.
I had to take a couple months of a snowboard-break due to an injury which sucked, but now i am back on snow and it´s awesome. I started riding again at home in Europe, to be more exact i spent most my time in Mayrhofen so far - Mayrhofen got the best park in Austria and some really sick freeriding terrain which is all accessible from the lifts (if you know where to go).
No hiking necessairy, no trouble with ski patrol – it´s easy to get sweet runs just off the lifts here in Mayrhofen. I hope we get some more fresh snow again soon though…
This weekend specifically, there was a girls slopestyle event in the park in Mayrhofen. Since the speaker somehow ended up in jail i took over his job for most of the day which was quite the experience.
The Mayrhofen Park
Aerodynamic Starwars steez made in Europe. I don´t really get it, do you?
Last week has been pretty good. You know when you get your tricks without fighting with yourself and everything comes easily. Damn I wish it would be always like that. To be honest, everthing went good until I got there :
It is 46 stairs, narrow, shaky, sticky. Took me forever for this one…Than we found that rail that no one did before. We found out pretty fast why no one did it. There was a huge crack, like 2 inches wide, on it. So we tried to fix the same way we fix the cracks in concrete when we skateboard. Worked out pretty good and got the trick pretty fast to.
