As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t suffer at least one season ending injury over the course of your ski career, chances are you’re just a huge pussy. Sorry, but it’s true. If you refer to “shinbang“, “toebang”, or any other kind of bang as an injury, you’re also a huge pussy. And herein lies an important distinction—being hurt vs. being injured. If you’re doing this thing called freeskiing/newschoolin’ right, you’re always hurt. If you’re doing it righter (or you’re just talentless like myself) you probably have been, or will be, injured. If this fact frightens you, you should take up golf…or blogging.
Archive
For November, 2009
I’m working on getting my Master’s degree in English, and as the joke goes, “I already speak English, what are they teaching?” Admittedly, these hyper-educated individuals get the big bucks to teach grown men and women to read. The challenge, of course, is that they have to teach reading in a way that we deem to be worth thousands of our dollars. As you might imagine, it takes some creativity.
One of their favorite techniques is to take seemingly unrelated books, stories, poems, etc. and force us to analyze their connections, conflicts, and interactions. I keep forking over the dollars, so I guess their strategy is working.
I’ve decided to test this idea on all of you fine readers in what I’m calling the Monday Mashup.
The theory is that putting anything in a new context will change the way you perceive it. Here are three popular snowsports webisodes. Two you’re likely to be very familiar with, and one will probably be new to most. Watch what you’ve got time for…then react your ass off! Or quietly contemplate the meaning of it all. Your choice.
So, I did it. I mean, I’m doing it. I’m en route to my own personal imaginary nirvana, or as it’s more commonly referred to—Portland. I’m writing this in the trunk of my car, lying in a borrowed sleeping bag, and apparently I parked in the exact spot necessary for the “Denny’s” sign to shine directly in my face when I lay in the only comfortable position I can manage. But, my pants are already off, and I’m zipped up, so I ain’t moving. I’m 75% sure that I’m in Kingman, which I assume is in AZ as I haven’t seen any CA welcome signs. The open-faced chili cheeseburger I dominated a few hours ago is sitting low and heavy. Yikes. Despite that inconvenient truth, I’m sleepy in that satisfied “I went somewhere and did something” kind of way—even if that somewhere and something is nowhere and drove respectively.
I decided that I was going to Portland while writing last week’s CF, but I left it open-ended and whatnot because I thought it sounded more mysterious and cool to do it like that. I still think it was a good choice. I don’t know why I felt compelled to share that. Continue reading this entry »
Chris’s newfound vagabondism makes for some damn good Casual Fridays. It does not, however, make for consistent internet access. While we wait for our traveling contributor to poach someone’s leaky wireless signal, check this edit to hold you over. The good people over at Right as Rain and Plenty Soul put it together on a preseason day up around Whistler.
Oh, and if you’re in the state of California, please take the password off your wireless network so Chris can email his story and steal your credit card numbers. Thanks.
Nick Hickling: Our day started pretty late– around 3. The place was packed with 50 or so kids lurking around. We all met up at the cliff/stepdown spot, and finally moved to the blue PVC rail when everyone else left. Kadenwood is up in a development above Creekside in Whistler so there’s building supplies all over the place. Great day, great little intro to the season
75% of all ski edits are filmed at Keystone, Breck, Park City, or N’star.
90% of park skiers won’t ride at one of those resorts this year.
100% of these stats are made up.
For those of you who live at one of the park Meccas, let me explain something: most parks don’t look like yours. From what I see in your edits, it looks like there are lots of stock flat-rails/boxes of varying lengths to learn tricks on, and the jumps are no longer made like the table Candide was jumping on in Ski Movie 2. Like I say, this is a guess. I don’t ride at one of those aforementioned Meccas. Neither do most people.
Everyone else deals with horrible takeoffs, ruts, rail burrs, gaper-snakes, flat landings, and strange features that make no sense. After many years of frustration and bewilderment, I present to you: The (completely unqualified blogger’s) Treatise on Parks.
Jumps
You’d think this would be self-explanatory in 2010, but jumps shouldn’t look like Evil Knievel’s car-jump ramps anymore. No one should be launching off a cheese-wedge, over a long-flat deck, to a short landing—from thirty feet up. It’s dangerous and stupid for reasons that are so obvious I refuse to explain them. The Gap Session taught the masses about safe jump construction. The jump should follow the rider’s trajectory, which ties into my point about Physics later on.
Variety is good. Sure you think you’ll look cool on the local message board when you brag about the 90ft table you just built on a mountain with 500’ of vertical, but 9 times out of 10 it will suck. Make a variety of sizes, nobody is filming videos at your resort (other than the Meatheads) so make shit that kids can learn on without dying or snapping body parts.
Rails
I’ve ridden at many a place with rail issues. I blame video parks. The dopes that manage our local parks (more on that later), watch whatever video has the most Burton riders in it and think that they should imitate the private-shoot rails they see. This never turns out well. The funding/know-how just isn’t there. They try to churn out a scaled-down, cheap version of what they see, and what results are asinine mutations that defy physics.
