Hey all, and welcome to another edition of the Daily Barns. This past weekend was the Snowboard.com "Screw Mother Nature, We're Getting shi*ttered" meet at Blue Mountain in Collingwood Ontario and let me tell you, after this meet we might want to be thanking mother nature rather than telling her to sod off (on account of the complete lack of visible sod anywhere unlike we expected when this meet was originally planned). This was the first meet for me personally where I got to shred the gnar with my fellow ECers and it was a great weekend of
progression,
laughs,
pretzels,
skanky girls (not in our crew),
riding without lift passes and
poaching freshies.
The road trip started for me when I picked up the rest of the Ottawa crew who were riding the Bangbus to Blue (No one is really sure how it came to be known as the Bangbus, but this became its official name). Once Chris (AddictiveEscape), Jeremy (Mr. King), Brianna (atomicsnowqueen), myself, food, booze and snowboarding gear were loaded into the bus, it was time to face the white out conditions on the long drive to Blue.
The drive took about 7 hours total (including a stop at Wendy's to steal trays for beerbogganing and a few pee breaks). Upon our arrival in Collingwood, it took us a while to find the right chalet, "Chef" (crasiestwy) came through for us, he arrived just minutes after we did and immediately knew where to go so he let us in. Once we were settled, the craziness began with a jump building party. Most of the night was spent in the parking lot in front of the chalet drinking beer and doing acid drops (the snowboarding kind, not the small paper square kind) from the second floor balcony. We developed a bit of a fan base including the skanky girls from the chalet next door; they saw us building the landing and asked us if we were planning on jumping from the balcony. We call them skanky girls because with a little more convincing, they probably would have taken their clothes off to watch us do acid drops; however no one from our chalet seemed particularly interested in that. Within an hour, most of the neighbourhood was outside their chalets watching the show with iPods blasting from car stereos and crazy shred dogs doing their crazy thing, it was a good night.
Once we got tired of jumping, we re-appropriated some DVD cables from one of the other chalets (our chalet had a DVD player without cables for some reason), and proceeded to chill out watching shred videos and eating pretzels. Chris eventually passed out on the couch so the pretzels then became projectiles to try to wake him up. The floor was littered with pretzels, so the next morning while walking around in the living room area, the floor seemed a little crunchier than usual. The phrase "f**king pretzels" was uttered on a number of occasions.
Saturday was a day of riding. In hopes of not having to buy lift tickets, we parked the cars at the top of Blue and rode down from there. The conditions were great, I suffered from toe drag on the first run however (this is what happens when you angulate too aggressively) and did at least one complete flip, dragged my backside, got up and rode it out to hoots, hollers and laughs from the rest of the crew. There was much progression on this day too, by the end of it we had the rookies cutting lines in the trees, dropping cliffs and trying terrain park features. All this without buying a single lift pass and there were nine of us riding together that day, this feat still amazes me (thank you to lax standard liftie operating procedures). Once we were done riding for the day, it was time to head back and plan the festivities for the night. This included more front yard jibs, a bangbus jib (videos coming soon hopefully) and even more progression as the rookies all successfully executed trash can bonks. As was the case the previous night, our adoring fan club was there to watch the show and drink their trashy asses silly.
The final day started a little later than the previous. We were all pretty tired and sore for the previous day's riding. There was still one thing left to do however; ride down the Orchard. Since it had been snowing on and off all weekend, and nobody rides the Orchard on account of there not being any lift access, we decided that we would go poach some freshies on Sunday morning. This required some pentagon planning and military like precision. The plan was to park one car at the bottom of the Orchard, pile everyone else into the other two cars to shuttle them up. After the run, the drivers of the other two cars would be shuttled up in the car that was left behind to come pick up the rest of the crew. So off we went, Carrie (Cazza21) parked her car in the P1a lot, and she jumped in the Bangbus for the drive up the mountain. We parked on a dead end street, skated back to the mountain road, then stealthily snuck into the forest. Once out of eye sight of the road, we started hearing the distinctive sounds of snowmobiles. Thinking it was the Blue Mountain Gestapo, we hid in the trees hoping they wouldn't notice our tracks. Once we were confident that we hadn't been pinched, the hike to the orchard began. It was totally worth the effort, we arrived at the top to untracked runs; freshies are so beautiful. Sean (powjunkie) took the lead followed by Jeremy, Chris, then the girls followed by Adam. I was bringing up the rear to make sure everyone made it down since at least half our party had never ridden fresh powder before. I'll tell you, there's nothing quite like riding fresh untracked snow. Even if it's in Ontario and it's on top of a thin layer of surface melt; it's a total Zen experience. After getting my fill of nose presses and spraying the trees on turns, we gathered up at P1a and decided that we should end on a high note. We packed up our gear and made our way out of Blue Mountain to finally take our separate ways home.
This was easily the best Snowboard.com meet I've ever been on which gives me high hopes for Telus this coming April. A special thanks to the entire crew for being the super chill individuals that they are and making the weekend as fun as it was. Here are a few things to remember from this weekend:
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It IS possible to ride for free even with a large group of riders.
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Skanky trailer trash girls are willing to take their clothes off to see people do seemingly life threatening stunts; just take inventory and make sure that you actually WANT them to do this before you make the suggestion however, it sometimes sounds like a better idea than it actually is.
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If you don't have cables to watch DVDs in your chalet, "borrow" them from another chalet. On a related note, I am still in possession of said cables, I'm willing to make a trade; show me what you got.
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I think all the ice cubes I've flushed down the toilet have finally started paying off. I think mother nature loves us now (at least until this weekend, +8 degrees, aye fawk off).
Anyway, I hope it won't be long before I get the chance to shred with this group again, amongst the finest in the East Coast. I know Carrie is going to Telus and I'm counting down the days until then. So until next time, keep your browsers plugged into YouTube, you must might see us jumping off balconies (those skanky girls promised). Until next time...
Keep Shreddin' the GNAR!
J.
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