Elan Snowboards - Agent-G Blog

Snowboarding Season 07/08

2008-04-17T07:31:02+00:00

Well, the snowboarding season of 07/08 is coming to an end and I have mixed feelings about it. My dream for years had been to just move out to Lake Tahoe. I only lived a short drive away from it, but finding roommates and living out on my own would not be easy. This year I was finally able to move. It was alot of change for one year. My girlfriend who needed to get out of her house because of how mentally abusive her dad is, packed up and moved in with me. It wasnt easy for her, it was a fight with her dad on a daily basis, and it was a big change in her life.

Alexis, my girlfriend, and I worked hard all summer and saved up all the money we could so that we would have enough for when we moved. We found a house…not the best one, but it worked, and we paid for three months rent in advance.

The problem was we moved at a bad time of the year. The season had a late start and finding a job was not easy. Every place we went to look for a job at told us the same thing “fill out an application, we are not hiring right now, but you can fill one out.” I was hoping to find a night job so I could snowboard during the day, but the only problem with that is so is everyone else who lives in Tahoe.

The sad thing about South Lake Tahoe is you need to know people to get a good job. This place is all about who you know. And in the chance you do get a job, the people treat you like shit because they dont care about you. If you quit, so what, they can just hire someone else who doesnt mind getting paid minimum wage and getting yelled at. The market here is totally saturated.

We moved here in October and we didnt find a job until mid December, and by then, we had spent all the money we saved on food an whatnot It was a sports shop job and I really was not looking forward to another one of those. You work during the hours the resorts are open, and you have to deal with all the flatlander idiots who ask you stupid questions like “Is it going to snow this week?” or “Where is the Lake?”. The lake is that big blue thing right behind you, you stupid flatlander.

The job sucked really bad. It wasnt even really a sports shop, it was a rental shop. The people that worked there didnt know shit, and we were getting paid minimum wage and working at this horible place. It was one of the worst jobs we had ever had. I was unhappy everyday, and Alexis basically was too.

I finally saw an ad in the local paper for a restarunt job. It didnt give an adress, but said it was a high end restarunt that wanted people with 10 years expirence to work there for servers, and someone with 2 years experience for a dishwasher. I thought to myself that this must be a really classy place to work at if they want that much experience. They only accepted resumes, so I faxed one in. I was hoping that I could quit my job at the sports shop and work there only.

I get a phone call about the job two days later, and she said that the waiter job was filled, but I could be a dishwasher. Not what I wanted, but I figured at a high end restarunt I could work hard and move up fast.

The job was not exactly what it said it was. It was a nice restarunt, but it was located in an area that is dead in the winter. It was only open for 4 hours a day and they would only get about 3 to 6 tables in a night. Besides that, the owner was a crazy Beverly Hills spoiled rich bitch who had never worked a hard day in her life and had an alcohol problem to boot.

I went to school two days a week, so the most I could work at this place was 4 days. And 16 - 20 hours of work a day was not enough to pay the bills. So now, I had two jobs which I really hated. She also gave me a job working for her husband who did construction around Lake Tahoe. He is a good guy, but I could not stand his wife.

I ended up walking into another sports shop to buy mittens and to also look for another job. The sports shop was a higher end one, not exactly what I was looking for to work at, but alot better than the other one I was currently working at. Alexis and I talked to the manager for two hours, and he told us to call the boss man in a few days. We did, and he gave us jobs on the spot.

We both quit the other sports shop job. I did when I was working the construction, and Alexis gave her two weeks notice. The owners of that shop were so pissed at her "after all they had done for her" they said, they told her just to leave. Hahaha...they didnt do anything but under pay us and yell at us over nothing.

I next quit the restarant job and the construction job went with it. I went back to work on the last night the restarant was open, only to have the drunk owner insult me and talk to me condecendingly over and over again enough that anyone else would have probably walked out. (from what I hear, most people have walked out on her)

The sports shop job we were currently working at was great. We were able to work nights so we could ride during the day, and we worked in a happy, plesent enviroment. It was great. The head manager boss man, Brent, really knows his stuff, and it was alot of fun to work for him.

Alexis and I both had passes to Heavenly...its not the greatest mountain, but it is big, and you never get bored there. For working in a sports shop we also get shop passes which are free passes to Heavenly, Sierra-at-Tahoe, and Kirkwood...so we rode there quite a few times too.

I have had quite a few injuries this year, but I figured I would. Moving to a good resort that has a decent park, I knew I would be pushing myself alot more than usual. But it has been alright. It has been a fun year full of ups and downs.

