Outdoor Industry Sales Representation and Multimedia Production – Representing Immersion Research, Astral Buoyancy, Shred Ready, Rapid Transit Video and Smiley's Nose Plugs
Recently I had the opportunity to visit Breckenridge for a short ski trip with my family. Even though it isn’t a banner year for anyone in the snow industry we had a great time. Breckenridge on a bad year was excellent compared to the typical North Carolina ski hills, so we had no complaints.
Notables from the trip: - We tried out Shred Ready’s new snow-sports helmet, the Forty4, and were very pleased with the performance. Seven of us wore these helmets for a week on the slopes, including a 5-year old, 8-year old, 12-year old and four adults. General consensus was that the helmet was comfortable, warm, really quick and easy to buckle and adjust, and of course very protective. I really enjoyed that I could implement my iPhone headphones into the ear pads and listen to music and make phone calls from the ski lift.
- The other standout event from Breckenridge that I deemed noteworthy involved me running over a squirrel on my snowboard. I seem to keep having run-ins with these furry rodents. Two years ago a squirrel dropped a chunk of chocolate cake out of a tree and onto the sidewalk in front of me. This was the most ridiculous encounter I’ve had with nature, until now. As I approached the animal it darted back and forth from the ski trail to the woods in normal squirrel behavior which is always entertaining. However, in the last second it took a gamble and decided it would be a good idea to run in front of a 150 lb mammal sliding down the snow at 30 mph. Long story short, I clobbered that poor animal and hair went flying all over the snow. I think “nine lives” may refer more to squirrels than cats though, because he got up and ran away.
While I was not busy killing innocent animals with ski equipment or watching my decade-old snowboard boots biodegrade all over the mountain (I threw my boots in the garbage before we went home, they were that bad) I got a chance to take a few photos of some talented athletes on the hill. Below are a couple of my favorites.
Crossed up, grabbing, all kinds of style up there.
Hey, put this in your video. Was cool watching these guys film and jump together.
Very large amount of air in mid sideways flip trick thingy. Impressive to watch.
And my favorite of all, young Mason styles it out during his first snowboarding lesson.
I’m very pleased to announce the release of a new DVD called Coming Home: the adventures of Spencer and Chris. Comprised primarily of four short documentaries, shot and edited by Chris Gallaway and myself, the video collection represents a labor of love (Notice the $14.99 price tag. Nobody is getting rich off of this project.) and our passion for sharing stories about our experiences on the water and in the outdoors.
Chris and I have worked together on several projects over the past five or six years, including his award winning Green Race Movie and my last production from Rapid Transit Video, which was entitled The Eddy Feeling. Chris is always a pleasure to work with an he really pushes me to make my creative work better. We tend to learn a lot working together and the Coming Home DVD was most definitely a learning experience. And I don’t mean that sarcastically at all. I only say that meaning that it has been enjoyable to produce this project and that I feel it is our best work so far. Chris does all kinds of great work through his company, Horizonline Pictures, and I encourage you to check out his website. He has this sort of inspiring style that makes you think he is only headed for great things. When I listen to his video narration I can’t help but think he belongs on a show like This American Life.
Further, I am really pleased to be able to share these stories with the paddling community and to do it with purpose. At first we honestly didn’t even plan to make these into a product that would be sold. We both had some short film ideas in mind that we wanted to do for ourselves primarily, kind of as scrapbooks, collected memories of monumental journeys we took with our kayaks. Thanks in part to our co-producers, Astral Buoyancy and Shred Ready, we were able to pool enough funds to pay for the DVD replication.
My primary contribution to the content of the DVD is a video entitled How to Go Surf Kayaking, which is second in a series of surf kayak films associated with INTERFERENCE, a surf kayak film my friend Joey Hall produced two years ago. Over the past fifteen years I have been traveling around the world with a group of friends on surf kayak trips. Without much direction we have documented these trips and I have tucked away footage and photos for years and years. The title, How to go Surf Kayaking, is both sarcastic and sincere, meaning that it’s not an actual instructional video. Rather, the title means that we as a group learned how to go surf kayaking, how to travel with kayaks, how to survive as tourists in other countries and how to have fun surfing together. The production was, as I state in my narration, “for my friends,” merely as a scrapbook piece, but now we are going to be able to share it with the world. And hopefully this video and the others on the Coming Home DVD will inspire people to go out and travel and find the fun and beauty we have found in the sport of kayaking.
Quickly, the other three films include Grand Canyon in Winter, North Shore: A guide to getting lost, and Coming Home: North Carolina. All three of these were produced fully by Chris Gallaway with the exception of Coming Home, which I was a big part of in filming and planning.
Proceeds from sales of the DVD, as well as funds raised at the video premiere, will benefit two non-profit organizations local to Asheville, NC. We feel there is something we can all appreciate and gain from these groups and we aim to raise more awareness of both. Our VOICE is a intervention and prevention agency in Buncome County NC that serves victims of sexual assault. In short, they are a rape crisis center, and their services and purpose should not go unnoticed. RiverLink is an organization which spearheads the economic and environmental revitalization of the French Broad River and its tributaries as a place to live, work and play.
There is an awful lot to say about the music in the soundtracks of these films, which I will dive into on some separate articles that may be found later at RapidTransitMusic.com
I recently had unique and exciting opportunity to shoot and edit a video for SmartWool. As I found out during the shoot, most of SmartWool’s socks are milled in the USA, near Chattanooga TN. Great company, lots of really fun people to be around.
Can we please come together as a community and just stop it with this “social networking” and “email.” I mean, companies like “OSM” and their fancy “RAVEN” ordering system need to just give it up. Do you honestly think that when Abraham Lincoln invented faxing that he didn’t foresee the internets and all it’s flaws? Well maybe he didn’t have his googles figured out but he darn well built the fax machine to stand the test of time. I’m pretty ticked off about all this facebook, youtube, tweeter blibble-de-blab. Get your fax machines out and let’s show the world how to do business the real way!
Recently I had the opportunity to visit Breckenridge for a short ski trip with my family. Even though it isn’t a banner year for anyone in the snow industry we had a great time. Breckenridge on a bad year was excellent compared to the typical North Carolina ski hills, so we had no complaints.
- We tried out Shred Ready’s new snow-sports helmet, the Forty4, and were very pleased with the performance. Seven of us wore these helmets for a week on the slopes, including a 5-year old, 8-year old, 12-year old and four adults. General consensus was that the helmet was comfortable, warm, really quick and easy to buckle and adjust, and of course very protective. I really enjoyed that I could implement my iPhone headphones into the ear pads and listen to music and make phone calls from the ski lift.
