SDS Blog

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Alaskan Exodus

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Former Rome intern Dan “Jiggy” Janjigian checking in from the land of shred up here in Valdez, Alaska.  I’ve bounced out of Jackson Hole for the spring to work on Thompson Pass at the Alaska Rendezvous Lodge as a jack of all trades: apprentice guide, bartender, maintenance man, occasional diesel technician; an all around doer of things.

After kicking off March with 13 straight days of snow, including an 18 hour, 3 foot storm, we are experiencing one of the best seasons to date. We just had another foot fall up high and are laying down the tracks as quickly as the heli can take us up there. Anyone with some free time, a few free dollars, and the want to ride deep pow should GET UP HERE.

Headed into the hills, more updates soon to come.

Check us out at….Http://www.arlinc.com

Down at Loon Mountain for the 10th Annual Last Call event with Eastern Boarder

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Dave Schiff, John Cavan and Bub from EB. Schiff may have been asking them who let the dogs out, because later that night he had the jukebox ask everyone who let the dogs out…maybe 6 times in a row.

Cavan and I headed down to Loon Mountain for the 10th Annual Last Call. We showed late Tuesday night, with no real plans of where to stay or anything, just assuming stuff would work itself out. EB came though and hooked it up with a couch and one of those awesome beds that come out of the wall, which I always wanted as a kid. If you have a small apartment, you should build one.

Rome Regional rider Mary Rand, who took 1st place and $1200 at the event with coach Charlie Sweet.


Wednesday missed the mark on weather, little windy, little cold, but that didn’t seem to make a difference at all. Loon put together a sick set-up, with a gap jump over a rhythm section/ jib course, huge quarter pipe, and huge wallride. After a few guinea pig warm up straight airs from riders, Chilly Miller, on what I think may have been his first drop, gapped the rhythm section with a huge front rodeo and it was on from there.

So… the plan was, Matt would make a giant rice snowball, then hide in the bushes outside, and when someone walked out of the bar, he would pop up and yell snowball fight, and whip a giant rice ball in someone’s face. Really it was one of the best plans I’ve ever heard.

The awesome continued pretty heavy through the night over in Woodstock. Great times, great people. Well done and thanks to EB and the Loon crew. Check out the EB blogs for more photos and wrap ups of the event. http://easternboarder.com/main.php

NH's finest at work, Chas in the quarter pipe, photo - Mary Walsh

Self Control Test

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Yoo

I have decided to put Myself through a Self Control Test…

I am not gonna Drink any Soda or Eat any Candy for the Rest of the Season, if I can do that then im pretty sure I can do everything i put my mind to.

The Longest time with out this stuff has been 2 days in a row for the last 8 or 10 years so its a pretty Big Thing for me hehe

I have been doing this for a little more than a week now and its going great…

Ill keep you updated!

www.helgasons.com

Pics from Japan

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Here’s a few photos from our trip in Japan.

This is how the menus in the restaurants looks like. It gets confusing.

So you sometimes end up with something like that. This is whale.

The crew

This is a dry turtle. They grind it and they eat the powder with water…

The turtle…

beers

Will Lav

Euro X Games

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

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!

Easter Boarder – 10 years ago…

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

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.

Hell Yeah Cavan…

Euro-Shred!

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

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?

Pics from last week

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

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.

And we left the spot.

Will’s report of the week.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Another week went by, some more shots got logged in, life is good. Here’s another edit.
You’ll probably notice that the lence is dirty…well, this thing gets dirty so fast…anyways…

We set up a rail next to a building that the alarm when off for some reason…cops came but never saw us, we had a good session.

Untitled from Will Lavigne on Vimeo.

Will Lav

Squirrels, cops and snowboarding

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

I went on a trip with the Standard crew. Here’s a video of stuff we saw on the road. Lots a squirels and cops. We took today “thursday” off and we’ll keep filming on friday. Good stuff went down, can’t show to much, sorry…Somewhere not in Quebec

Squirrels and cops from Will Lavigne on Vimeo.

Wil Lav