gearing up

after a very 'office bound' first half of the season, it' now time to hit the road again. canada is due, and its gonna be a pretty long trip this time, almost a month. i had a hard day cutting down the 'necessities' to a reasonable amount (and weight). not an easy task at all!

i wanna bring some new gadgets for photo and video, so i have some extra kilos to calculate. less shirts, less underpants, more tech shizzle :)

we are also doing our powderboard test again, so we have even more weight to handle. luckily, i booked our flights already beginning of december, as air canada (and a couple of other airlines) decided to change their baggage allowance around xmas. i wonder, how things will go tomorrow.

more news tomorrow after the check in :)

laax - rock resort

the burton european open are always my very favourite event to go. having the rocks resort finished since the beginning this season is one more reason to look forward to this week. its a new concept with appartments for 4/5 or 8/10 people.

the cubic, blockish shape of the building repeats in its interior design: only rock and wood from the region was used for the whole construction. all appartments have a nice livingroom/kitchen area, a sick and stylish bath with a steam shower and two bedrooms.

this year, all of the six buildings are open for business, including some nice restaurants in the basements.

if you get the chance to come across laax, you definately have to book in here, directly besides the base station.

staying here with the whole pleasure crew is for sure one of the nicest times of the season... thanks alot, birgit for hooking us up at this incredible place!

pow can come!

having some days off over new years, i decided to give my good ol' fish a new look. i traded some bindings with bene right before xmas (thanks for that, buddy!): the all purple version of the cartel EST! as purple is my colour of the season together with some shades of petrol, the board design of course had to match these colours :) ...

the original fish was nice, but pretty boring (silver with grey edges, 2008/09 design) and i always wanted to have a 'fischi fish' design, so it was about time to do it. i picked a mean looking comic piranha (well, i think i'll use that one also for the piranha 161 once it needs a redesign...) and it already matched the nose of the board pretty much. the tailfin also matched the fishtail, so all i had to do was to stretch the little buddy a bit (which later on does not matter with the bindings mounted).

after some illustrator work, i plotted the green, black and whiteform. the purple is below the design all over the board anyway. the small fish between the bindings had some tiny pieces (especially the teeth), which made me swear alot during the mounting process...

well, its finished now and i have to say, i'm pretty stoked on it. can't wait to ride it and have the evil grinning fish floating right before me. pow can come!

pleasure photo special 2010 - it's done!

hellawork the last couple of weeks, but finally it's done and in print: 148 pages full of the finest in snowboard photography. i'm really stoked on it and can't wait until it hits the shelves on january 15th!

to cut down more than 30.000 to the top 120 was not an easy task. section style again :)

thanks to all photographers involved, especially for the quick interviews. i love you guys!

have a nice christmas!

air&style 2009 II

what a weekend!

after not posting for quite a while due to extensive (and boring) office work, the air & style in innsbruck is the perfect opportunity to return to blogging.

WEDNESDAY...

innsbruck was once again hosting the air & style, first time with a straight jump again. the whole thing started off on wednesday already. stubai had prepared a nice training kicker on the glacier and bluebird plus half a meter of fresh were not the worst arguments to start the weekend even one day earlier.

a lot of the riders were up there, training. grilo (picture above) amongst them, being one of the replacement riders in case, one of the main field riders get hurt. throwing down doubles already today.

after checking into the hotel in innsbruck, öfi and i went to the riders dinner and to the jimmys later on to start off a nice series of IBK nights. i love this town, its always nice to come back here, feels almost like home already :)

funny first night with iouri and travis, opening champagne bottles the fancy way. see for yourself in the next gossip of pleasure mag...

THURSDAY...

was rather a 'black thursday'... seb toutant pulled the worst overshoot ever, checking into the jump as very first rider. speaking of 'overshooting' does not nearly describe this slam. his highest point was at the half of the landing and he crashed from around 20m of height almost to flat. (see the two crosses on the pic below)

i could not watch the impact, thinking he would for sure die. sepp braun was the event doctor again and there after just seconds for first care. of course, everybody was shocked and nobody could think of riding anymore. after an hour, rumors came through, that seb suffered only minor injuries, being fully checked in the innsbruck hospital.

after these good news, the riders decided to continue training, also to get rid of the first shock.

coming back to the hotel, we finally got the (still unbelieveable) good news, that seb only broke the inner ankle and had some smaller injuries. what a relief! of course, we had to celebrate and ended up at jimmy's again...

