Was looking through the interwebs this AM, trying to find sneak peeks of 2013 gear that’d be relevant or interesting for the blog, and came across Switchback Bindings. To be honest I like the simplicity of their grinning highback logo, and the modular binding idea will go off in this day of ‘my pro model socks need to match my pro model headphones need to match my pro model google straps need to contrast with my pro model binding hardware‘. I think they’ll sell like hotcakes.
HOWEVER what stood out to me was all their talk of going no-back, ya know for the freedom, the surfy feel, the (insert hyperbole here) and I thought “AH-HA! Finally my old age experience will come in handy and I’ll look to the past to rehash something that will redefine snowboarding as we know it. BOOM!
Step 1: Look back to the past for a future ‘new’ idea
Step 2: Profit
Step 3: ????
So, I present to you my top-5 ‘amazing ideas that will bring a whole new level of marketing fun to snowboarding!’
1. Baseless bindings. This one is a no brainer, someone says no-back and I instantly think baseless. I’m not talking Burton ECS IST or whatever (it’s not baseless if there is a shock absorbing pad there brah), I’m talking real deal Holyfield baseless and the limited stance options that come with it. Like Trojan Ultrathin condoms these babies are all about broad board feel. Possibly even surfy feeling.
2. Step-ins. Switchback is going to remove back highbacks, my baseless bindings are going to remove the bases, what else can we remove? The straps, naturally. Save that annoying 5 seconds you spend ratcheting into your bindings and instead just step down. At 5 seconds saved per run times….umm….a lot of runs you’ll have hit one more run! My marketing team industrial designers are still working on our final look/feel for these babies so not sure if we’ll be going baseless or no-back, but rest assured it’ll turn your strap using frown upside down. #PROFIT
3. Hardboots for pipe. #OFKYEAH For those of us you don’t like the responsiveness, or lack thereof, from our baseless nobacks (what? You no like boardfeel?), THESE are your holy grail. Hell, I’ll make sure my marketing team markets the plate bindings as no-back so you’ve got additional new technology to talk about around the snowboarding watercooler.
 Who says there's no flex in hardboots?
4: No boards Let’s just remove the bindings from the equation altogether. No boards, or as our forefathers (or fourfathers if your mom didn’t use those Ultrathins…) called them snowboards. Actually, these look like they’d be fun on the right day – say if you had a cabin in the mountains with a nice little hill behind it, keg in the snow at the bottom, just chillin’ with your crew and taking laps on the no board – and they’re likely the closest thing we’re getting to what McFly has had us all dreaming about since ’85.
5. Camber Run out of 80s/90s ideas to cop? Just go back a few years and take the idea you wrote off in all your marketing material last year, add it to a board for 2013, and market the hell out of it, capitalizing on the short term memory of the American consumer. #STEP2BABY
Honorable mention aka coming in 2014: Ballz jeans, two-tongue boots, Sorels, dual edge snowboards, ‘Boycott Burton cuz you can’t patent fun’ stickers, USA manufacturing
Doesn’t look like the accumulations are going to be of the epic pow variety, but snow in the forecast is far better than golden globes!
 Well well well... At some point in time from Sunday-Tuesday if you live in the City of Portland you will see snow. In my two years of forecasting in the City of Portland, this is the first time I’ve been so convinced.
-Meteorologist Matt Brode
I would really like it to snow some real snow. For an extended period. So I can sit on chairs to ride powder for a couple days in a row. I can’t really live like this. -a man
 More teens less mid-30s plz
and more or less internet free, at least relative to my usual ‘always on’ curse. Have a great Christmas everyone!
It’s kind of funny how you can go from walking around with nothing but lint in you pocket and being totally stoked, to walking around with a pocket full of keys and being totally bummed.
It starts out simply and seductively. I’ll just get this car so I can snowboard more. Wrong. Anything that let’s you snowboard more is a scam. It won’t let you snowboard more because you ride every day and a car can’t add days to the week.
“I’ll just get this little night job so I can buy gas,” you hear yourself saying. There’s another key. Then your job starts making you miss sleep, so you can’t snowboard as hard or as long as you used to. And you need stuff to wear to work. You need a place to change and store your stuff. Now you have an address, that’s another key. Soon you have to get a day job because you’re not making enough money at night. The keys start adding up.
Now that you have a job, girls know you’re not a total loss and you end up with a girlfriend. She wants you to hang with her once in a while instead of going boarding all the time. First, she gives you the key to her heart, and then the key to her apartment. That’s two more. You can’t give her the key to your heart because snowboarding put a combination lock on it and only your snowboard knows the number.
Now you have a bunch of keys in your pocket. They’re high-maintenance items. You have to take care of them. They’re weighing you down. Snowboarding is slowly slipping away, and you don’t even notice.
One day, cruising to your full-time office job that you had to get a few years back to make payments on all your keys, you drive past a guy on the corner with his thumb out and a snowboard under his arm. While speeding by you start thinking about the guy you just passed. He looked like you used to—snowboard and nothing else. As you pull into the parking lot at work, you can’t get the hitchhiker out of your head. Your mind keeps wandering back. Pulling all the keys out of you pocket and jingling them, you think about what you really want from life.
