Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate

I missed Rome Ride Day today…. for good reason, I went to Montreal last night to see the Pixies.

so FUCKING good!

Forester, Anna, John and the Justin’s say they went riding this morning but we never caught up with them. Started off a bit hard at the top but it was all gravy by the third run.

Oh and Paddock came up to show off his brand spankin new Macbook Pro.

I guess Forester and I will just have to “CARRY ON”

Just kidding buddy, nice to have a smoking buddy in the office!

“Guys in extreme sports always get hurt”

The lot was empty this morning until Ron showed up at about 7:55, Josh and Travis arrived minutes later. We were amped from the get go. The Sun was blasting, plenty of snow from the storm two nights before and we had a good crew.

Ron and his large helmut.

We kept adding onto our crew all morning until there were about ten of us.  Our laps eventually rolled from the trees into the park as the sun warmed up the tranny’s.

Ron was quick to point out that all the shots are either butt shots or guy in the sky photos, Im no Ansel Adams.

Mr Breakfast waited in the car.

Overall a super fun morning, we all have shit eating grins here in the office.

I have some old friends from my home mountain King Pine staying up at Stowe this weekend. Actually, the entire staff  of King Pine is here, 60 of them came up for their annual end of the season REEB trip (REEB is BEER spelled backwards). Every year, after they shut down their resort for the season the entire staff gather up all the kegs that haven’t been kicked and go on a road trip. The last two years they have been coming to Stowe.

With a large contingent of us Rome guys in effect and a great crew from King Pine we were rolling deep this morning. We got a few inches of fresh last night and it blew into the trees nicely. It was cool showing them some local stash spots and getting some last drops (maybe) on our favorite lines.

See you all up there tomorrow, who knows, maybe we’ll get another few inches tonight and we can do it all over again.

Everyone is back from our annual Ride With Rome, a two day event to ride with East Coast snowboard shops, held down at Mt. Snow’s Carinthia Park.  Two nights of partying and two days of riding later and everyone around here looks like the walking dead.  A couple of my favorite memories (foggy at best) where a rowdy rendition of Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild Women with Josh and Forester on Guitar, Sully on Banjo and the entire house singing the lead vocals, watching Justin get dropped while he was being “put on the ceiling”, intern extrodinaire Jimmy’s failed attempts at putting the porch back together (thanks Alexa), a late night gnocchi feast (thanks Paddock), watching the park guys from the lift slay everything in sight and riding the wood park with a good crew.  I also heard during one of the many impromptu recaps around here this morning that, a group effort was put into getting Paddock up onto the ceiling and the spaghetti dinner that Sully and Paddock slaved over was next level.  It was good to see Jake Sullivan from Darkside can still rip after being off a board for four years, welcome back buddy.

For some of us it will be a party that can’t be remembered and for most a trip that won’t be forgotten. Thanks to all for coming out and we’ll see you next year.

oh, and here is a remarkably accurate shot of what I was seeing when Justin got put on the ceiling.

FUCK, I LOVE MY JOB!

My brother was a huge MAD magazine fan and as a kid I always wanted to get my hands on his copy of the latest issue.

Check out these gems

I only took a single photo of this mornings shred session. Here is a chronological list of the lines I got.

Hayride

first run, then 2 down

Lookout

after that we hit up

Major Jones

to

Lookout Rockgarden

and for our last run we went to

Elliot's Falls

Stowe was so fun this morning!

I had some friends in from out of town so we hit up Bolton for some night shred on Saturday night.   I am embarrassed to say that it was my first time. When I was an intern living in Stowe, the guys who lived in Burlington would go three or four times a week. Now that the Rome/BTV contingent consists of John, Justin and I, we’ll have to start going regularly again.

Thanks Bolton

Ali and I went to NH this past weekend to say good-bye to her brother Payde, who is moving to Bozeman, Montana. I got thinking about my first move out west, I had just graduated from high school and was intent on living the dream of riding big mountains everyday. My best friend Jan and I each found a friend to ride shotgun, packed everything we owned into our beaters, said goodbye to our family’s and headed into the complete unknown. There are way to many stories to tell from that trip and the following years living in North Lake Tahoe and eventually Steamboat, but here are a few pictures from that first trip.