FRIDAY...

2nd day of training, first double corks and heavier tricks. werni stock liking the kicker and easily throwing down one front 10 after the other.

werni stock

christian brecheis and i could not watch the training though, as we had to do portraits for the upcoming article. we borrowed a sword from michi zirngibl (thanks, bro... snus is on the way!) and lolli gave us his fog machine. cyril brought us a couple meters of black photo background (thanks for that, cyril!) and so we had a quite simple setup next to the riders room at bergisel.

we shot for full 6 hours and somehow managed to get good portraits of every single rider.

the day ended at weekender LATE... first time i checked the watch was 5 a.m. resulting in quite some hangover for the main day of the event. very clever, i have to say... :( hehehe.

mugl was voted 'most drunk editor' and we had to hide his face to protect the innocent! :)

SATURDAY...

the contest day begun with a big hangover. well, it was feeling like straight coming from the party to be honest. a nice breakfast (thanks bene!) saved my life kind of.

off to bergisel at 10, trying to prepare everything for the event. lolli came early afternoon and we checked the possibilities for our new flash project that we were planning for this air&style event. not too easy, as the air&style once again made it impossible to set up flashes anywhere near the table.

it was working out nevertheless and we were super stoked with the result of the shoot.

who else was super stoked, was of course grilo, who was the most consistent rider over the whole evening and so well deserved won the air&style superfinal against peetu, wiig and iouri.

well done, grilo! big day for slovenia :)

after a quick shower, we all went to stadtcafé for the VIP party, having the 4th super fun night in a row. met so many people that night, it was unbelieveable. thanks everybody, this night (and the 3 nights before) reminded me, how i love snowboarding and all the people involved. what a great family to be born into ;)

iouri and grilo, stoooked!

hasi was there!

silli, danger, toby and mr. shitface...

SUNDAY...

sunday it was time to move out of my new 'appartment'. peetu totally overslept (what a wonder) so i took him to munich airport. he had dinner invitation for later that day with the finish president, so he kinda had to catch his flight.

turned out to be an easy one, no traffic and a smooth 1,5h drive from IBK to MUC.

what a weekend. again. thanks air&style, thanks innsbruck for one of the most memorable contests ever!

the flood...

oh my gush! rain is really the last thing that comes to your mind down here in karpathos. well, from time to time it CAN happen... but the incidents in the past 5 hours are beyond everything... its not rain anymore, its a fucking FLOOD!

the day started super nice, bluebird... i saw an insane sunrise on my daily run in the morning. no wind though... NOTHING... forecast was 2-3 bft from southeast, so worst case scenario and everybody was preparing for a lazy day with lot of reading, some naps and lots of 'mythos'.

turned out to be totally different than expected: at around 3 p.m. the wind picked up and we sailed devils bay with bigger sails first, later on around 5,7, waves getting bigger.

we finished the session at 6p.m... that's when it started to 'rain'.

at 6.30 i already had to dry my room for the first time... some plastic piece was stuck in the pipe, so my whole balcony was flooded about 10cm high and the water was starting to por into my room... towel job #01

meanwhile, the main station was already sorrounded by small streamlets, growing bigger and bigger... that was when I decided to leave the wetsuit on as it seemed to be the only adequate piece of cloth. the small riverbed next to the station was already half a meter deep and alost impossible to cross.

we stayed in the main station until half past seven, waiting for the 'rain' to stop. got some beers (still in dressed in decent black neoprene) and got some cookies from harald's room. well, that was our delicious dinner for today...

meanwhile, we ended up in the hotel bar (which literally is the only almost-dry place in the whole hotel)... i'm so NOT looking forward to tomorrow and cleaning up the whole mess...

peace & out

new baby - unboxing

i'm back down in karpathos for a short week. september sessions... way calmer than in summer. a bit less warm, no more people. perfect for a week of relaxing before the season starts off with full swing.

brought my new small freestyle wave baby with me already and set it up yesterday. weighs pretty much nothing and i can't wait to ride it now.

wind is a bit too low for the small one right now. yet, we've been sailing with 4,7 the whole day yesterday. forecast looks promising.