The sports shop is about to close down and so is Heavenly. We will be moving back to where I moved from for the summer so that I can work at my summer job as a waiter at a fine dining restarunt located on the a beautiful lake in the Sierras. I will probably go to Mammoth a few times before they close down too. Hopefully they make it to July 4th.

Gunbarrel 25

2008-04-08T06:15:30+00:00

Pre Gunbarrel

April 5, 2008

Okay, so every year, Glen Plake has this competition at Heavenly. The rules are simple: twenty-five laps down Gunbarrel, which is Heavenly’s face run. The task not so easy.

You see, Gunbarrel is three-quarters of a mile long trail of strait tore up moguls. None of the moguls are even, and it is strait abuse by any standards.

So….I called up my brother the day before the competition and told him to get his ass over here and do it with me. He tells me that he is not a mogul skier and doesnt want to do it. So I tell him Im not a mogul boarder and I am doing it. I finally convince him to go, and he drives over here.

My girlfriend, Alexis had mostly dislocated her shoulder at Big Sky, Montana, and had her arm in a sling, and I am still injured from my trip from the top of the half pipe to the flats, but she wants to do this with me, and I said screw it, lets do it.

Moguls where not ment for snowboards, I’ll tell you what. There is no fast way to do it on a snowboard, but I kept going for it. Out of the 200 people that entered that competition, only ten of them were snowboarders.

Alexis, carring only one ski pole, and one arm in the sling, was right there with me the whole time. She did a few interviews for TV because everyone wanted to interview the gimp.

The competition was ruthless and became more like repetition than anything else. We had our line, and we kept taking it every time. It started at 10 o clock, and we didnt finish it until 4. Thats six hours of riding. We didnt take any breaks, and we didnt stop. It was strait though. The winner of the competition was a Slovanian who has raced his whole life. He did it in a little over 3 hours.

We finished the competition and Alexis and I had to go strait to work. We could hardly stand and had to work. I suppose it is a good thing we have a kick back job.

Note Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, I took them from the Heavenly photograhers site.

So...I rode my Answer for the first time today....

2007-12-10T02:42:59+00:00

.....and it was siccckk. It took a little getting use to. I have been riding bigger boards then that for a good many years now, so going from the 157 and 159 to a 154 was quite the change.

Also, the Artec I had had a really nice flex to it, but it was a 159. And the Nitro I had which was a really stiff board, was nice for hard pack and for poping off jumps. So riding the Answer which is a pretty flexy board was wayyy different then what I am use to.

But I can tell its going to be a great freestyle board. I am thiking that when I get my Artec back from warrenty, that maybe I should try going up in size now that I have the Answer in a 154. I need something for speed.

Another board bites the dust

2007-11-13T06:14:50+00:00

Seperated base and edge

Thankfully this time it wasnt my new board.

No, indeed it was my Nitro which I had owned for a year. Which, infact, is the longest I have owned a board in a long time without breaking it.

So apparently the ptex and edge septerated from the core as did the top sheet as shown in the pictures. There is no inpact damage, and I cant say that I have ever had this damage done to a board without hitting something. Though, possibly the last picture had something to do with why this happened…look at the flex in that stiff ass board.

And no….epoxy is not going to fix this one. The core apparently warped and is rounded the base of the board, and the edge is no longer strait. Well, this will be the 4th board I should get back from Nitro on warrenty within the last 4 years. That means the last time I paid for a board from them was 4 years ago, and yet I get a new board each year.

New and Old Boards

2007-10-17T22:15:59+00:00

Nitro MFM sitting next to my new Elan Answer

A picture of my Nitro MFM from last year sitting next to my new Elan Answer

So, I have to say thanks to those responsible for making me User of the Month. This is so awesome that I won a snowboard that I actually like, and from a company that I have come to love. And I cant believe how fast you guys shipped it out. I was figuring it would take a while. But according to the invoice it was shipped from Austria and made it to California in 4 days. Thanks!!

This board is definitly getting its use this year. As soon as we get enough snow to ride on there will be pictures up of me on the new board

Pond Skimming

2007-10-17T02:05:44+00:00

My Dad

The date was April 7, 2007. The day for Pond Skimming at Bear Valley Ski Resort. And like every Pond Skimming day for the last three years there, it was overcast and snowing. The temperature was 25 degrees F (around -3 degrees C) and it was intermitently snowing.

My cousins from Sacramento came up to the resort to do the pond skim with us, along with several of my brother’s friends.

All together there were 32 entrees into the competition and of those 32, 15 were my family, and two were our friends.

Of couse we had to start drinking earily. No one wants to do something like this totally sober.

