The first CKOS giveaway

It's almost summer. Time to get stoked. My drawer of “Giveaway Goodies” that I’ve been collecting all winter is about to explode and with the revamp of the website being (close to) complete, I thought I’d hold my first giveaway. I’ve got goods from Volcom, Billabong, Zumiez, Skullcandy, Nixon, Red Bull and Anon. I’ll be sending out a package with some prizes in it from these companies and others to the winner of this contest.

The contest is simple: Just leave a comment on this post with your name, email address, and home mountain. I’ll choose a winner at random on the 27th of May

That's Reno for you.

Don't do it in the park.
Reno is such a nice place. I guess I should post one of those "Not Safe for work" warnings. It's fairly vulgar, but completely amusing. I had a guy go off on me for like 5 minutes in Mammoth about how the home owners were just "not down". But this definitely beats my dude by like 5000%. Reno always wins.



"I have no fucking life. I live in Reno. This is a shithole. Okay what do you think I have to do? Follow you guys around? Yeah."

"Shaun White you know. If he had a tight little vagina I'd bang him too. You know? Because I'm a whoremonger. Trust me."

Ahh so many quoteable quotes. Can't watch this video enough.

Shayboarder and Roxy's Ollie Pop Contest

Back in the end of March in honor of the Roxy Chicken Jam, Shay from Shayboarder.com hosted a contest to give away one of next year's Roxy Ollie Pops. The entries for the contest had to include the six requirements (you can read what those are by clicking "contest" in the first sentence), and could be an "image/video/whatever". Since my beloved Rome Detail was starting to see the end of her life I thought I'd take a shot in entering the contest. There was something like 5 days left before the contest closed when I first saw it so I got to brainstorming right away. I ended up deciding to make stop motion video. Here's the final result: 


Gotta Get an Ollie Pop


Okay, yeah it's kind of ridiculous, but it did the trick and I won the Ollie Pop. The board came to my house while I was at Nationals and I made sure I grabbed it during the six hours I was at home before I drove back up to Sierra for the Billabong Flaunt It Finals. I rode my trusty Detail for the contest and then sent that board home with my mom. I knew the only way I'd break in the Ollie Pop was if I had no choice but to ride it. So I spent the last three weeks of the season riding the Roxy every day. Here's a review-ish

First day on the board freaked me out. See, I had ridden a camber board with no edges what so ever for the past four seasons. I had a camber board (with edges) that I used for pipe and racing, but I never hit rails or jumps on it. Then this Ollie Pop comes along with its C2 BTX shape- meaning its rocker in the middle and camber under the feet, and it's magne-traction edges and I'm shitting myself. I caught my edges sooo many times that day. I hadn't fallen that much in such a long time. I hit a couple boxes, and I felt a little sticky.  When I brought myself to hit the medium jumps (10-25ft) I felt a little strange on the take offs and landings but when I got used to the feeling I went ahead to try a front three indy (my safety spin). I landed it and then a millisecond later I caught an edge, flipped back and slammed my head pretty good. I was over jumps after that. I went on to try out some rails and there was this weird grabby feeling under my feet once I locked on.  I didn't like that feeling at all. It totally freaked me out. I was riding with my friend Lejawn who rides a Gnu board that is similar to my board, and she told me magne-traction/shape just gets a little while to get used to. So I took her word on that and just kept riding the board.

Not even out of the bag yet!

I got used to jibbing on the board, but still wouldn't spin jumps. I started hitting the bigger jumps (30-50ft) and felt pretty comfortable on them. I had one scare when I caught my nose/toe edge on the take off of a 50ft. Luckily I didn't get thrown off the lip (I had 3 feet between my sprawled out body and what would have meant a total wreck). It eventually got to the point where I felt like I always had when I was straight airing. Totally comfortable.

Like 5 days into riding the board some buddies from LTpark.com came out to Northstar to film and since I was the only girl riding with the boys I had to represent. I hadn't spun since catching my edge the first day but since I was being filmed I went for it. I planned on doing a front 3 off a jump but I got nervous as I was taking off and just did a 180. Then I realized I had popped hard enough to have time to 3 so I considered bringing it around to that and ended up just drifting to 270. Basically, I wrecked my face. Lots of blood. But that was definitely my fault, and not the board's.

