Elan Snowboards - Community Blogs

INDO summer time...

2008-08-29T19:35:33+00:00

Matevz Pristavec 01

As also last year, I spent this warm months with my girl in Indonesia – Bali and Nusa Lembongan islands. This year we were there for two months. Mostly moving around for perfect surf. We rented a motor bike for 1 Euro per day :). Yeah things there compared to Europe are really cheap. Rooms were between 4 to 6 Euros and food is even cheaper that you can imagine. So basically you need to save for your flight ticket…

For surfing Indo is just unbelievable! It’s so consistent with off-shore wind coming every day before noon and the waves are just always there. There waves basically for all levels and they are really close together. Unfortunately for us many people also found that and this year compared to last one was with much more tourists and surfers. Enough word, go see the photos and you will see!

Peace Matevz

Back from crazy Beijing, China

2008-08-25T13:00:07+00:00

Nihau!

My sister Sabrina is the reason why I went to Beijing. She is a Judo fighter. The Judo fights were in the beginning of the games. I arrived on the 10th and her fights where on on the 11th. Unfortunately she lost her first fight really close against the double olympic champion from North Korea. And then this girl was so tired from the fight, that she lost her second. What means Sabrina was out. It was very hard for my sister, cause she expected a lot. She was first in the world ranking the whole year. To make it a little nicer we went to see a lot of other sports like swimming, diving, beach volley ball and Atlethics. Beach Volley was a lot of fun and really exciting to watch, cause the Schwaiger sisters from Austria played against Germany and in the end they won the really tight match. The big stadiums Birdnest and Aquatic center look amazing. In the Birdnest we saw the 100m women final and cheered fort he Austrian Günther Weidlinger in the 10.000m run.

Sure we did a lot of tourist stuff too and saw all the interesting places, but we also went through the litte streets where the original life is still happening. The first five days I stayed with some Austrians in a hotel and the last five days I stayed at Miriam`s place. Miriam is from Austria and lives there since three years, speaks Chinese perfectly and she has a pretty cool dog called Tank. By the way she is together with the first chinese Snowboard pro Wang Lei. But he wasnt there, he is right now in New Zealand.

The first thing I recognized, already at the airport, were all the joung volunteers, thousands of them, everywhere in the town, all dressed the same blue olympic t-shirt, a big smile and a loud „Welcome to Beijing“. What was very funny when you entered or walked around , or went to your seat, was that each of them had their thing to say and stepped in front of you „Please go there to the security check“ followed by a big handvow in the direction, the next one „Please show me your ticket“, „Please, mind the Steps“, „Enjoy the competition“ and so on. Like little roboters I thought after a while. How much they must have trained for that and they took it really serious, it seems there is no other joice then the correct way. If someone didnt follow their instruction or just passed by, they seemed to be afraid to leave their place or that they would make a bad impression to the visitors. So somehow I made it into the Olympic green without ticket and then I always followed Sabrina, cause if you had an Athletes card around your neck, you rarly got checked. So I made it into the Aquatics center and could watch diving. But believe me I would have never thought I will make it in there. So I got my way in to some other places.

We always went around with the taxi, because it is very cheap and I heard it can get pretty confusing if you go with the bus and end up somewhere else. To get to a place it always took at least half an hour and if there was a traffic jam it took one and a half hours, but that was just happening once to me. If you dont have the place you wanna go to written in Chinese, you will go nowhere. And I think they never read maps, cause one time I wanted to show them a place on the map, with no success. Haha. But you could also find some young people who speak a little english and they are very helpful and nice. Always when I wanted to go to the Olympic Village I had most problems to convince drivers to go there. Some also told me to get another cab. There are a lot of chinese army people around the village and barriers.. They must be really afraid of the army. One guy was making the army impression to tell me that there are the army people and he thought you are not allowed to go further. And I was like no no it is okey, then he drove on.

Three times I was a guest in the Olympic village. You have to apply the day before and then you can stay there for the day. It is pretty cool, they have a huge mensa where you can eat all different food types and a Mc Donalds. There is also a mayors house, fitness center and a lot other stuff. But the best thing are all the athletes in there. Imagine, the most trained bodies in the world in one place, wooow. And all the different body types too, the small gymnastics and the tall basketballers or highjumpers…

When you look closer to some of the new buildings, you realise that a lot are completely empty. Sabrina has been in Beijing some years ago and wanted to show me a big busy market street, which is a kilometer long. When we came there, it was pretty surreal. The street was changed into a pedestrian zone and everything was new. All Chinese people were happily strolling around. And then we saw that there was nothing in the buildings, all the shops still empty. We were the only faces who looked like they just have been put in a movie and all the people around us are extras. The question is where they moved the people who lived there to. Miriam told me, that before the games you saw a lot of kids around begging. I didnt see anyone. I just read that two 80 year old chinese women were protesting in the „protesting zone“, but they have been punished with a one year boot camp. I hope the Olympics bring China something good for their future and hopefully the human rights will be more respected.

