The debauchery begins

Wednesday night began my adventures with the Flow snowboard team.

I took the ferry to Seattle, then a cab to my good friend Denver's house. There was a party and I got sufficiently drunk, spending the wee hours till 3am shooting the shit with Cam. Cam has been a good friend of Denver's for awhile, and we've known each other vicariously through Denver, but while I was back home we finally got to chill.

At 4am I was awoken by a girl I hadn't seen in awhile, Tina. We took a limo (apparently she always takes limos?) from Denver's place in Seattle's U District to SEATAC for our 6am flights. Total coincidence that we both happened to be flying out at the same time.

I flew from Seattle to Denver. A best friend of mine from high school is going to DU and always talks about the great mountains are in Denver. I couldn't see any mountains, it looked perfectly flat for miles. After an hour layover I flew to Boston where I was picked up by Andrew Mutty, the Team manager for Flow. We grabbed chicken sandwiches at this great Italian place he knew of, then got on the road to Vermont. The first thing I noticed about Mutty is that he is one crazy driver. I've never rode with someone who drives quite like him. He drives well over the speed limit, splits traffic, cuts off semis and somehow never gets in accidents.

Somewhere in Massachusets on the road to Vermont.

We arrived that night at our condo where I got to meet the team: Tim Humphries, Scotty Lago, Anti Autti and Sharka something or other. She's Czech. We had a brief meeting about the film and then all went to bed.

The next day we went up and rode Stratton. I haven't been up riding in almost a year so it was pretty weird getting back on the board and into the snowboard groove. I was a bit impressed by Stratton, the east coast has a reputation for small icy hills, but Stratton is a fairly good sized resort.

View from the top of the gondola.

Mutty hooked me and Jake up with photo passes and Team Manager passes the latter of which granted us access into the riders lounge. Burton really treats their riders well. The lounge had free food, big screen TV's, comfy couches and massage tables. Me and Jake hung out in the Rider's lounge for a long time discussing logistics of this Flow movie.

The rider's lounge well after all the riders had left.

After our discussion we headed up on hill for the US Open quarterpipe finals. It was a great show, all the riders pushed it and I ended up with some good shots.

Getting the shot.

Our boy Scotty pushed it especially hard, ending the night on a great note by getting first and spraying chamagne all over the lens of my camera. 5 lens tissues and a thourough cleaning later, my hvx is once again fully operational.

Saturday we woke up and filmed the halfpipe finals. It was sort of a down beat compared to the previous nights sucess. Both Scotty and Antti are great pipe riders but had a tough time and didn't make the podium. Better luck next year.

The guy in front of me was having trouble getting his camera up.

Saturday night we had a more in depth talk with the riders about the movie. Mutty helped us communicate our ideas and really got the team stoked on the concept. After the meeting I followed Scotty to the US Snow team's cabin where he got leg massage. He claims it really hurts and only looks relaxing.

Today we woke up early at about 7am to go shred and film the slopestyle. Got a few shots even though slopestyle is a very difficult event to cover.

Shooting the first jump.

While tucked away in the trees, I found fellow snowfilmer Aaron Leyland.

Leyland making those Burton girls look good.

Leyland, Jake and I talked gear and complained about the weather. It was my first time meeting Leyland though we've been internet friends for awhile. He's a funny ass dude and an excellent filmmaker. Burton scored him the very elusive "Super Photo" pass that granted access basically everywhere. The whole event is very elitist and strange like that. Passes are needed to get anywhere in the event and they are very serious about not letting people in to places without the right pass. Jake and I were restricted to the upper half of the course with our regular photo passes. I got us lunch and tried taking a sandwhich to to Leyland on the deck of the jump, three event security guys came up and told me to leave.

Scotty got 3rd in the slopestyle, which won him some money and made him the biggest point winner in the contest. He took the podium and was given a key to a new Volvo for his tricks. This time I was careful to stand back and shoot telephoto as not to get sprayed by champagne.

My friends at Snowboarder Magazine are in town tonight and the contest is all over so there will be some serious partying. Last time I partied with those guys the night ended with throw up all over the Nike 6.0 team vehicle. Sorry Nike.

More to come...

PS - I've been watching the 1953 musical fantasy "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" It's a wild and bizarre movie, the only film Dr. Seuss ever had direct involvement with before he died. Deals with the dreams of a young boy who is being forced by his mom to learn piano. Lots of great imagery and set design.

Bart decends into the dream world.