I’ve been in AK for the last couple weeks. Man! Sickness! King of the hill goes off! So many nigs. Alot of the old school nigs from back in the day and lots of new ones too. Terry Kidwell was up there shreddin tough. Travis Rice, enough about him. I got seventh. Mark Landvik, dude is cool rippin. Scotty Lago can ride mountains. Rob Kingwill was there reigning on the mountain and the mic. Mikey Basich did the most
rididulous double drop line in the event I have ever seen anywhere. That dude is psycho-smooth and
and ruling.

What a carnival of souls. Snow machines everywhere. The alaska tailgate scene was off the hook. Fools on kites. Killer chopper lines off the big mountains with ABA. My buddy Gabe Smith did some cherry-sweet descents with Nick Perata and they shredded the steep, deep nizzle lines. We had the best snowboarding by day and bitchin’ parties at night. If you’re not at Alaska tailgate, you’re missin the action baby. Damn!

I got to ride an amazingly sick mountain face that was the best run of my life. Theo the guide at Rendevous Heli let me have this run first right after the 18 inch storm. Dropping in on this run first is a true honor and a lifetime experience. I dropped in hot on the top of that run. It was a couple feet of fresh and there was about four inches of hoar frost on there too. It was like broken glass comin down that chute. I just blazed down into the gut of that chute. I toe sided to the right and looked back at my sluff. I was going about the same speed. The sluff was getting bigger and carrying more speed and volume, so I just rode faster and got in front of it with perfect rythm not missing a turn. I cut left up on this spine and started gouging deep spine-type turns down the sweetest spine. I got to hit a thirty foot rock with smooth-ass landing. The speed was perfect all the time. No resistance on touchdown. Just glassy cold speed. Then the sluff started passing me on my right. I kept riding that spine untill I was about to get cliffed-out. I saw all the sluff boiling down the chute which was my out. Right then I knew what to do. I ollied right over the river of tumbling broken glass. It was making a tinkling noise like thin wind chimes. I ollied over the sweeping snow and then pointed the chute. I got up to speed real quick. The wind was rushing faster and faster. Then I was going faster than the sluff-slide so I just cut right back into the sluff. My speed floated me back to the surface of the river of snow and I came outta there with mad speed. In front of the sluff again as
it spread out onto the glacier, I carved into a a huge bottom turn. Now I was hauling-ass across a bunch of avalanche debris. It didn’t matter though. There was a few inches of pow on there too. I was carrying a bunch of speed into the rollers below the big face.

I just started laying huge down-hill g/s carves over the wind lips and rollers. Ridiculous frontside and backside slashes. Airs over the blind wind-lip. Toe side three. Too easy. A sick frontside windlip comes into view. Impulse. Nice lay-out back. Frontside slash. Cut left. 40 foot front three. Landings are so smooth, it doesn’t seem real. More lips and rollers all the way back to the L.Z. Butter surface 360 up to the heli-pad. 4400 vertical feet of blower pow. Textbook run top to bottom with no stops. Maybe my best ever. Sweet.

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Hey man. Merry Christmas and all that. I went riding with the Easy Loungin crew at Northstar the other day. Pretty fun. Those dudes and chicks can shralp pretty tough. I went to Squaw Valley a couple days after that. A lot of times when I go to snowboard I’m not into it. I usually go through a period of wanting to leave every time I go unless it’s pow, then there’s no question. I was pretty tired the day I went with the Easy Loungin crew. I had been working nights and I had gotten myself pretty run down. I plow the snow from Northstar’s roads. I work from 11p.m. until 7a.m., or from 7 to 7 if it’s snowing really hard. I had been on nights for a couple weeks. We stay on nights after a storm because there’s still alot of maintenance and clean-up even though the plowing slows down or is all done.

I’ve had the swine flu for the past three weeks as well. I first got it on the 3rd of december. I’ve been plowing nights and riding on good days or when I had the energy. I’ve had some sweet days. In fact every day I’ve gone out I’ve had a really good time. Even if I am depressed or I don’t want to go up on the hill, if I can just get myself on the lift, I always have a good time. Then I come home and cough and sneeze and hack and suffer. Or, I go to work and freeze and get chills and hack and cough and choke and freeze and get dehydrated and suffer at work all night. That swine flu shit is truly miserable. That is how I am sure I had the h1n1 because any cold as intense, long-lasting and debilitating as this one had to be the swine.

Now I know how those little piggies felt all coughing on the news, and no one even gave them any cough drops. Poor bastards. I bought myself Nyquil and took it during the day after riding so i could sleep. I took Dayquil at night so I wouldn’t fall asleep on night shift. I had Theraflu for day, and Theraflu for night. I had vitamins and cough drops, tea and zinc. I must have spent $100 on cold and flu meds. It helped only a little. I coughed so hard I thought my lungs would come out my nose. I thought my lungs were bleeding. I coughed so hard I got headaches. I hoped a blood vessel would just burst in my head from the coughing spasms and I could just be put out of my misery from a brain hemorrhage. Makes me wonder if I should have gotten a flu shot.

All I can say is that when I was actually riding, I didn’t feel the misery of my swine flu. On the chair the coughing and hacking would resume, but when I was ripping down a run I don’t remember feeling a thing. Strange. I’m sure being out in the cold and exerting myself like that when I was sick and tired from working nights and shredding days while being sick wasn’t helping my recovery. It was hard for me to get caught up on sleep and let the old body recharge the batteries. Sickness is certainly a mystery. All I know is when I’m riding the pain of life goes away. I was actually beating myself down knowing that I would probably end up sicker from riding, but the temporary euphoria was some how worth it. GOD DAMN that was a brutal two to three weeks. Was It worth the hours, days and weeks of suffering for the fleeting moments of bliss? Yeah I guess so. But I’ve decided I want more. I’ve decided to take over the world. This will be an exciting time for us. The fuse is lit. Can I get a witness?

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Yo foolios. Farm here. That’s right the OG Shawn Farmer himself. This is going to be my spot on EasyLoungin to spit whatever game or knowledge I want. Although new to the blogging and social networking game, this shizz is instinctually ingrained in the cells of the Fizz. I’m pretty excited about the coming winter. It reminds me of my own storm chasin’ back in the day. We used to just drive around the western states chasin’ the storms from town to town, resort to resort. For us it was usually Utah, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Oregon, California, and back again. I only went to Canada if I could sneak in past customs. If we hit a dry spell or a lull in the storm pattern, we’d just hit the road. We’d call our bros and find out where the storm was gonna hit and head for higher ground. You gotta understand that back in the day we didn’t have all the high-tech shizz that we have access to today. Weather reports were mostly local and there were no cellie phones. You had to rely on the word of mouth bro system for accurate storm information. You had to call your people on one of those phones with wires on it and it was usually inside someone’s house! Read the rest of this entry »

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