Tara Dakides is out in the desert of Baja California right now with mohawked skier Glen Plake and NASCAR racer Boris Said making a run in the Baja Challenge class of the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.
Thanks to Tracking International we know that as of 9:26 AM Saturday November 21, 2009 it appears that Tara’s BC-5 car is going about 41 MPH near mile marker 625 and is still about 40 miles out from the finish in Ensenada, Baja, Mexico. It appears that they are no longer leading the race.
For more on Tara’s drive across the Mexican desert click the link.
Lick it up, lick it up. . . Yes, Olympic gold medalist Hannah Teter now has her own Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavor and it’s call Blonde AmbitionMaple Blondie.
The first flavor created for an athlete, Maple Blondie is a rich and creamy maple ice cream with blonde brownie pieces and a smooth maple caramel swirl that will be arriving in Scoop Shops nationwide later this month. Channeling the company’s commitment to social mission, a portion of the proceeds will benefit Hannah’s Gold, Teter’s own charity that funds various projects in Africa.
Sounds pretty tasty. Not surprisingly Hannah is “amped.” “It’s great to have support from my home state, and a cool way to further support Hannah’s Gold and all the work we’re doing in Kirindon, Kenya,” she said.
We’re not even going to guess where this thing came from, but The Snowtunnel is described as follows:
The Snowtunnel is a patented design that allows snowboarders/skiers the opportunity to ski all year round. Unlike other artificial environments, The Snowtunnel uses real snow and can be run at a fraction of the cost of larger refridgerated park rides. The Snowtunnel concept can be standalone unit or incorporated into a larger facility.
Are we missing something or is this just a corrugated pipe that’s been iced down and spun? We would, however, like to see what it looks like when someone falls. . .
GWAR lead singer Oderus Urungus (a.k.a. Dave Brockie) is apparently a hardcore shred who, like all of us, wanted a pro model. It appears that Sined Snowboards has given him one according to a post on the oderus.com website:
That’s right, own a piece of rock and roll history with the very special limited edition (only 300 made) SINED/Dave Brockie snowboard. For those of you that don’t know it, Dave Brockie is one of the founding members of the grammy-nominated rock group band GWAR, and the malevolent mind and mouth behind GWAR’s supremely evil front-thing and FOX News intergalactic correspondent, ODERUS URUNGUS! But Brockie is much more…a writer (check out his blog at rvanews.com), an illustrator (check out his work at oderus.com) and an avid snowboarder! So when old buddy, huge GWAR fan, and ex-pro rider Ron Bureta got his own company going, the long-held idea of a Brockie snowboard finally became a reality.
The Wall Street Journal’s Hannah Karp lightly discusses halfpipe judging to see just what will happen if Shaun White or any other snowboarders pull out some tricks in the Vancouver Olympics that the judges have never seen before.
Sweden’s Ola Sundequist, the Olympic Head Judge, chimes in with some color, but doesn’t really get into how the judging is really going to work. And that’s probably a good thing, because snowboard halfpipe judging never really has stood up that well to rigorous analysis of any kind.
Nemo’sTrevor Graves has posted a collection of photos from the I Am Snowboarding collaborative art project that is on display in The Village at Mammoth through November 29, 2009. If you didn’t make it, these photos will make it better.
While resort buying and selling seems to be an endless Ponzi scheme where no one ever really comes out ahead it is worth mentioning that today Intrawest announced that it is selling Copper Mountain to the Park City, Utah based Powdr Corp.
The transaction is anticipated to close in December 2009 and the agreement is subject to regulatory approvals including the issuance of a U.S. Forest Service special-use permit to Powdr Corp.
When a post on the Ashbury Eyewear site featuring Kr3w’s new snowboard team started a blazing 114 comment flame war between people claiming to be from Comune, Ashbury, and Kr3w it did more than waste time for everyone involved. It sent one more reminder to other companies that what their employees post online from work can come back to bite them.
In the comments the Ashbury Eyewear site admin eventually exposed all the posts that were coming from what they believed was Comune’s IP address. A similar thing happened last month when Yobeat.com’s Jared Souney called out Burton employees for posting anonymously to the Yobeat.com comments.
This debacle caused at least one manager to take action. “After I saw those comments I seriously sent an email to my staff telling them not to do shit like that,” one company executive told us. “With online you always have to try and stay one step ahead on shit like that. Employees can screw things up without even realizing they’re doing it.”
Most employees understand that whenever they speak, they’re in some ways “speaking for the company,” but with social media taking over it becomes more important that ever to remember that what is Tweeted, facebooked, myspaced, or posted to comment boards has a far larger audience than just talking shit between friends at an after party.
It’s not all downside, however. Conflicts are great for traffic and we’re guessing this feud probably ended up helping Ashbury get more traffic than they’ve had in a while.
TJ Schneider is back for season three of The Snowboard Realms, which according to a post on Snowboard Canada, launched today. All it does is make us feel worse about missing opening day at Baker. If that was possible.
We have no problem with skiers. Not even the one’s who are obviously doing their best to be snowboarders. They do their rad thing, we do ours. But Northern Idaho College’s David Humphreys doesn’t like skiers at all, according to a story on The Sentinel Online. And we couldn’t help but laugh while reading his rant titled Skiers Can’t Take The Hint.
With the approaching winter, comes the cumbersome task of dealing with skiers. Every year, I give these pole jerkers another chance, but they always manage to get on my bad side early on in the season. . . . In general, skiers flaunt a boisterous persona, melting the snow around them with a sense of false confidence. . . Skiers, what’s with the poles? Is it really neccesary to use a couple pieces of metal, just to stay up? Snowboarders can ride perfectly without the help of a couple of sticks; skiers should do the same.
Apparently it’s the 80s all over again up there near the Panhandle.
Tara Dakides is out in the desert of Baja California right now with mohawked skier Glen Plake and NASCAR racer Boris Said making a run in the Baja Challenge class of the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.
