Colorado Update

I'm back from my vacation, and feel like I need another vacation to recover. I'm positively sure that my posts here were dearly missed, but rest assured I have some pretty good stuff to update everyone with. I got some pretty good video with my gopro while out snowmobiling and snowboarding in Colorado. I'm going to try and get all that edited together soon and get the video up this week. For now this quick pic will have to do. 

Vail, CO

7 Springs Snowboard Trip: After

As mentioned before, this past weekend I headed up to 7 Springs to go snowboarding with some friends. The snow was pretty good, the weather was pretty good, it wasn't too badly crowded, but it was coooold! Thank goodness for insulated snowboard gear! So while the hillbillies were out there in soaked blue jeans, I was nice and toasty warm, and dry! I don't think I'll ever understand why people think it's acceptable to ski/snowboard in blue jeans. Anyways, MOVING ON!

My helmet worked better than I hoped for. I was a little worried before heading up there about its ability to keep my noggin warm in the almost 0 degree temperatures. Before we left I tried on the helmet with a beanie underneath, but it was an extremely tight fit, and probably would've been very uncomfortable for any extended amount of time. To my delight, I was surprised to discover that even without a beanie, the helmet kept my head plenty warm, I even opened up the vents on it on occasion to help control my overall body temperature [a feature I hadn't planned on using, but was glad it was available.] Also, the built in headphones worked beautifully, and my ears were filled wonderfully with the sounds of my snowboarding playlist.

Overall, it was a real good trip with friends, and I'm glad I was able to escape and get up there for a weekend. Now I'm realllly anxious for my upcoming trip to Colorado in just over a month! I took my GoPro camera up with me, and filmed a bunch of footage of my friends and I cruising around the mountain. I shot the video at 60 frames per second as opposed to the normal 30 frames per second, but when I tried to import the files into final cut pro, the program for some reason did not like the clips. Because of this, I had to play around with converting the file types a bunch before final cut would accept it. The end result is a video that wouldn't export at the correct aspect ratio or quality, I dont know why this was happening but for that, I apologize. Hope you still enjoy the video though!

[Snowboarding at Seven Springs]

7 Springs Snowboard Trip: Before

Watch this.



[Very Best of Snowboarding]

Now that we're in the right state of mind.....later this afternoon a bunch of friends and I are heading up to 7 Springs, PA for a weekend on the slopes. I'm pretty excited, since 7 Springs is a pretty good size, and generally has good snow conditions for being in the mid-atlantic region. Also, I only got to snowboard one day last year, so I'm realllly itching to get back out there. Also, this will serve as a good time to start getting my legs back under me since I'll be heading out to Colorado in about 6 weeks.

In anticipation of this weekends trip, and the trip to Colorado, I went out and [finally] bought a snow helmet for myself last weekend. I've been snowboarding for about 13 years now, and have never worn a helmet on the snow [and least when not riding a bike.] I've had some hard falls before, and actually knocked myself out once a long time ago, but overall I've been pretty lucky so far. I figured since I ride so much faster now than I used to, that it was time to get a helmet. I picked up a Giro G10 audio series helmet, and I really like it, and am excited to test it out on the slopes. It has some pretty good speakers built into the ear flaps, and when I tested them out after bringing the helmet home, I was very impressed. I was very surprised by how good the sound quality was, and that was important for me since I do like to ride with music. My roommate was so impressed that he went out a couple days later and bought the same helmet.

Anyway, here's a couple pictures of the new 'dome protector.' Hopefully I wont have to test out the limits of this helmet anytime soon! Stay tuned for updates on the trip after the weekend!

The new lid.

Tunes? Yep.

And this is how you mute and control the volume.

Meaning you can keep your music player tucked safely away.

2011 HGTV Dream Home: Stowe, VT

Last night on HGTV, they unveiled the 2011 dream home. It's appropriately named, because it is in fact a dream home of mine (for the east coast at least.) It's up in the heart of the only place on the east coast with decent snow conditions, Vermont. I actually had the opportunity to head up to Killington 2 years ago, and would love to get back to visit some of the other mountains [cough]Stratton[cough] at some point. I feel like living in the HGTV dream home, would more than likely provide me (and 13 of my friends, the home sleeps 14 you know) that opportunity. I'm entering twice daily until the registration closes on winning this house. Assuming I win, who wants to move there with me? To apply, I'll need you to help pay taxes, and also earn your keep by providing the house with some service. Please respond in the comments on why I should pick you, when I win this house. In return, you'll be granted a living space, and lifetime of amazing memories. Pretty good deal if you ask me. Here's a couple pictures of some of my favorite spots of the house.

Front of House. Massive windows and right next to the slopes

Massive two car garage, the Challenger will hibernate in peace with it's own protected parking spot.

'Gathering Room' - again, massive windows reminding you just how close you are to the slopes. Oh, and the gas fireplace, that's nice too.

Huge Kitchen. I hope one or more of my roommate applicants will be able to put this to good use!