Running back to your car, you reverse out of the parking lot and squeal a Rockford in the middle of the four-lane highway. You’ve got to get away from your keys. You begin throwing them out the window as you blow down the highway. First to go is the key to the door at work. Then you backhand your girlfriend’s apartment key out the passenger window. Flick, there goes the key to the storage unit, then the key to her car. Flick, flick, flick. You feel better each time a key flies out the window and goes bouncing down the pavement at 100 mph. You don’t even slow down for the tollbooth, paying instead with the tossed key to your office and the executive washroom.
You only have two keys left. You unlock your house, run in, grab your snowboard, and dash out of the house. You leave the key to your house sitting in the lock to the front door. Whoever finds the house open can take it, and all your stuff. You don’t need it anymore. You jump back into the car and start burning rubber through all four gears back to the highway where you saw the hitcher.
He’s still there. You slam on the brakes. When he opens the car door, you look into his eyes. It’s you. It’s the life you left behind when you sold out.
 Swallowtail, key free
So beer friday is a bit different this week. While I’ve had a ton of great beers lately, especially last night at the holiday ale fest downtown, going to throw up a quick and easy recipe I brewed lately.
Up til recently I’d really only done partial mash brews, and usually just following other recipes with slight tweaks. This beer is a few firsts: my first all grain, and my first attempt at trying to semi-recreate another beer from scratch. The inspiration for this brew was the Vaporizer by Double Mountain, my post-ride beer of choice when hitting up trails in the Hood River area. To me it’s got the perfect easy drinking mix of crisp and hoppiness that slays on a hot summer day. They describe the Vaporizer as “a golden-hued Pale Ale that features a beautifully hoppy aroma and flavor. The malt is 100% Gambrinus Pilsner, our sweet and supple house malt from Gambrinus Malting in British Columbia. The hops are primarily of the Challenger variety, grown on a single farm in the Yakima Valley. We dry-hop “THE VAPORIZER” to pump up the hoppy goodness. It’s an appetizingly dry, clean and pure-tasting take on a hoppy Pale Ale.” They also tell you that it’s 50 IBUs and 6% ABV.
Using the above I started plugging numbers into Hopville until I came up with something nearing what information they provide and what I remembered Vaporizer tasting like. As my local shop was out of Challenger hops and the usual substitutes I went with ahtanum, which doesn’t seem to get used often. Came up with the below, which is damn simple.
10.5 lbs Gambrinus Pilsner
2 oz. 4% AA Ahtanum – first wort hopped
.5 oz. Ahtanum at 60, 30, 15 and 5 minute intervals in the boil
Wyeast 1272
90 minute boil due to the pilsner grain/DMS
Based on my gravity reading before primary the final stats came out as: 52 IBU and 5.6% ABV (original estimates were 50 and 6). Close enough for now, we’ll see how it tastes once it’s kegged and fresh hopped. Anyways, hope everyone has a chance to get out this weekend!
Wow…seriously? Between the bikes and now this Shaun has gone Shaquille O’neal circa-1993 on us (or Spaceballs. Shaun White the lunchbox!) and is putting his name towards any and everything. ‘Sallgood though, make your money kid! This stuff better keep it real though and be pasty white with red flakes and ginger flavor.
The timing on seeing this was impeccable, especially after reading this interview with Farmer earlier. To liberally paraphrase: selling out happens because people want to get paid, haters gonna hate, you just have to recognize that you
Nothing is cooler than snowboarding down big mountains in powder on natural terrain.
’nuff said.
Sorry for the non-post yesterday, got caught neck deep in a Powerpoint and as this blog doesn’t make money and is but a labor of love it gets low priority over potential revenue generating opportunities (that being said if anybody wants to advertise here get at me!). I’ll continue highlighting 2011-2012 splitboards next week.
After a few false starts beer friday is BACK for real this time. This week’s beer isn’t a particular beer, but a style (well, as of right now it’s not an official GABF style and is a subcategory of experimental beers) – FRESH HOP ALES! Only available in the northern hemisphere during harvest time, a true wet hop ale uses hops picked within the past 24 hours. That’s right, instead of using dried hops or hop pellets brewers actually put the hop cone into the brew kettle. The finished product, when done properly – and properly to me for these beers means not going for an overly agggressive beer – is an AMAZING beer that really highlights the nuances of the individual hop varieties. A well done fresh hop IPA or pale is the perfect capper to a cool fall surf session or evening BBQ on an amazing PNW crisp fall evening, and are a nice sendoff of the summer beer palette.
Current favorite of the season: Breakside Brewery Fresh Hop IPA
Dog of the season: Full Sail Lupulin
So there you have it, another hard week in the books, treat yourself on your ride home to a locally brewed fresh hop ale!
Six days/five nights in the Enchantments coming up. Starting the packing early, one too many shots to the dome have me a bit forgetful when it comes to little details these days. Came to the realization that if it weren’t for the old Mountain Hardwear warehouse sale, Patagonia Outlet extra 40% off sale, and REI used gear sales I’d probably be rocking a neon Columbia 3-in-1 Bugaboo jacket.
That green Mountain Hardwear Paclite Goretex in front, thirty bucks.
Down sweater, seventy.
etc. etc. etc.
Full retail is for suckers
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