Spring Break oh10 Part 1

SPRING BREAK oh10

PART 1 [colon] FAKE SNOWBOARDING

What does Spring Break mean to you? Debauchery? Mischief? Topless Sightings? Beer? College Bros? Scandalous photos? Cancun?

How about Snowskating? For me, spring break means that Bjorn is finally free from classes so we have a week to snowskate and travel together. Sprinkle on some of the things mentioned above (minus Cancun cuz that's lame) and you have the makings of a great trip, but before any stories, let me introduce you to the spring break players:

Bjorn is a straight up Montana man at heart. Just because he cleaned up his clothing style this year doesn't mean he's lost any of his beer-drankin, sleeveless flannel wearin, kuntry nature. When times get wild during spring break and hes not slapping around a stale fish while multitasking a boardslide and some tanning, you might catch him ripping off his shirt and screaming SPRING BREAK OH-10, proving that although he graduates very soon, he's still in college at the moment.

That's me. When I'm not taking fifty tries to land a tre flip, you might catch me getting carried away with some rap lyrics while rockin a young jeezy tall tee. And yes, it does say "Read with Jeezy at your public library." I mean, that's how I learned to read, didn't you? Anyways, when times get too crazy on spring break you'll definitely find me slipping up and reverting to a Minneapolis hood dialect that renders my speech incomprehensible to the average Montana person.

For the first half of the week, our main photographer and filmer was Cam Foster. Spring break definitely got too wild for him because he broke his own snowboard in the name of snowskating.

Logan (from JUX) was gone this week so above you have our other Logan. He's a pretty good filmer and DP as well but unfortunately he doesn't like to get wild on spring break. There are a few other spring break players as well but you'll meet them in part 2.

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I arrived in Bozeman expecting spring temperatures and a dry skatepark, however I was greeted with 5 inches of fresh snow, so instead of heading straight up to the mountain as planned we spent a day in town in search of some of the last urban riding for the year. Saying urban when speaking about Montana is sort of a contradiction, however Bjorn did take us to a great spot at some softball fields with bleachers ready for sliding. The sun was out and the temperatures were the hottest I had felt in four months, just right for spring break and definitely hot enough that the bleachers had to be snow-lubed every hit. As the session heated up shirts were lost in true spring break fashion. When skating together, Bjorn and I always have a tendency to go back and pull some tricks out of our younger days for fun so here Bjorn comes through with the classy classic, the boardslide stalefish.

Photo Cam Foster

The next day we went back to the bleachers in the morning to beat the slush, and then headed up to the mountain for some minipark riding at Moonlight Basin. The snow was really weird; soft but exceedingly slippery like a soft ice. We hit this little jump that bucked us pretty hard and really didn't land much except ollies and grabs but hey its spring break so you don't have to ride away to count it, right??

Photos Cam Foster

After that we hiked up and did lines on the tiny features, throwing together a bunch of tricks but swearing that we'd go to the big park the next day and actually stack. So the next day we did go straight to the main park, which happens to run right under the main lift. This means that everyone gets to watch which allowed us to hear tons of comical reactions from the unsuspecting skiers and shred bros upon realizing that we didn't have to strap our feet down to ride the mountain. The best thing I heard was when it got super hot and I was wearing some goofy stuff, a chair full of high school girls rolls by and this girl is like "ugh I can't believe he's wearing a beater," and then there's a pause as I drop in and her friend says, "and HE'S SNOWSKATING?!?!!?" obviously way more thrilled with my unstrapped riding than my choice of attire. Anyways, the first day in the main park we hit a bunch of boxes, and of course a few rails and jumps. The double rainbow box, as fun as it might look, was the most frustrating. It was super hard to retain speed for it on a cross-hill drop in and Bjorn and I ended up with better bails looping out and landing on our backs than actual shots. Apparently keeping your feet free keeps your mind free to hit everything because no snowboarders hit it and as one said "I don't hit that circus $h!t." Last we hit the stair set and rails which was exceedingly icy and hurt quite a bit before getting booted for they day as they closed and swept the park. It was already late so the moonlight employee had to follow us down to close for the day. I wasn't content to just ride down so I hit every feature I could, which I don't think the employee was very hyped about. Then it was an adventure riding down the bottom half of the mountain, which had already started icing up, trying to make swooping cat track turns on a singledeck. It worked fine for me but it was pretty funny to see the surprised looks when I rolled by ski patrol and the look on the employee guy's face as he had to follow me down half the mountain on the edge of control.

The second day in the park proved to be our most productive once we realized how fun the hitching post was. Hot, sunny park days are some of the best and we spent hours at the hitching post and ran through batteries, cards and tapes. Of course, good things only last so long and we had to move on to something else so the consensus was to take a trip to Utah the next day, however that trip was an adventure by itself and will be fully exposed in part two of this writing. Look for it soon.

After Utah, we wanted another park day, however after some spring break type morning activities it was already late so we opted for a last day at the minipark. We got there and the jump was worse than ever which didn't stop us from getting bucked by it for an hour trying to do actual tricks before realizing that it was way funner to just do dumb lines on the rail above into the jump. During my numerous tre flip attempts on the jump a group of skier kids stopped and obviously wanted to watch me hit it. I did and got bucked super wild and just flailed through the air. One of the kid's moms skis up to them and the kid, barely able to control his laughter, is like "mom, haha, you should have seen this guy (points at me). He went off the jump and did this (waves his arms all crazy doing the running man motion) on his FAKE SNOWBOARD!" I couldn't believe it; the truth had finally hit me. A little kid was finally able to break it down. I mean all this time that I though I had been snowskating, but really all I had ever done was go fake snowboarding! This was a revolution in my mindset and the video title was set in stone, plus the week actually had a purpose now; there was no reason to pretend like we were the future, some cool snowskate guys, instead we embraced that we were fake snowboarders for the week and all of a sudden everything made sense. The sky got bluer. The trees got greener, the snow even got whiter and we had more fun now that we could take off our veil of secrecy and truly embrace being fake. So there you go, enjoy our fake snowboarding video that Bjorn put together and I hope your fake snowboarding this spring was as fun as ours!

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