I wanted to wait until I finished the whole story to post this and the vid, but I got baked too much last week and now I have too much work so I’ll hafta finish another time. The video isn’t sponsor me quality, but there are some good shots.
https://www.newschoolers.com/web/content/videos/id/173971/
A Month in Vermont: An Epic Gnar-Shredding Adventure, Vol. 1
As a few of you may have read in the New England forum, I spent this January living in Londonderry, VT, armed with a Stratton/Okemo season pass, my planks, and a shitty digital camcorder. The goal was to film and edit a short ski/snowboard film and pass it off as an independent study for college credit. At Colby College, we have a short semester called Jan Plan (Middlebury has a similar program) where you take only one class, go abroad, get an internship, or do an independent study. To graduate, you need to do 3 Jan Plans out of 4 years. Though we aren’t getting academic credit for the movie, the project counts as one of our January Programs, so next year I can do whatever I want.
For the month, me and my friend stayed at his grandparents house in Londonderry (15 min from Stratton, 30 from okemo). The house almost never gets used, so the place was ours. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had. Here’s a general timeline of the month with some highlights:
Week 1: Injury, Rain, Burlington
A few days after New Years, I drove up to the house from the ‘cut, stocked with food for the month. When I get there, my friend’s cousin, along with his girlfriend and two friends, and one of our friends that transferred away from Colby were all chillin’ at the house, so several days of beer drinking, bowl smoking, and gambling on pool (the house has a pool table) ensue. Unfortunately, last run of the first day I catch my edge on a backside 270 out and dig my tip into the landing, resulting in a forward twisting fall that was horrifyingly close to a season-ending acl tear. The injury bothered me for the rest of the month, but was easily ignored with an ace bandage, ibuprofen, and ganja. This wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but this is on top of an acl tear 2 years ago on the other knee that still hurts sometimes, and frustratingly painful bone spurs in my heels that hurt all day every day on snow. As all east coasters know, icy landings are hard on the body, especially when you’re already hurt.
Everyone is sore the next day, so we all took the day off (it was Saturday anyway, weekends at Stratton suck balls). We decide to build an igloo out of the snow bank in our driveway, and after a solid days work we carve one big enough for 7 people to comfortably sit in, so of course we smoke a blunt inside immediately after completion. As luck would have it, the temp stayed well above freezing that night, so the roof collapsed. The igloo was not the only casualty however. It stayed warm for the next week, with a full day of rain, causing Stratton to lose 2 feet of snow in less than 2 days.
To ease our troubles, my friend calls up a connect in Burlington, so we drive up there one night to pick up a QP. No problems result: a chill dude arrives, we give him cash, he gives us a giant bag, and we were on our merry way to eat at Mr. Mikes. The bag was beautiful. Letting nuggets run through your fingers like gold is a good feeling. It was definitely the most bud I’ve ever held in my hands at once.
We did manage to get two sick days of pipe riding at Okemo early in the week, 50 and sunny both days. We ended up getting some pretty good shots in the pipe and on the jibs. But alas, after 5 days of 50 degree weather both Stratton and Okemo were looking pretty bare and the parks were beat, so we decided to pack up and head up to Maine in search of better conditions and some females (having a house full of dudes is fun for a few days, but gets old real fast).
Week 2: Road Trip
With quap in hand, we make the 5 hour trek from Londonderry to Colby on Friday, arriving just in time for pre-gaming. After a few hours of chillin, we head to a party with a bunch of kids that were abroad in the fall. At this party we play slap shot a.k.a. slap the chaser. For those of you that haven’t heard of this “game”, this is how you play: 1. Grab a bottle of liquor (we used bottom-shelf rum) and stand in a circle. 2. First person takes a bottle shot. 3. Person in order behind the drinker slaps the drinker in the face as they finish the shot. In short, rather than taking a chaser someone slaps the shit out of you. It sounds intense, but after a few shots it stops hurting for some reason… Halfway through the game, two girls decide they want to play. All of us are reluctant to slap them hard, but they felt it necessary to wind up and step into every slap they gave out. Needless to say, after nearly killing the handle of rum with about 10 people, we were all hammered. It didn’t really hit me till later that night. I was halfway through sparking a bowl with this chick in my room and WHAM. I had to send her away, for I knew I was on the road from hammered to incompetent, and I wanted nobody to witness the impending sloppiness, especially this girl. Within minutes, the room started spinning, I couldn’t talk, etc. I was now in the special state of drunkenness where the only adequate spot to sit comfortably is, of course, on the bathroom floor. The cool, hard tile, for some unknown reason, is the only surface on which to ease the discomfort of being far too drunk. So after saying my prayer to the porcelain idol, I pass out on the bathroom floor for about an hour, then stumbled back to my bed and crashed.
In an attempt to prove that I am the pinnacle of manliness, I have my mind set on getting up at the crack of dawn to get up to the Loaf for a full day. Fail. I wake up on time and call up my friend, who informs me that he needs a few more hours because he feels like shit. I don’t argue, because I also feel like shit. After wake and baking at 11, I get my ass out of bed and down to brunch, where I learn that my friend had a similar night. He ended up locking himself in a bathroom to boot, then passing out. Our 300-pound friend had to break down the door and drag him to his room. I guess our tolerances were low.
The ski day was decent, and after another night of partying, we woke up in the morning, conferred, and decided to take the day off. I was fine with this, because my knees were killing me after a day on the famed East Coast ice and I had a girl in bed with me, so I was content on laying in bed to reflect on the spectacular dome I got the night before. Seriously, the girl was truly an artist at smoking pole. On Monday, it snowed all day at Sugarloaf, which was nice. Not an epic pow day, but better than ice. We got a pretty solid day of filming in on Tuesday, wrapping up our trip to Maine. On Wednesday we drove down to my friend’s house in New York to work for his dad and pick up some extra cash while waiting for the conditions to return to normal, then headed back to VT on Friday.
Coming soon: MILF Hunting, headies, and the epic day....