Anyways, by a week and a half in I was feeling awesome on the new board. The mange-traction wasn't really throwing me off and I wasn't catching my edge anymore (for the most part). On the last couple days of the season I tried spinning again and landed my first 540s. I haven't had a chance to ride a 22ft pipe on it, but it feels pretty good in a 18ft one. So while I miss my Detail, I think I'll have a good future with my Ollie Pop.

My only problems with the Pop: I don't get pop. I just don't feel that SNAP that I get from traditional camber. This makes me nervous about getting onto rails. Maybe it's just me needing to build confidence on this board, but I really don't feel like I get the pop I used to be able to get. My second problem is that theres no metal edge around the nose or tail. I went to do a 270 onto a rail but pretty much just stuck my nose into the side of the rail. It made a fat chuck of the nose peel back and that wouldn't have happened if there was metal protecting it. The third thing is that when they say the mange-traction holds edge- they really mean it. It might help if I detuned my edges, but riding it the way it came has led me to hold really intense edges (GOOD!) but also get stuck in those edges (BAD!) I'll make a turn or land a trick and just get totally stuck in a edge that I can't get out of. I think this is mainly a problem on days when the snow is slushy because the edge sinks in and grabs to whatever solidness is underneath. But yeah, those are the only things I can think of right now.

Here's an entry from Heather Baker that I thought was really awesome:

Thanks Shay and Kyre from Roxy for doing the giveaway! I'm really stoked on having this new board its gotten a lot of attention on the mountain already!

USASA Nationals, in photos

On the way to Colorado

Arrival at Copper

View from my hotel room at the resort

Checking out the aggressive start to the boardercross course on practice day

Went out riding with my coaches and friend Kiah while waiting for awards on the first day

I don't know why but I love this face. Maybe it's because I 'm rather..... hello

My first podium! Getting second for halfpipe

Nose slide to tail grab off the second box during the slopestyle contest

Third in slope. This was shot right after the photographer said something like "Why don't you guys look excited at all?" So we cheesed it

At the Windells dance party, watching some kids go crazy over a jacket in the product toss. The fight went on for a couple minutes and the dog pile was huge. Eventually it was broken up by a security guard. The kids had to be literally pulled apart

Watching my team mate Ruby blast through the finish line in her Slalom race.

Getting my lean on in Slalom

Ruby and I stoked with our Slalom medals; Ruby got second and I got third

I met a monoskier. I don't know how monoskiers do it

I thought I couldn't get an all around because of getting DQed in boardercross so I was in shock when I heard my name during the all around awards.

Came home from Copper to find this beaut waiting for me, courtesy of Roxy and shayboarder.com

Queen of the Park weekend part 2.

So here I am sitting in the Kirkwood Village, actually not too worried about what's going to happen to me. Things usually ending up working out with time so I wasn't going to stress. Sure enough a liftie, Jared came up to me and said "Hey what's up." I told him that I wasn't going to be able to stay where I thought I was because I couldn't get a hold of my Uncle to use his cabin because he was fighting fire. Jared was such a chill dude and was all "You can come over to my place. I live right down the road and you're more than welcome to stay on my couch for the weekend." Sweet. I knew things would work out.

I headed over to Jared's place and met his room mates (who's names I forget :/). I hung out there for a while and then a couple of his girl friends, Mary and Michelle came by. It was pretty fun. I was at this mountain that I didn't know anyone at and all of a sudden it was like I was hanging out with my crew. We had some drinks, got to know each other and then I got a call from my uncle. Turns out that one of my uncle's buddies had gone up to the cabin and I could stay there for the weekend. I was on the move again, this time to my uncle's cabin.

So I go off to the cabin and blah blah blah hang out with his friend Brian, and then eventually go to bed. The next morning I got up and got ready for my contest. Before I left the house I decided to put my gloves on top of the fire-stove thingy to warm them up.

Well. Turns out that that was a bad idea. I turned my head for 40 seconds and when I looked back my gloves were smoking so I pulled them off of the fire and threw them on the snow outside. Apparently (surprise to me) gloves will melt when you place them on hot metal. Cool. Good start to the morning. I like my gloves extra crispy. I spent some time picking the hardened chunks off my gloves and cleaning the melted plastic off the fireplace and then headed back to the village.

