MUST BE NICE

DC Shred Days

Method TV: DC Shred Days 2012 from METHOD on Vimeo.

Mammoth Opening Weekend 2011

Mammoth fired up the lifts and we hit the slopes to kick off the 2011/2012 snowboard season. Yep, it's my favorite season of the year. The Shredding was awesome, and The Black Lips played Saturday night at Canyon Lodge. Quick trip, but full of fun.
Mammoth Mountain's photographer Peter Morning came out with us yesterday to snap some photos. Yeah, Mammoth has full size jumps in the park right now, but why bother? We were sessioning Bob's Nob putting on a Grasser / Method clinic inspired by our previous night's viewing of Road Kill.


Me.

Dark Mark
Tall Todd

Mt. Waterman

I might get jumped for posting this online, but let's face it, this place is open to the public and visible from the road.

Last Sunday Dan Mac and I took the chance that the road would be open and the lift would be turning. With some crazy old skier guy bashing through the closed gate on the road, we made it to the lift, and it was running. Over 3 feet of new cold snow and the Sun was out. This place isn't big, but it's steep and good. Bring your own food, water, toilet paper, etc. It's a "pack it in, pack it out" kind of operation.





So much can be said about Waterman, but I'll leave it to you to explore on your own.
When we were done shredding, we opted for some Apres Ski down in Downtown LA. First stop was the Wurstkuche. Delicious cased meats and Biers! next up we went and tried out Salman Agah's new Pizza Joint Toddy G's. The Place was delicious and the pizza delivery guy told us he had shredded Baldy on Saturday. Be safe on that Enduro.

California Road Trip

Weddings, Puppies and Babies were the sights to see on this 1134 mile California, by way of Reno, NV roadtrip. More often than not, we hop in a plane and fly over all the goodness that is out there. The road can be grueling but with the right attitude, it can be awesome. Here is the breakdown.
Costa Mesa>Mammoth>Reno>Lake Almanor>Anderson>Sacto Airport>Cameron Park>Costa Mesa.
We headed out Friday night and got to Mammoth at 1 am. Woke up, had breakfast with my ol' man and hit the road to Reno. Stopped in to Pie-Face Pizza Co. and had an amazing Lunch with Pie-Face co-owner Robbie Sell and fresh UNR engineering student Peter Benchetler. Did a drive by on the ol' Alma mater and pinned it to Lake Almanor (God's Country) without a minute to spare. There were times when we thought we were going to be changing into our wedding costumes on the side of the road in the forest. The wedding, wow! Amazing setting and great times! Next morning we grabbed some coffee and Rev. Brusven and headed North to Anderson to check out a fresh litter of Spins. Still no word on if we are getting one or not. After that it was a mellow drive down to Sacto where we dropped off the always a good time Brusven and we head over to meet the new Latzen. Spent a fine evening and morning with the Latzen fam and then it was on the road south to Costa Mesa. The End.

Pie-Face Pizza Co.

Robbie Sell (yeah, that Robbie Sell, the one with the best FSBS's in Snowboarding, although I could not find an image online) and a couple other friends have opened a new Pizza restaurant in downtown Reno, NV. 239 W. 2nd St to be exact. The food is delicious and the beer selection is unmatched. We stopped in for lunch over the weekend on our long road trip to Lake Almanor, but that's a another post. Pie-Face will be having their grand opening party September 18th. Go there.


Side Salad

The PB & J (pineapple, basil & jalapeno)

Mammoth Pond Skim

There is nothing "Freestyle" about Boardercross

So Men's and Women's Olympic Boardercross has come and gone for 2010. Somehow, there seemed to be a lot of hype about it this year. So, I found myself watching it. Boardercross is probably the worst representation of snowboarding. The boards they ride, don't even look like snowboards that your average or pro snowboarder would ride, plus I don't even have an idea where someone would buy one. The course looks more annoying than fun and the fastest person wins. Big Deal. A special thanks needs to be given out to Burton for once again designing the snowboard uniforms. Nice going dudes, once again you have made snowboard pants way too short. You were given the opportunity to offer these racers some style, and you blew it. Fratastic lockerboy hero Nate Holland doesn't like tight pants. If I was him, I would blame the spinout out, fourth place finish on the tight short pants he was wearing in the finals. How does this guy think Boardercross is a "freestyle discipline?" Last time a Boardercrosser pulled a freestyle maneuver, she crashed and got shunned. No redemption this year either. So this leaves us with the Golden Boy Seth Wescott. The casual goofy footer cruising in the back of the pack waiting for all the kooks to make jocko mistakes so that he can win the gold medal again. I don't know Seth, but by the looks of things, he's doing it as right as possible. Gone are the days of Rippey throwing backflips and Palmer spinning over jumps during Boardercross races, now it's all about speed and strategy. I say you get a second off your run for every trick you do over the jumps. That would make things more interesting. It might even be a little more freestyle and a little less skier.

Back in Mammoth for the Holidays

What is going on here?
We had an awesome time in Mammoth for Christmas and New Years.

Room 302 part 2.

So this blog thing is a pain in the ass. I guess my story is too long so I have to splice it up. Read the below post first I guess. I don't know, who cares. I don't think anyone reads this thing but here we are where I got cut off. We got a room to rent in Boron. 50 dollars cash. Smooth. My Favorite DD and I went out for some snacks and beverages for the night .and came across a creepy Snowman
Back at the room I found this newspaper under the kitchen table. August 21, 2008. My guess is that this was the last time the room was occupied.

5 people in a studio

So, we made it through the night. Not sure how much sleep anyone got, but all was well and sunny when we woke up.



We headed out to 4 corners. Since this is my third attempt at posting this story, I'm not even going to go into the up and back trip via Hwy 18 to Big Bear without riding. Until the next trip to Mammoth...I heard they have daily non-stop flights there now.

Room 302 (What we do for Snowboarding)

A cold winter storm blew in and Brandon and Kat picked me up at 9:30 pm Monday night to make the drive up to Mammoth in hopes of getting some good powder. Besides the late departure, our drive was pretty uneventful. We arrived at my house at about 3am. The inside of the house was 12 degrees! Gnarly. We had a beer and went to sleep around 4. I woke up at 7 am to this. Check the glare.

We headed out for a bagel and an awesome day.


Towards the end of the day, I ran into my friend Gabe and he suggested that we hike up the backside of Lincoln Mtn and ride down the front of it to my house. With not a minute to spare, we got on the last chair of the day over to the start of our hiking destination. I only have photos of the top and bottom, I was too busy enjoying my run down to take pictures.





Wednesday Morning we woke up to a light snow falling and somewhat overcast. Oh yeah and at 8:15 am our friends Skyler and Dan showed up at the house straight from Orange. I decided not to take my camera out on Wednesday. However, it was good! No wind and the Top finally opened. We shredded all day and headed back to the house. Since both parties involved people with jobs and needs to get back home, we decided to leave Mammoth even though we had heard both the 14 and 15 were closed due to snow. We weren't even out of the neighborhood and we were following a plow.

Home was our destination, however mother nature had something else in mind for us. Luckily Dan and Skyler left about an hour earlier than we did. Their travels came to halt in beautiful Boron, CA They managed to get the last Studio Apt. that was for rent that night due to the high volume of stranded travelers. As we got closer, we realized that our travels too were coming to a halt. We headed to the Desert Lake apartments (Summertime view) to meet up with Dan and Skyler. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Four walls, roof, heater and friends. Perfect.