You're at a super rad coffee shop/bar in Avon (Beaver Creek) called Loaded Joes and Rock Band 2 fest is going on and the joint is packed. I've been melting faces on the guitar all night and have had to have security keep all the groupies off me... I mean what can I say? I'm a Rock Band god.
We went to the X-Games this weekend and it was a circus. An epic adventure to say the least. I'll be doing a post on that after I get back from my Rock Band world tour.
Oh yeah, I rode knee deep freshies today and It's not supposed to stop snowing until Wednesday... Life is good. Dig it!
We rode Vail last Friday and it was lots o' fun. I don't have any time to write about it because I'm trying to get all my shit together as fast as I can and drive to the mountains... It's puking snow! So here's a few photos, and if you have 9 minutes and 57 seconds to kill, a video I made of the days shred action. Make sure to stick around after the credits... Dig it!
Mervin MFG represent!! Lib, Gnu, Lib, Gnu...
Artsey contemporary post modern Renaissance shadow photo
After rolling into town last Wednesday I couldn't wait to get to the mountains and finally ride some good snow. I love you Lake Tahoe, but your icy conditions and lack of snow cover causing me to shred up my board, and not in a good way, was bumming me out to no end. As much fun as riding over rocks, busting my ass, and encountering the greenhouse effect in my snow pants is, I was so stoked to be back shredding the Rockies.
Thursday morning I went to pick up my good buddy Jake Galusha (JG) from the airport in Denver and from there we were on our way to the mountains. We were meeting our other buddy, Jacob Biddle, (JB) who was already in Vail riding. We got to the Eisenhower Tunnel at about 2:30 and decided to hit up Keystone for a Twilight sesh. Since it was a week day there was hardly anyone on the hill so we were able to get in a bunch of runs with no lift lines to wait in.
Keystone has a super sick park set up with a bunch of really rad features and we lapped that quite a bit. I was back in a positive state of mind after my Tahoe park massacre experience, and I rode well in the park. There are some way fun wall rides and I was all over those. There's also a pretty big quarter pipe that JG was charging. We got a couple good photos and had an awesome session. We took off at like 6 and headed to Avon to meet up with JB and crash for the night in the Walmart parking lot...
Wall ridin'. I can't seem to get a photo while I'm all the way on the wall...
JG sooo close to airing out
Perfect power stance
The Keystone lights
We got a little video action of the last run with the poino-shoo camera, as I like to call it, (point and shoot) so check it out. When I load the videos from the poino-shoo onto imovie, the sound never works, which usually isn't a big deal cause I play music over it anyway, but in this case I was bummed cause we were saying some funny shit on the way down and I wanted it on the vid. Alas, dig it.
Here's a very cool video featuring Travis Rice and artist Mike Parillo giving the inside scoop on this years Lib Tech TRice pro model deck. There are some details on the deck you would probably never notice unless TRice or Mike told you about... Which they do in the vid. So peep it!
Do you like mu-staches? Do you like snowboarding? Do you like to sport your mu-stache whilst snowboarding?? Of course you do! My good pals from theMustachio.com over in euro town just launched their new website and it is looking so sick! Just like how my mu-stache looks... only with a different meaning for the word sick.
These guys have such a great site dedicated to everything snowboarding and being funny, and it would be well worth your time to go click around the new Mustachio for a while.
The new Mustachio website is even Ron Burgandy tested and approved, so go peep it now!
Well, I got back to CO on Wednesday and Thursday I took off for the mountains of Summit County for 5 days of super awesome shred fun, photos and videos to come... I'm currently in Fort Collins to tie up some loose ends and move out of my pad before my permanent move to the mountains sometime this week. As I mentioned before, I had a place to live lined up but after numerous phone calls, oh about 20, and messages, like 7, and no return calls, I can only assume the people sold it and don't have the common courtesy to pick up the phone and let me know. LAME. So, if there's anyone out there with a cheap trailer for sale, hit me up!!
In the meantime, here are the rest of my Tahoe shred-ventures. Shouldn't these have been done, like, a week or two ago?? Yes, but I was busy sunbathing in the 60 degree Reno weather...
Stop and Smell the Mt. Roses
Perhaps you remember this post? Well, it was finally time to get out and teach the little dude how to shred. My Aunt and Uncle and their two boys, Chase and Reese, all got passes to Mt. Rose for the season and were nice enough to buy me lift tickets for two days of riding in exchange for my super ultra expert lessons, so thanks Chuck and Amy! Mt. Rose is a super fun mountain and is only a short 25 minute drive from Reno, making it a local favorite.