The best parks in the country might have one or two gimmicky “signature” rails, but most of their acreage is taken up by flatbar rails and boxes. They tend to be of the straight or single-kink variety. You just can’t go wrong if you stick to building a “skatepark in the snow.” The occasional “C” or “S” box makes an appearance, but you’ve got to be realistic about this– if you didn’t pass high school Physics, you might want to steer clear of a feature that relies so heavily on centrifugal force.
That's a rail, on top of a box, on top of a bus.
“The Disabled List” is a new weekly feature. The next two will be written by unfortunate sufferers of knee and boot/foot injuries. Enjoy!
Mel Gibson probably gets the honor for “Most Famous Shoulder Dislocation of All Time,” although there are a few other movie dislocations in the running. They’re all pure bullshit. Without fail there’s plenty of screaming, writhing in pain, and dramatic relocation via slamming the shoulder into things. The howls of agony are more or less accurate (for the first dislocation anyway), but slamming your shoulder into a wall is about the last thing on your mind. Continue reading this entry »
There’s plenty to be written about how fun Garrett Russell’s skiing is, but that would be against our principles- wouldn’t it? If you’re lucky enough to have snow, go try to have this much fun. I dare you. If not, watch the edit a few more times.
BroBomb is proud to present an edit from one of skiing’s good guys:
The fun is made possible by Line Skis , SASS, Smith, Full Tilt , Dakine, Marker, and Telluride.
You’d think that one night spent playing “Dodge the Suicidal Mule Deer” on a pitch black Colorado state road would have lastingly quenched my thirst for that sort of adventure. Well, it didn’t. In the wee hours of this glorious morning, I got on my Luke Skywalker ish and swerved around a presumably brand-new herd of deer en route to Wolf Creek Ski Area, just outside of Pagosa Springs. I beat the sun there, but just barely.
Let’s back up though. The most interesting part of this story—in my estimation—is the shenanigans that led up to this latest impulsive, ill advised road trip. Continue reading this entry »
Mike Schneider, owner and founder of Surface Skis, was cool enough to take a moment away from packing preorders to talk to BroBomb. If you’re not familiar with Surface product– scroll to the bottom and check out their product video.
BroBomb: You just got back from a shop tour of California to promote the 09/10 Surface line. How’d that go?
Mike Schneider: Overall, the trip was much needed and a great time as well. Some friends of ours were kind enough to let us stay in their place in Incline Village so I actually had a hard time leaving the Tahoe area once I settled in. I visited a few shops around that area and the response was good. People are hyped on our rocker stuff and price points. We don’t have a ski over $600.00 in our entire line and offer some good incentives and margin to our dealers. I think we did real well for our first real shop trip to CA. I also spent an afternoon over at Boreal watching the chaos take place on their landing strip of snow. I got to chill with our homey, Jason Arens, for a bit so it was great to see him and meet his crew of friends. I will most definitely be spending a lot more time in Tahoe when the snow comes in. I am pretty hyped to get to know that area this year and bring the Surface crew over to shred.
Are you noticing more interest in the park/ freeski segment of the market over past years?
For sure, park skiing especially is blowing up and is so sick to see take place. Park skiing is so accessible to every kid no matter where he lives and I think that’s a large part of why its doing so well. Not many of us get to shred snowmobiles and heliʼs in obscure places all the time so we have to make the most of what we have, whether its sessioning a flat bar in Michigan or spinning laps in Park City, it’s all good. Super pleased on where skiing is headed right now.
Are shop owners catching on? When I was a kid I remember trying to convince my local shop that park skiing wasn’t just a fad. Are you finding that they’re already convinced of its staying power now?
The smart shop owners and those who are on the pulse (or have employees who are) have already committed buying dollars to freestyle brands and its not nearly has hard to convince them that freestyle is here to stay and exploding.
Skiing isn’t safe. You can wear all the helmets, Crashpads, and futuristic POC storm-trooper gear you want; there’s still the risk of injury. Hopefully, we all go to the hill with reality in mind and act as safely as possible. But, the risk isn’t something to be avoided or stamped out—that’s what makes this sport such a rush. The padded-walls world we live in has eliminated most real risks, but the human body still craves that adrenaline. Nobody wants to return to the days of being a saber-toothed cat’s lunch, so skiing does a damn nice job of feeding the need.
Matt's feet.
If you ski long enough, an injury is damn near unavoidable. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a clean break on some quick-healing bone doing something that makes a badass story for the ladies. If you live in this world, it’s more likely that you’ll tweak a knee off a roller, dislocate a shoulder during a temper tantrum, or swell your feet like Sloth’s face by wearing crappy boots.
The BroBombers are lucky enough to cover all of the above. For the next few weeks we’ll bring you “The Disabled List.” We’ll tell our stories, and try to provide some useful info on recovery, rehab, and how your mother will react. Doctors are great and all, but they don’t tend to be skiers, so they’ll tell you all types of crazy things about how you should stop hitting jumps and sliding rails. Screw that, we’ll tell you how to keep on charging. You can trust us, we’re bloggers.
