Winter

I recently attended the 2011 installment of the World Freeride Festival. This annual festival takes place on Thompson Pass in Alaska, and draws riders from all over the world to tailgate and ride some of the sickest terrain on the planet; hence its name, Tailgate Alaska. A friend told me that the problem with going to Tailgate Alaska is that you end up being compelled to return every year. My response to him was: so what's the problem? As it turns out, he was exactly right.

Tailgate Alaska officially kicked off yesterday (7PM AKDT) at mile post 29.5 on Richardson Highway. The bad news for me is that I'm writing about it while sitting in the flat eastern timezone. However, my official departure for AK is not too far off — less than seven days away — so I'm not too bummed about it either. It will give me a bit more time for some last minute preparations before I leave; like securing a good map for example.

The snowboarding season is finally on in the North East (North America for you global netizens). With it comes the beginning of the lesson programs offered by the ski school at my local resort; a winter source of employ for yours truly. However, this year is a bit different than in the past because the ski school — which manages both ski and snowboard programs — has a brand new director. With the new management in place, the big question before the season began, was whether or not this would trigger the usual war over uniforms (i.e.

Saturday was day three of the SIA snowsports tradeshow. After taking in the free funk served up by Del on Friday, we weren't in a huge rush to get to the convention center. It was a good bet that day three was going to be a low key affair (relatively speaking). The plan was to meet up with some friends from Sierra Snowboard, then take it from there.

Friday was the second day of the SIA tradeshow. Day one, on Thursday, had already seemed long in spite of the fact that we didn't really go party that night. In spite of this, I still planned to get an early start on day two. Since Zoe had been fighting a cold, however, we left her behind so she could get some more sleep. We were therefore left to our own devices to take photos so I apologize in advance if there aren't many.

Thursday was the first day of the SIA snowsports trade show in Denver Colorado. Dana, Zoe, and myself woke up early to head down to the Denver Convention Center for some shenanigans. This was the first time any of us had been to Denver (with the exception of the time I spent in the airport last year). We were all very keen on seeing how the Denver SIA show would play out.