if you give a moose a muffin

if you are parent, you probably read that bokk, and the other couple - " If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", etc.

this pic could perhaps be titled "If you give a Snowboarder a Garbagepile".

it isthe launchramp nicky and his buddy came up with in a rush, with the last snowfall. my immediate commentary to it, as sawyer climbed the ladder to the top was " dude, you are going to eat shit so bad". he did not, and it actually sent them down to hit the press-box and following rail-hit pretty nicely. they have moved onto construct modern-day urban ramps, hips, and tow-in hits all over town, but this fine monument to 15 y/o energy remains outside our front door.

to the laboratory !!

at one time, maybe back in te 90's, i was a bonfide ski-waxing guru. these were te days pre-stone grinding. it was as much alchemy as isaac newton trying to turn mercury vapour into gold. and, probably just as toxic, as we stuck out noses down into swirling chemical fumes and smoke of exotic flouro-carbons and gods knows what.

razor sharp metal scapers, quivers of hi-speed drill mounted brushes kept in hermetically sealed baggies, wax that cost more than heroin, and was more addicting. don't even ask about cost - cost was not an issue. and, pay to let somebody else wax your skiis ??? we would sooner have paid a cuban poolboy to . . . . . . well nevermind. ain't nobody touching the bottoms of my skiis.

but, no mofo ever out-glided my ass at the birkie. that was all that mattered.

nowadays i could give a crap. i'll put on anything, or nothing. things have moved on, and i have not kept up. but, if you want to do a glide-test sometime lemme know. take yer stone grinders and yer paid-for store wax job and i will dust off my old wizard-like madness. you ain't out gliding me if i don't want ya to.

scored a top-o-the-line crazy-hell set of poles today for a c-note at the ski-swap. too cool. ski poles are the only legit use of carbon other than stealth fighters that i know of. time to ski !!

nicky setting up the winter trainers - 1 outta 2

it did not take much snow for nicky to get motivated to set up the home-trainer scene for himself for the winter. here he is getting a super-sweet little press-box snowboard feature put together for those backyard jib sessions. way nice !!



. . . . . he was a little less successful here, however, in following my suggestion that he get his "bike set up in the studio next to mom's for some trainer-time in front of the teevee". oh well . . . . .

public service anouncement - "snow"

in case nobody noticed, teevee weather forecasting is no longer about forecasting weather. it is about selling teevee advertising time. hence, the "naming" of summertime rainstorms, and wintertime snow flurries. and of course, the insanely over-reaching snow predictions.

these cats, tho

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/winter_wx.shtml

ain't selling no teevee time. bookmark it, and check the little percentage/date/snow amount maps. they are the best guess you are gonna get, and the best guess it is possible to make. they only go 3 days out, cuz guessing anything past that is stupid.

yer all welcome.

throwing down and living dreams

somehow this weekend nicky managed to insert himself and his little kawi 110 playbike into the popular local x-mas parade. thus, he found himself rocking stylish tweaked extended wheelies down the mainstreet of his hometown, much to the delight of the kids and everybody hanging around the quaint parade, and he didn't even have to resort to throwing candy. plus the cops were stoking and slapped him on the back for his efforts, instead of chasing him into back alleys with their lights on - so what more could a 15 y/o want ?? good work if you can get it, and evidently he takes after his mother and managed to get it.



MK on the other hand, was throwing down herself in a manner most dignified - rocking handel's messiah as a rare freshman member of the chorale, in the ultra-posh debartolo performing art center of notre dame university. gretchen brought her mom down for the performance, and it doesn't get much nicer than that.

the kids are alright, and as my man russell would say - it was a good day.

aaaaaghhhhh my eyes !!

while it is true that i own a couple bikes so cool that grown Nipponese bicycle enthusiasts will throw themselves to the ground and weep with joy for just having seen them, i am a man that believes not only in redemption on the wheel, but retribution. hence, for a portion of the year i ride this horrid monstrosity - call it a form of bike ascetiscm . . . . bordering on bike self-flaggelation.

yes, those are aero-bars ( albeit very small ones ), and even more disturbing, those are an ancient set of powercranks mounted down there on the noodle-like bottom bracket of this poor old vitus. speaking of which, while it is made of aluminum and would by elemental nature normally deserve scorn and ridicule - it avoids that by having been ridden by sean kelly - if your aluminum bike was ridden by sean kelly, go ahaed and give it a pass - otherwise . . . . . . . .

anyway, i dare anybody to come up with a bike more vile than this collection of weirdness. living down there amongst the spiders and cobwebs of the Count-TmonT-Cristo isolation cell it serves as my torture device. it does feature 2 redeeming qualities, however. find them in the blurry photo, and i can get you a professional grade spork for a prize.

ok, i love to hate on the cowboys, trek, and the yankees . .

. . . as much as the next guy. you do not ride around on a drop-bar mtn bike ( and actually believe it is everybody else who has it wrong ) for 25+ plus years because you like the mainstream.

but i gotta break ranks on the notre dame football team. sure, i am a total coattail bandwagon fan, it is true - to the degree i thought of them before MK went there i reckon i hated on them too. and, just so we are clear - i am still on record for saying the kid "shoulda gone to ripon". but goddammit if that place does not have some serious-ass Style. how much Style ?? get this:

several days before they jettisoned charlie weis and paid him off with a wad of stacks totalling several million like they were in the movie goodfella's, they called up the FAA and had em turn off their private jet's tracking info, so they could conduct job interviews in privacy like Gentlemen.

T-H-A-T, my friends, is style. Style.

mind you, i get the hating. plenty to hate on. but make no mistake, by hating you are being played - hating on the ND football product is by design, and from a media perspective haters and fans both equal $$. and, what ND understands is that while it is good to win, a great thing to win . . . . it is a far far better thing to matter. and matter they do, there can be no denying it. what they do best tho - is matter with Style.

whether it's the stacks-o-ten-thousand-dollar-bills they hand weis out in the garage ( was it 8 million, 18 million - who cares - as if it makes a diff to these guys !! ), the gassed up and ready private jet, turning off the aircraft's tracking device so they can meet prospective coaches in secret like the Illuminati, or even the mountains of free media coverage they pull in for themselves - i don't care which part of the story you look at - those dudes know what the fook they are doing, make no bones about it, and they pull it off like the Corleone family.

Style. nobody is even a distant 2nd.