Deck. Perfect spot for some after dinner beer pong, we may need to buy a space heater or two though.

Master Bedroom. Not really crazy about that black dresser over there, but I suppose I'll let it slide....this time.

I have a feeling my hot water bill may be a tad on the high side with a bathroom like this.

Ski Vermont? Okay.

TV/Movie/Game Room. Yep, that'll do.

First Roommate Room. Think you can live with that? Yea, you better be able to!

Guest/Secondary Roommate Room, pick a bunk and stick with it.

Outdoor Grill. I'm much for suited for this type of culinary art.

Outdoor Hot Tub/Fireplace. The best for last. After a long day on the slopes, who wouldn't want to unwind with a cold beer and hot tub session?!

You may have noticed that "a couple favorite spots" included the entire house. Trust me, I planned it that way. So, if all goes as planned, I'll be moving in sometime this spring, and will be accepting roommate applications from now until then. Of course, if you win this home instead of me, I get dibs on the room of my choice. You can enter twice daily, here, and here. Good luck folks! :)

Kid On A Leash Part IV

Well, kid on a ski-leash really, either way it's still funny. My brosef and his wife Katie went snowboarding the same place I did this week, just a few days later, and they were able to capture this picture on the slopes. Hats off for your crack-reporting and photography skills guys!

As always, take a picture of a kid on a leash, send it to me, it goes on the blog. Enjoy!

Lazy Sunday

Sunday was lazy....okay not really by most people's standards, but it was really. I headed out early Sunday morning to Wintergreen and met up with a friend [that's us in the picture] for a day of playing in the snow. Good thing I just recently purchased my nifty new camera huh?! The weather was actually great, and I think I feel comfortable saying it was the warmest weather I've ever snowboarded in. It was sunny and probably 60 degrees all day long. No jacket, no gloves, just goggles cause the snow was BRIGHT! Anyway, I didn't go crazy or anything since this was [unfortunately] my first and probably last snowboarding day this year, no need to injure myself. So I had fun cruising around, taking pictures and filming. There's a bunch more clips, but I haven't edited them together yet, so [for now] this is all you get. Enjoy!

Snowpocalypse 2010

Well, as anyone may have guessed we've had massive MASSIVE amounts of snow here in the Northern, VA area this weekend, record setting in fact [I believe]. You can find a good picture account by heading here, to my sister in-law Katie's blog. For a quick video though....well you've found the right place!

We had a couple friends come over to get snowed in with us, and there are 4x4's a plenty. Here's an example of some shenanigans we I got into today! Enjoy! [Oh, and I say "snowmobiling" instead of "snowboarding" but I'm not sure why...maybe I was trying to not wipe out!]

Snow-Cross Dual Slalom!

Take 4 mountain bikers, put them in start gates at the top of a mountain and send them off at the same time trying to get to the bottom first while flying over jumps, banking berms, and knocking each other over....oh yea, and it's on snow. Yep, this sounds like a good idea. Count me in!

The event is being held up at Blue Mountain in PA this Saturday, and I'm heading up to give this a whirl and hope I don't kill myself. The race entry is only $20, but that also includes an all day lift ticket to go snowboarding after your eliminated from the racing [I'll probably get eliminated early, so if nothing else I get a nicely discounted lift ticket for being a crazy person attempting to ride a bike down the snowy mountain] - Sounds like a pretty good deal to me! Here's a quick video of the past years events/preview of what this years should look like.

Blue Mountain 4X Biker Cross from Spinteck Limited on Vimeo.

Should be a fun time! I'll bring my camera along and hope to get some good pictures, and maybe find someone to take some shots of me crossing the finish line totally wiping out. Stay tuned!

Ski Liberty

This past Saturday I headed out to Ski Liberty with some friends to get in a little snowboard action. I've never been to Liberty before, and there's probably a reason for that...also the same reason I probably won't ever go back (unless given a free ticket.) Wayyy too crowded for that little hill they like to call a mountain. It's probably got about a 100 ft. vertical difference from top to bottom. Okay maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much! I'd say it took me an average of 20 seconds to get to the bottom of each run. And about a 5 minute wait to get back on the slow lifts to head back up and do the same run again. I'll stick to Killington or Colorado, thanks for playing.

Given that nonsense, a day on the snow is still better than a day sitting on the couch. Here's a few pics. Enjoy.

Some friends.

This skier decided to hop in the picture with me.

View of the 100 ft. vertical drop.

Reflection.....get it?

Oh hey! I managed to crack open the high back on my new binding too! Super.

Killington Trip!

Alright so I promised some content, and finally got around to getting some pictures together. Last week a few friends and I made the drive up to Killington, VT to get in some good snowboarding action. The trip was definitely worth the drive. They had a lot of snow up there and it was cold enough that when they did decide to blow snow, it came down as actual fresh powder rather than tiny ice chips like we get down here.