It had been spring for awhile until this day, so the snow was frozen with a couple inches of fresh snow on top….very slow conditions for riding, and hardly anyone was making it across because of the speed needed

My brother’s Toby and Bear decided to go down on a sled. They didnt make it very far, but they tried.

My dad sank in the middle of the pond, but atleast he kept his beer helmet on the whole time.

My brother Jarrett made it all the way across and spun a 180 out winning him first place.

I actually hiked up about a 100 feet higher then where everyone else was to give me more speed. I had some beat up old boots I was going to use for this, and they ended up being to small for the bindings. So when I tried to lean back in the water, they totally gave out. I went down hard in the middle of the pond. It was a good wake up call and sobering experiance.

Life and Death

2007-09-26T08:04:20+00:00

I never thought it would hurt so much…I never thought it would happen for that matter. My brother who I have known for 20 years now died today. And from all things something stupid like a druge overdose.

I am so hurt and angry its hard to describe. I guess when I thought of my family of 8, I was just always happy to know we all loved eachother and all cared. Its hard to loose. So very, very, hard. I keep thinking I will wake up from this nighmare to see my brother there, laughing like he has no worry in the world. Barrett, I will always love you. I will always have an empty spot in my heart from where you left, and I will always keep a candle lit for you. You ment the world, and I hope you are in good arms today. From your oldest brother Garrett Stevenson

How A Chair lift Is Built

2007-09-25T06:27:03+00:00

Last summer at this time, I was on the crew which built the new chair lift at our local mountain Bear Valley Ski Resort. I didnt really do the job for the money, it was mostly the experiance and to be able to say I did it. I have pictures up in a new gallery to show some of the processes involved

They were long, tiresome days. Since the season for working on a chair lift is so short, and they started in July, we would work 10+ hours a day 7 days a week. It only takes a crew of about 7 men to build this whole chairlift. To first start the job, we did alot of chopping down trees, and digging. Since lives depended on us, we had to over engeneer the hell out of this lift. The first picture I have shows the holes we had to dig and the cement we used to make the footings for a tower. Most of the time, we would come to giant pieces of granite rock which we couldnt dig though and would have to use explosives to blow it up. But first we would have to drill through the granite. Not easy work.

After the cement was poured, we started seting the Drive engine, and the return engine towers. We would put them on semi trailers and drive them down the back side of the mountain with a tractor. Then we used a crane to set them. This was very tricky. It had to line up perfectly or else everything was off. We had to pull it toward us with rope, using all the strength we had.

For all the other towers, we used a helicopter to bring them in. This was hard because the helicopter would stir up all this dust below it and it made it like a sand storm. I of course did not have to deal with this because I was in the parking lot hooking up the towers to the helicopter. It was a nice job. One of the hardest days of work we had was tightening all the nuts on the towers, drive, and return. I am sure most of you have seen the nuts on the towers. These ones had a three inch diameter hole. To tighten them, we used a metal wrench which fit on it and then slammed it with a sledge hammer until it was tight. But all the towers had to align perfectly, so we would hammer it down all the way, then have to hammer it off all the way and put metal shims under it so it would align. Then hammer it down, then hammer it off. I think that was the most tired I had ever been from a day of work. After that we ran the haul line, and then built the chairs and put them on. We worked in all conditions. It was snowing and we were out there screwing nuts together.

In my gallery I have pictures which corrospond to this blog if your interested.

Last season in California

2007-09-23T07:17:56+00:00

So, this last snowboarding season in California was the worst one I have seen since I moved to this ski resort town 11 years ago. We had hardly enough snow to open by Christmas, and then after it there wasnt snow for a month. Then when we finally had some good storms, we had these high winds 80 -120 mph winds to be percise which would take all the top snow and carry it away.

It felt like summer all year. And then the summer was one of the hottest and dryest I can remember. Usually I do a little motorcycling in the summer, but it has been way too dusty this summer. I guess all I can hope for is a good season next year.

I cant complain too much…California has had some really great seasons the two years prior. And we have some of the best resorts in the world in the Tahoe and Mammoth area.

for those that read

2007-09-23T07:11:34+00:00

I really like this site for snowboarding, but it still seems small compaired to others. Once I was use to the interface its not that bad. I first loaded all the pictures into the galleries, and found out that you dont link them. So that messed me up. So now when I figued out how to do it right, it seems like I am flooding them all in one day. I do appricate the fact that most the people on this site seem really mature and dont seem new to the sport. I get tired of dealing with kids who are ignorant on the web.

I think one of the main differences in why this site seems so small is because I am from the US and it seems like most everyone on here is from Europe. But I am glad I am on here. Because of this site, I was able to get my snowboard warrenty which i had not been able to do for a long, long time.