Summer already gone....

2008-08-22T19:15:52+00:00

Buzios, Brazil

So after some summer shredding up in Whistler I left to go visit the family out in Montreal like I do every year. It was great family times, but the weather was so bad. Raining every day and we were even getting water cyclones in the St-Laurence river. Never seen before, it was quite a sight. So after lots of card playing and long dinners with all of my family I took-off to visit some friends in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Rio is one of the most beautiful, colorful, diverse city’s in the world. It’s crazy, you have the mountains in the middle of the city that reach down to the ocean with the lagoon in the middle of down-town. Rich parts and the flavelas mixed in all together almost with the beaches and hills with the botanical garden in the middle. Oh, and the itsy-bitsy-bikiny…...ya, everybody wears those, but all the women seems to have a really nice but. Everybody is super active and of course it’s plastic surgery heaven there.

So we went the first week-end to Buzios, which is considered the St-Tropez of Brazil where all the rich and famous go and vacation on the beach. It’s really cute romantic place with all the beaches and restaurants but the water is a few degrees colder then Rio and it makes such a difference when you forget to bring your shorty wet-suit from home. I was freezing with blue lips after about an hour of surf.

But anyways, it was I think one of the best trips of my life overall and I would recommend everybody to go. I wouldn’t tell somebody to go there for a surf trip, but the surf is fun and there’s beach-brakes every where. There is just so much to do.

Now I’m back home and getting ready to go to school early September for 3 intense months. I’m working at the Farmer’s Market in Whistler on Sunday selling berries with friends. I hope the rain will stop soon.

Summers are so short here you can almost feel the snow coming in already since it gets so cold at night.

talk to you soon. ciao dom

Summer already gone....

2008-08-22T19:12:55+00:00

Summers are so short here you can almost feel the snow coming in already since it get’s so cold at night.

talk to you soon. ciao dom

* fun times in Tyrol *

2008-08-14T07:52:27+00:00

the paddling team

Since I´ve spent the last 2 whole summers at the Atlantic ocean I forgot how beautiful Tyrol can be in summer time. We go hiking, swimming and even paddling. Photos will tell more than 100 words… Paddle hard & stay strong :-)

Summer news

2008-08-05T06:38:41+00:00

Triest - the city of scooters

Heya, hope you’re enjoying summer times!

The last two weeks I’ve been on a trip through Eastern Europe. We, Rudi and I, where travelling around in the car, going from city to city and almost never staying at one place for more than a night. Our way took us to Slovenia (Maribor, Ljubljana, Postonja), Italy (Triest, Venezia), Croatia (Rijeka, Krk), Hungary (Budapest), Slovakia (Poprad, Levoca, Spisske) and Poland (Koszecin, Krakau).

It was really nice to visit so many extremely different cities. We got to know a new way of communication, where the actual speaking is secondary…, because you couldn’t expect people to speak English at all. It was really funny speaking with Italian truck drivers, Slovakian waitresses and polish grandparents without understanding a word.

In Croatia we were hanging with some friends from the Snowboard Klub Nine from Rijeka and where doing some wakeboarding together. It was really nice to meet them. In Poland we were staying at the place of the big family of a friend and we were seduced to drink a vast quantity of Polish Wodka. They were extremely hospitable and hearty. Speaking of city impressions, Venezia impressed me the most. It’s really worth to spend a few days there and fall in love with the beautiful buildings, old houses and the whole atmosphere.

After 10 days and more than 3000 kilometres on the road, it was getting quite exhausting but all in all, it was an awesome trip and a big experience.

Back at home now, I’m pretty occupied by several things: seeing friends and family, some sports, reading, working at a company this month, writing on my Bachelor thesis and studying a little because I want to finish my Bachelor in the coming semester. Besides that, me and my Crew are working on the production of our Movie ‘Together’ which will be distributed by www.x-tremevideos.com.

