Lucas had his first Twitter experience last Friday and spent a couple hours fielding questions from snowboarders out in the tweet-land. He caught on pretty quick and really hammered out answers once he had the hang of it. Here’re a few excerpts…
For many in the Northern Hemisphere summer is starting to wind down, thoughts are beginning to turn to video premiers, new magazines and the upcoming winter season, but for the Southern half of the globe winter is currently full on. The Rome team has had a pretty busy summer so far, here’s a brief update of what’s been going on.
Although he’s left with a pretty savage scar, Bjorn Leines is now 100% recovered from his vicious arm injury he incurred filming with the Absinthe crew. Bjorn is currently in New Zealand with Volcom filming some last minute shots with the 9191 crew.
Stowe is about 20 minutes from the Rome office here in Waterbury Vermont, so it’s no surprise that most employees here claim it now as their “home mountain”. When we picked someone who fit the bill for “Locals Only”, although there are a ton of great locals over there, Toohey stood out to all of us.
Toohey’s one of the most positive, glass-half-full guys you’ll ever meet. With a constant friendly smile framed by what is undoubtedly the best mustache in the Central/ Northern Vermont area, he’s a hard guy not to like.
So give us a quick run-down of how you became a Stowe local.
I moved to Stowe from Hardwick, VT when I was 18 to work at the mountain as an instructor. After spending a few years here I left for the west like most snowboarders in the Northeast eventually do. It was fun but was missing something that the East Coast had. East is amazing...
It’s hard to believe that it’s already August; it seems like only a few days ago it was June 6th and Windells was starting summer off amidst pow days and freezing temps, and now it’s warm, sunny and Session 6 just finished up. Luckily, there’s still tons of snow up on the hill so there’s been no shortage of shreddogging at Mount Hood.
The Rome Game of Shred has been running without interruption at Windells Camp on Mount Hood, where campers have been shredding the summer snow up on the glacier. Session 5 just finished up, which is a surprise to both campers and camp staff; summer always seems to go by so quickly.
Johnny Lazz has been riling up the campers with both his on point rail riding and his infectious laugh for the past few sessions. He led Rome Stache’r Night, again one of the most ridiculous evenings on campus, with almost 100 kids participating in the man-hunt-esque game.
Last Friday Mike Forester, the newest design guy over here at Rome sat down in front of his computer to do some Q and A with the good people on Twitter. He kept pretty cool under the pressure of the tweet barrage that came at him for 2 hours, so I guess we have to give him a little credit. Here’s a sampling of a few of the gems from Friday.
@Jslaxx - Mike, if I win this board, I will try any trick you ask, get it on video, and post it online, any suggestions as to what trick?
@romesds - Double pits to chesty
Marie Hucal is one bad ass snowboarder, she’s the newest addition to the Rome team and she’s quickly made a name for herself as a charger who’s not afraid of rails, jumps, or filming with dudes. Sharing the same name as another certain female snowboarder on the Rome team has earned Marie a handful of nicknames but it’s clear that she’s her own person and won’t be living in the shadows of anyone. After MFR got injured this winter Marie Hucal got the call to come out to Bear and film with us for Team Shoot Out, a daunting task for anyone, but especially someone who really hasn’t filmed with any of us before. Marie is funny, quick witted and has a positive personality, which makes her an easy fit to our team. I look forward to working a lot with her in the future…even if she is kind of a hippy…I mean flaming spinning yo-yos…who does that? Here’s a little iChat interview I did with her recently.
John Cavan - ok lady you ready to do this
Marie Hucal - sure thing!
The videos are in and the judging has begun on the 2010 crop of Local GNAR entries. This marks the 4th year in a row that a group of Rome employees get to pretend they’re working for a day, and sit around to watch local snowboard flicks…could be worse.
This year we’ll be releasing one Local GNAR entry per day (in no particular order) for 5 weeks leading up to the announcement of the winner. You can check em all out on our Facebook page daily at www.facebook.com/romesnowboards.
If a poll was taken here at the Rome SDS, Mike Forester would rank high as one of our favorite people. Earning the title BIE (best intern ever) during his internship in the summer of 2009, he has now officially made the move from shop employee at Casualties in Marquette, Michigan, to intern extraordinaire, to full time Graphic Designer here at Rome.