Once in the village I found the demo shop and approached Adam. Before I even said anything he went "Hey, let me go get that ticket for you." Success. So Adam slipped off and then came back with a "friend of Adam Palmer" ticket and I was off on my merry way. My first stop was the main park at Kirkwood so I could warm up for the jam. I got there and it was closed off already because it was the park that was going to be used for the contest. I was able to get a sneak peak at the set up though and I was relieved when I saw that the four features involved were ones that I felt like I could hit. There was a flat box, a battle ship box, an up drop to down box, and a jump. I was expecting rails and a bigger variety of features but these mellow boxes and jumps were fine by me.

I wandered around the mountain in search of Kirkwood's other terrain parks so I could try to learn some tricks other than nose-slides before the competition and after a while found the progression park. Oh jee. This park was itty bitty with itty bitty jumps and an itty bitty pipe. The boxes were ride on and four inches above the snow on either side at most so they didn't help much. The pipe was about six feet tall, with only like one foot of tranny. I dropped in, almost died, and then rode straight down and out of it, over that pipe in a single hit. How about those itty bitty jumps? I hit the first one (which looked to be about three feet) with no speed and didn't pop and knuckled. Really? Knuckling a three footer?? So I charged into the next one, popped real hard and flewwwwwwwww past the landing. Sorry knees. Yeah. I was over the progression park real quick.

At this point I figured I might as well just go to the village, sign up for the contest, and then hang out until the practice on the actual course started. I went to the sign up tent, gave the nice girls running sign ups my $$ and then got a tee shirt, stickers, and the girl powder bandana I had to wear during the contest. I met Zippy, this super cool chick who runs the South Lake USASA series and together we applied a sweet Girl Powder die cut to my board. And then I ate a delicious sandwich. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. While I was enjoying it a girl approached me and went "Hey are you the girl that was asking for a ride on facebook? Did you actually hitch hike here?!" I said yes and we became friends. Her name was Liz and she was there with her friend Jenna. Liz, Jenna and I ended up going out riding together until practice started.

When practice began and girls started showing their stuff I got real nervous. Everyone was doing all sorts of spins everywhere and I was never one to spin onto or off or on top of a feature. But once the contest started I just kind of went for it and I guess I did some cool tricks because I ended up coming in second. I really didn't expect second (I thought for sure Liz had second and I was battling with Jenna for third) so I was totally stoked when then called my name. I'm really glad I just kind of hucked myself because I realized that there were a lot of things I could do that I didn't think I could. One of my favorite things I did in the contest was on the up-step down down box. I mobbed into the up, popped and then flew like twenty feet to a fairly flat landing, gapping the down. That was really fun. I wanted to spin over it but got too nervous to try. I did my last run one footed and I think that might be what got me the second.

After the contest I went riding with Julianne and a few of the other girls for the rest of the day.

That night I just hung out with Brian and had dinner at the cabin. I passed out pretty early and then the next morning I went out riding with him. The weather was pretty gnarly on Sunday but Jared hooked me up with a "Friend of Jared Heizer" ticket so I went out to ride anyways. I was riding with Brian, who was into the all mountain go big and charge it stuff. I was just like "eh" and after about two hours I took a dry-off-and-play-angry-birds-break in the lodge. Then I went back out to the park, set my camera up in a tree and hiked the park for a bit to try and get a shot or two. My Uncle Greg showed up shortly after and commented on his surprise that I was actually good at snowboarding and could do tricks.

That night Greg, his girl friend Laurie and I went out to sushi and they had a really cool fish tank with really cool fish in it. Then we headed up to Tahoe City. They dropped me off at Lakeside and I met this guy Matt from couchsurfing. We hung out with some other couchsurfers and played pool.  After getting some late night grub Matt drove me back to my apartment. Pretty mellow night, except for the part when Matt's car slid off the road and we almost get wrecked. No big.

But that's it. That was my weekend in like a million words. If you got this far in the reading, WOW. I can't believe it. Post a comment here with a $ in it and your email address and I'll send you something cool. Jeeze I write too much.