Check: http://www. x-tremevideo. com/comingsoon/index. cfm?ccs=79&cs=1515

For the Teaser go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TIPi5RiiQ4

And there is more news I’m really happy about: coming season I’m riding Horsefeathers Outerwear

40 summer days and 40 nights @ Hintertux

2008-08-04T14:45:03+00:00

Head Coach

Nihao! Or should I say Hello…well anyway, let me start like this, I spend almost 6 weeks on the Hintertux Glacier with Chinese provincial team (12 competitors, 3 coaches, 1 translater), which is sponsored by Elan Snowboards … I was helping them with some coaching, tips, learning new tricks…specially on the kickers and spine … but in the Half pipe, man they are good, some spin machines, altough in the last weeks pipe wasn’t that good, cause the shaper went home and let the pipe crack, so we shaped it by hands here and there, they were still pullin some good tricks off…

Well otherwise it was a lot of driving from Mayrhofen to Tux and back everyday, but a man’s gotta to do what a man’s gotta do, right?  So we spend a lot of time in the car, and since I’m into RAP music we were listening to Rap music a lot, and after some days, competitors and other 3 coaches were coming to my room, asking if I can give them some of that car music…and I was like, sure! So after a few days everybody were bouncing thier heads on some Swollen Members, Kanye West, Hieroglyphics, Jay-z, Nas etc. Music ;) They were also cooking really good for me, a lot of chinese food for me in last 40 days  So I think I have enough of that food for a while… but it was good and healthy!

I also took them to the Elan factory in Austria and HQ in Slovenia, and after that in Ljubljana (Capitol of SLO), we made like a 1 day trip to Slovenia, and they were really excited about everything. We also went to Innsbrooklyn (Innsbruck) and they were shopping like crazy, specially the Swarowski crystal stuff  Back to Snowboarding….the weather was with us, except for some 8 stormy days, but 8 bad weather days out of 40… 32 days of sunny ridding, not bad huh? But the ridding days were like: early bird catches the worm… the glacier was closed daily at 1.30pm, mornings were really good, and than slushy… Now after spending some summer time at 3000m+ above sea, I’m going TO the sea, hope to get some good surfing, nice party’s and stuff… ;)

Summer time in Les2Alpes

2008-07-28T20:15:20+00:00

I came to Les2Alpes couple a days ago after 3 months of brake and no snow for me… I had to do some exams for my college, and I had an injury on the trampoline(dislocated shoulder)....bloody trampoline! And ten days ago, when I was at the seaside we’ve rented some motorbikes and I fell and scratched my knees and elbows. Well.something just has to happen to me,otherwise it would be boring.But now everything is ok and I am back on snow. Thank god, all we have here is great time….perfect weather,good park,good pipes,a lot of activities…. I love this place and I come back every year… Here, it just can’t be boring…..it’s just that they are going crazy with prices,everything is soooo expensive,but as long as we’re having fun it doesn’t matter….Hope you’ll get the idea of how beautiful it is here in the pictures…

Kisses,

Morena

hAng lOOse, brOs!

2008-07-23T12:24:21+00:00

Hey there what´s up? Long time no news. I just came back from my annual summer trip to the Atlantic Coast. I went there 3 weeks ago on my own to catch up with Lisa. She arrived 10 days earlier for the Les Ettes Girlie Camp. The first week we spent at the amazing flat with ocean view of Anne-Flore and David to hang out and surf together. I haven’t experienced such good waves in Hossegor in summertime. It was just awesome – check the pics! On my third day the waves were pretty huge and Lisa and I got caught by the strong current which took us out to the open water. We’ve already seen ourselves getting rescued by a heli, but luckily we made it back into the ultimate line up and took a really nice wave all the way back to the beach. Stoked!

For the second week we went to Sopelana/Bilbao (Spain) to visit another friend, Rene, who’s doing a skate/surf camp over there. He offered us a spare tent, jammy food and a good company. The waves were still kind of perfect. At the end of the week the swell changed and we were more concentrating on the huge shopping malls in Bilbao.

After one week of camping we were looking forward to sleep in a bed again. Our next destination was Biarritz, where another really good friend is based for the summer, Aline! (you should know her from my previous blogs). Good to have friends spread over the whole world! :-) Thanks, guys! The waves got pretty tiny so we worked more on our tan. The last days before leaving back home we had epic surf sessions again. Satisfied and with a big smile I´m back in rainy Innsbruck. What’s next? Dunno….

Summer Session

2008-07-15T16:06:58+00:00

Last week end I was in Les 2 Alpes for a little slushy easy summer session. We were invited to enter this event called Kumi Ama. Last year the first price for this contest was a trip to Tahiti, this year they offered a trip to Japan for the winning team. The contest was a team battle so JJ Roux, Gabirel BEssy + me all from Gap decided to win this ticket to deap powder. But unfortunataly when two of us stomped a good line on the slopestyle someone else felt. We managed to enter the semi final but we’ve been betten off by a better chorégraphie. Well I did pretty well I guess, cause I won the best trick and got a deal with Zoo York. Les 2 Alpes is definitively my favorite summer riding spot! Hope to see you there!!! Bruno