The first day of riding was after a decent little storm and the snow was great. The second sessions was about a week later and the snow wasn't so great then. Both days were bluebird, but super cold. Apparently my Uncle took the boys out for a day of skiing and riding before I got home and Resse didn't exactly do so well on the board. He was wiping out all over the place and not very stoked... Cousin Zac to the rescue! After half a day of dropping vast amounts of Jedi shred knowledge on the little grom, he was ripping like he'd been riding for years, linking heal and toe side turns with ease. It was awesome to see him progress so quickly and I was very genuinly stoked to teach and watch him ride. He was also having a great time and seems to be hooked on snowboarding... Almost as much as Nintendo Wii!
Chase and Reese cheesin'
No Mullets, HAHA!
159 Reese
Myself, Reese, and Chase on the Pondo chair
Need proof of my Obi-Wan esque teaching abilities? Just peep this little vid of Reese tearin' up the mountain!
After a couple runs together on the bunny hills, Chase took off on his own to get some turns in. I gave him the camera and told him to take photos of whatever he wanted and he got some really good ones! Here are a couple...
Mt. Rose bluebird
Chairway to heaven
This blows...
Towards the end of the day, Reese went to the lodge to hang out while Chase and I took a couple runs together. It was nice to get up to the top of the mountain and take a couple real runs. Chase is a super good skier and I had a hard time keeping up with him! He was ripping for sure.
Speed racer
It was super fun to ride with my cousins and teach Reese how to ride. I was even coaching him up on all the different trick names and snowboard lingo while we were riding the chair together. A future shred rat for sure!
The view of Reno from Rose
Northstar Gnar
Another day at Northstar... After a couple nice storms when I first got home, the weather in the Reno/Tahoe area turned tropical. SO WARM. Awesome for skating in January, not so awesome for snowboarding in January. I was wishing I had my skate deck so bad... The snow melted during the day and froze at night causing shitty conditions on the mountain. I rode this day with my buddy Trevor and it was fun until the last hour and a half or so. He had 7 or 8 days under his belt and was getting a lot better. We were just mellow groovin' most of the day, I was working on riding switch and trying to blunt stall every blunt stallable object I could find. I was teaching Trev how to ollie and he caught some nice air off a couple lips a few times.
Trev air
So-so blunt stall
After a bunch of runs, I decided to take a few laps through the park, and this is where things turned shitty. Now, this was my first real park day of the year. There wasn't really any parks with jumps set up in CO before I went home, and Tahoe was in desperate need of snow before any parks were really set up. There was a little mini park at Breck I hit a few times, but nothing big. So I scope out all the features the park has to offer while riding the chair overhead, and see quite a few that look super fun. Well, it wasn't fun. The snow was so icy and all I did was fall all over the place. There were some very easy flat boxes I couldn't seem to ollie onto, some jumps I felt like a first timer on, and a wall ride that absolutely owned my ass. On one jump I was going for a f/s 1, and instead got squirley off the lip and did a f/s ass drop. Sweet. I rarely ever get bummed while snowboarding, and this was one of those rare occasions. I felt so uncomfortable and like I took 10 steps backwards in my park riding skills. The only thing I felt good about was a little lay back I did on the wall ride that didn't annihilate me.
Air to ass
Post lay back
After the wall ride incident, which included me flipping over the wall, unintentionally, I was over riding and we got outa dodge. The mountain got the best of me that day....
Oh yeah, I was pretty stoked on this photo I took through the lens of my goggles.
Not So Heavenly
Lake Tahoe is my absolute favorite place in the world, (so far) but it was hard to love it while I was home for the holidays. With no snow and warm weather, the snowboarding was not good. I decided to try my hand at Heavenly in South Tahoe, since it's covered under my Epic pass, but it was more of the same icy, shitty conditions. I rode with my buddy Ben and we made the best out of the day.
Heavenly
Incredible view of the lake
A beautiful day in Apr--, I mean January
It was like 2 different worlds at Heavenly this day. As you can see, it was like 65 and calm at the bottom of the hill, but up top the wind was blowing like 75 miles per hour and they had to shut down a bunch of the lifts. After some absolutely brutal runs over concrete ice, we ended up lapping this little mini park they had and calling it a day. At this point, I was jonesing for the Colorado snow hard core! I did get a few funny photos though...
This dude must have come straight from the club, he was wearing enough cologne to last him all year
AHHHHHH!!!!
Decisions, decisions
On the drive home, the clouds rolled in and cast this awesome light over the lake and I was able to snap a couple photos of it. It made the water look gray and the photos almost look black and white. So beautiful!
Keep Tahoe blue!
So that's it for my Tahoe shred-ventures... I had a couple really good days, and couple not so good days. I'm super glad to be back shredding in CO, snow is in the forecast!
Movie reference? Anyone....... Buller? Anyone? Hahaha... First person to name those two movie quotes gets a cyber hi-five.