The Rome team was in-house checking out some of the Local GNAR entries not too long ago. We’ll be releasing entries throughout the rest of the summer and announcing the winner in early fall.
The past couple weeks LNP, Stale Sandbech, Eiki Helgason, Johnnie Paxson, and Johnny Lazz have been out at Hood getting some summer-shred in, hanging out at Windells, and enjoying the Oregon weather.
Rome’s summer Game of Shred has begun, as Windells just wrapped up the first two sessions of the season. Mother Nature wasn’t ready to give up on the chilly weather that easily this year, and Session 1 and 2 bounced back and forth between sunny and snowy, depending on the good lady’s whims; June 16th saw a snowstorm and two days later it was 70 degrees out. It’s been great, though, campers have been jumping on Rome Agent and Artifact Rockers from the Windells Demo Lab, to float through both summer slush and wintery powder.
Now that the snow’s gone, the mountains are showing their once-buried bounty from the season: watches, coffee cups, cell phones, Chapstick, ski-poles, trail maps, and other crap that doesn’t really belong out there.
Eiki Helgason and Will Lavigne will be hanging out and getting some summer-shred in with campers from June 24th to July 2nd. Will may even be hanging out a bit longer at camp for more good times. It looks like there’s a tiny bit of availability for Camp Session A, so get your spot today here at the COC website.
Summer camp for lots of people evokes memories of paddling canoes, ghost stories, and enthralling activities such as basket weaving, marshmallow roasting and friendship bracelet braiding. For the lucky campers at Windells however, summer camp will mean days of shredding up on Mt. Hood in Windells private park, launching into the brand new on-campus snowboard bag-jump, and skating brand new and unbelievable skate parks. And if you’re headed to Windells 3rd session, it will mean hanging out and riding with the Rome Pro Team.
Our friend Adam Hawes over at Transworld Snowboarding chatted a bit with Bjorn in the Caught Up with series. Really well done and a couple videos to check out on it to boot. Click Here to Check it all Out
Lucas Debari is the latest edition to the Rome Team. This season he spent some quality time filming in Alaska with Absinthe and Jeremy Jones’s project, Deeper. I’m really stoked to see what he put down this season, and stoked he took my phone call for this interview, even though he probably felt obligated to do so.
How long were you in Alaska for this season?
I booked my ticket for 6 days, but I ended up staying for 45 days. I kept getting invited for different trips, and one thing I’ve learned is if there’s potential in Alaska, there’s no reason to go anywhere else.
We at Rome have just learned of a potential safety issue concerning our 2010 United binding. If you have purchased this binding or are using it, please stop immediately and contact us at 802.244.1758 or at warranty3@romesnowboards.com. We will upgrade your 2010 United binding at no cost to you. However, we will ask you to return your 2010 United bindings to us.
Best Regards,
Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate
802.244.1758
Well hot pow is what we got. We arrived a day after the storm which would have been just fine, except the pass did not open that day due to clearing of snow. What a beautiful day that was, all we wanted to do was get on the pass and start building. Myself and Nicki had drove 16 hours strait to find the pass closed and the sun beating down on it. In late spring it’s a race for hot pow jumps but in our case an extra day of sun was not what we needed. Well the trip turned out a success and we bagged some shots for the movie and ended up with some funny stuff along the way.
-Leland
So, where are you right now?
I’m in Ocean Beach, San Diego. I’ll be here for the rest of the summer, maybe even a little into the winter too until I go back to Jackson, which will probably be around Christmas, that’s when it starts to get really good.
Tell be a bit about your trip to AK.
Alaska was sick. I went there with Willie McMillon, Adam Dowell, and Mike Mahon. We were there for 2 weeks, didn’t really have any budget, but we all got into King of the Hill which kind of became the focus of the trip. We did a ton of sick shit right off the road, tons of pillow lines and stuff. We also met up with a bunch of friends who had sleds so we got some trips up with them which was great. Saved our cash for a day of heli, each run there was 6-8000 of vertical, it was straight pow…so epic. I’m definitely going back next year, going to do King of the Hill again, and hopefully save up enough for some more heli time.