There's not really a ton to say except that we all had a great time, all escaped with no injuries, oh and it was COLD!!! I believe the high on one of the days was around 0 degrees, and here's a little picture of the thermometor at the top of one of the peaks (with no wind!) Can you imagine how much colder it would've been had the wind been whipping around the entire time? I prefer not to think about it. After the pictures is a video I took just cruisin' down one of the green runs filming everyone on the trip. You'll hear me say at the end of the clip that I need to stop. That's because at that point I could no longer feel the hand that was holding the camera! Time to get that mitten back on!

Enough rambling. On with the show! Enjoy.

View out the back of our condo.

Attacking the sasquatch guy in the Burton terrain park, "The Stash"
Catching some sweet air.
Exact opposite of the above picture. Faceplanting. Hard.
I make a mean fire.
Hibachi dinner. This flame looks like a little boy angel of fire!
Big Buck Hunter was in every establishment.
Blue sky. White snow. Enough said.
Video.

First Snow Day!

So, first off, Happy New Year! Hope every had fun and safe celebrations!

With the new year came yet another long weekend for me, so I decided to take advantage of it! (At least for one day anyway) Saturday night I headed up to Philly to crash with a friend from school, and then Sunday morning we made the drive up to Blue Mountain, PA. I had been to this mountain a few times while still in school and remember having a lot of fun there, so that's where we headed. As I mentioned in a previous post, conditions in this region of the east coast generally are not spectacular. We were on the snow by 8:30am and it was still pretty chilly out, and there was some definite ice on the ground. But once the sun came up and over the mountain, it softened things up quite a bit, and actually made for some pretty decent conditions! As an added bonus the mountain was darn near empty! No waiting in lift lines at all, and traffic going down the runs was minimal.

I didn't go too crazy yesterday. First day back on the snow since March, getting the feel for a brand new board and bindings, I more or less used the day to get my legs back under me again and get them warmed up. This coming Sunday I'm headed up to Killington, VT for a few days, so I also didn't want to walk away yesterday with some bozo injury that might ruin my upcoming trip! I spent a lot of my time yesterday practicing riding 'switch'.

Let me explain: When I ride regularly, my left foot is in front heading down the mountain, this is called 'regular' stance. If you ride normally with your right foot in front going down, it's called 'goofy' stance. Switch for me then, would be my right foot in front, essentially riding backwards down the mountain. I don't know how many of you snowboard, but this is a pretty darn tricky thing to learn. I'm not the greatest by any means, but I was starting to feel quite comfortable by the end of the day, and even made it down a few runs riding entirely switch. I was happy.

Enough about that. Here's a video I took towards the end of the day riding down a green run filming my friend I went with. I pan the camera towards my feet a few times to illustrate riding in both directions. As yes, I did fall once.

Hump Day Playlist

Happy Hump Day! As previously mentioned you'll most likely be seeing a decent amount of music and video related posts on this here blog of mine. One thing I'd like to do is create the Wednesday (or Hump Day) playlist, you know, to get you over the hump and onto looking forward to the weekend. Themes or compilations are usually a lot of fun, and today is no exception.

It's now December, the daylight hours are short and the days are cold....well except today cause it's going to be like 60 or something ridiculous, but you know what I mean. At any rate, It's winter time. And with winter comes one of my most favorite activities of all time. No, not Guitar Hero (although I do admit, I can shred a killer rendition of Cliffs of Dover) - I'm talking about SNOWBOARDING!! Unfortunately for me, I don't live out west....yet. No, I live in good ol, non-congested, stress free, easy going, not a care in the world, Northern Virginia. The closest semi decent mountain is at least 3 hours away, and even then it pails in comparison to what the west coast, Europe, our neighbors to the north, or even New Zealand have to offer. We get to snowboard (or ski) on a winterly mix of what I speculate is probably no less that 65% man made tiny ice chips. Translation: we have the worst snow conditions ever. The plus? When you head out west, or any place that is accustomed to perfectly groomed runs and 6 inches of fresh powder a day, you're in heaven. As an added bonus, if there's even a hint of frozen snow, the locals call it terrible conditions, bail for the day, and wonder how the heck we're able to maintain control.

Whew! My apologies, had to get that out of the way. My point is that it's now the snowboarding season, and I'm busting at the seems with anticipation of getting back out on the snow. So today's 'Hump Day Playlist' contains some music which I tend to listen to while out snowboarding, some of which you probably never would have guessed. Enjoy!

1. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
2. Dire Straits - Money For Nothing
3. Eric Prydz - Call On Me
4. CCR - Fortunate Son
5. Daft Punk - Around The World
6. Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin'
7. Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape
8. T-Rex - Get It On (Bang A Gong)
9. Brain Setzer Orchestra - Rumble In Brighton
10. Hellogoodbye - Here In Your Arms
11. The Grass Roots - I'd Wait A Million Years
12. T.I. - Whatever You Like
13. Poison - Nothing But A Good Time
14. Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger
15. Hole - Awful
16. Miko Mission - How Old Are You

If you have a song that you like that fits into today's list, by all means share it in the comments section!