Ok, so as I mentioned before, I'm going to be doing a bunch of Do It Yourself (DIY) features on the site and this is the first one. I'm a very creative person and I'm all about the DIY mentality. I love to make new things and change or alter the stuff I already have. I think people waste a lot of money on buying new shit all the time or paying for a service when they could make or do it themselves. Don't pay $25 for a snowboard wax, buy the wax for 5 bucks and ruin an iron doing it yourself. Want that $300 super snazzy snowboard jacket? Why not buy the black one for $150 and snaz it up yourself? Need somewhere to keep all your skate and snowboards? Make a skate rack in welding class for 20 bones....
There's also a sense of satisfaction when you do something yourself, for me at least. When I spend a lot of time and effort on something I'm way more stoked on it than I would be if I went out and bought it. It's like, "I just made that, fuck yeah!"
Anyway, the first HS DIY feature is a time lapse video of the skate rack I made in welding class this past semester. Well, it's actually me spray painting and adding some foam padding to the rack. I didn't want to risk bringing the camera into the welding shop where I was actually cutting and welding the steel... Shit gets a little crazy in there. It cost $12 for 14 feet of 1"x1", 1/8" thick tube steel and another $8 for some foam pipe insulation, spray paint, and some colored tape. It took me about 5 hours of work to complete, and I think it turned out pretty good!
So here it is, the first of a few DIY videos I've made. Dig it.
The HS graphic team was hard at work for the last week creating that spectacular visual... Well, I'm finally going back to CO after an extended, but very enjoyable stay in Reno. I can't wait to get back to some good snow! Hopefully the roads are to gnar on the trip... See ya in CO!
The next to last installment of these behind the scenes webisodes features the TiTa crew exploring New Zealand and all of its beauty. Lando gets his siiiiick method and T. Rice spins some of the craziest shit I've ever seen. Check it out.
So during my weekly visit to the Lib-Tech website, I came across this gem of an interview ESPN did with Lib Tech ripper and Think Thank Films genius, Jesse Burtner. This dude shreds better with one foot strapped in than most people do with two, and Think Thank has put out some great snow films including this year's Stack Footy, and their best in my opinion, 2007's Thanks Brain.
Jesse really seems to have things figured out, "Instead of buying a snowboard to emulate someone else's expression, you buy the tool to create your own expression—that's the agenda I'm trying to push." He says in the interview. Fuckin A. It's the indy film companies like Think Thank that I believe truly embody what snowboarding is all about, and that's shredding with your friends, getting creative, and having a fucking fun time doing it. It's people like Jesse and Think Thank that truly inspire me to go out and ride my snowboard. The big time films featuring the world's best riders don't really do it for me inspiration wise. I mean c'mon, I'm never in my life going to huck, or land, a double corked b/s rodeo 10 over a 100 foot gap like T. Rice does in That's It, That's All. Nor will I ever air 20 feet out of a pipe or drop a 2,000 vertical line in AK. That shit is incredible and I love to watch it, but it's so far out of my reach. On the other hand, I might be able to spin a b/s 3 off a little pow pillow, or blunt stall 180 out on a wall ride, or fast plant off a ledge, or rip up some powder, ya know?
Those are the types of films I get the most stoked on. The ones where it's like, "Oh shit that was sick... I'm gonna go try that!"
So anyway, the interview is great, peep it here. Oh and make sure to watch the little vid also, so sick.
If you need proof that Jesse is the shit, just peep his part from Thanks Brain. Dig it.
So I heard about this a couple nights ago and couldn't really believe it actually happened. I mean the physics of it didn't really add up in my head. That was until I saw the photos....
You all should go peep The Tacklebox for a very funny description from someone who was on location to witness the upside down Sasquatch.
Dude was like this for 15 minutes apparently... What do you think was going through his mind while his balls were dangling for all to see?
"This isn't good. Let me ASS-es the situation."
"Maybe when I get down I'll go have a HEINE-ken..."
"I hope I don't TAINT my reputation..."
" Myspace!"
"How ironic, the Butthole Surfers are playing on my ipod right now...."
"This is fucking NUTS...."
"I hope I don't piss on my face...."
Ok, ok.... terrible puns aside, this is still hilarious. This guys will be the BUTT of so many jokes... HAHA! Ok that was really the last one.
Tahoe Dangerzone has even morephotos of inverted Borat, like this one of someone getting a face full of ass.
I'm sure karma will catch up with me for making fun of this dude and I'll wipe out, causing all my clothes to simultaneously tear off my body, and I'll slide totally naked down the entire mountain.
Yo I'm Zac and Hybrid Sessions is my little platform to discuss all the shit in life I'm super stoked on: Snowboarding, Skateboarding, Music, and Art. A one-stop shop of sorts. Here you'll find my thoughts and opinions on said subjects, local and national shred news and happenings, interviews with rad people, amazing art and music, my adventures, hilarious humor, shit talking, and anything else I deem awesome enough to write about.
Reader participation is STRONGLY encouraged, as anything goes here.
Let's get radical.
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