features
Blog 1 - Stories from the Belly of Stylewars 2009
Aug 26, 2009 / 04:44:55 PM
The Smokey Van to Falls Creek
By James Caskey
The snow punter gets the green light
That's me - the snow punter! Don't get me wrong I am no kook on the snow, but yeah I will put my hand up as a weekend warrior, 1-2 week man who has never done a season.
So when I got an opportunity to roll with the Burton crew from Sydney down to Falls Creek for Stylewars I was frothing. Finally I could cast aside the shackles of "weekend warrior kook-dom" and hang with a bunch of dudes who live, breathe and eat snowboarding - and get paid for it. From the outside looking in it looks like a pretty sweet gig. Travel the world to compete, get loose and party. But is it all really like that? I was keen to find out...
Hitting the road to Falls Creek with Burton Pro team
When the minibus was finally picked me up at 12:30 in the arvo I was instantly relegated to a back seat. Squeezed behind Mark Sollars and Charles Reid from Canada, Mikkel Bang from Norway and Marco Grilc from Slovenia - who gave me the run down on the current state of the sex trafficking trade going in and out of Eastern Europe. ( he claims to be no part of it, but it became blatantly obvious that he probably runs the whole thing!!)
What should have been a 8 hour trip turned into a 12 hour saga thanks to a pie run and stop at Goulburn skate park, dodgy Chinese in Albury-Wodonga and random roadside stops for no apparent reason... everyone seemed pretty happy though.
Money doesn't seem to be too much of an issue for these guys. The gear is free, the trips are paid but when Transfer Mags editor Russ Holt's credit card got pulled out of the lucky dip hat, dinner was on him and no one offered to chip in for the $180 meal... But come to think of it neither did I, sorry Russ!
Kooking it in Falls Creek village
When we finally arrived in Falls Creek at 12am the lack of snow allowed us to drive right up the mountain. As luck would have it, as we arrived at the Snowdrift apartments where the Stylewars riders are staying, a much needed storm front hit and it started bucketing down with snow.
Unfortunately for us, our rental van started sliding down the road as we tried to reverse it down the hill. Of course we had no chains and we were more than over it. So after waking up half the staff of Falls Creek resort with panicked calls the little snow that had fallen luckily melted enough and a strange late night workmen/carpark dude guided us down the hill, allowing us to finally get to bet at 1.30am - 13 hours after we had left. We had seriously kooked it.
Down Day Called
Marco Grilc made his intentions clear for Stylewars down day with a added message on the riders notice board
The first day has been declared a weather day. The riders are chilling around the apartments. Some have gone up the mountain for a shred but the younger crew seem happy to sit inside on facebook for the day and chill.
I went up the hill for a cruise and whilst the manic winds were not making life easy or pleasant, there were some good little powder stashes in the trees outwide in the Summit bowl.
Everyone is pretty and mellow during the day but once the sun goes down and the beers come out, it is on for young and old.
With the Stylewars event in town The Snowdrift apartments is a den of inappropriateness. Every hour after 5pm is happy hour and everyone - the competitors, the camera crews and the tag-alongs are there for the gold coin Coronas.
Time to drink the sky blue with Ghetto Dice
Step do the dice if you want a piece of the Captain Morgan
Around 9pm people are keen to hit the piss at the pub, but to avoid paying ridiculous mountain prices for drinks - the ghetto dice come out. A posse of 15 riders gather in Nick Gregory's room destined to finish a 1-litre bottle of Captain's. (Ryan Tiene, Chris Kroll, Nick Gregory, Mikkel Bang, Herby Thaler and a whole bunch of other lose units are in the mix.)
The rules are simple for ghetto dice: Roll a double and you drink whatever the 3rd dice reads. Roll 3 sixes and you finish the bottle of Captain Morgans rum. The luck Herby Thaler from Austraia rolled the number of the devil (triple 6) and polishes off a good 2 thirds of the bottle.
Katalyst and Danielson Party play at The Man
Stylewars is a pretty big week in town and The Man Hotel is where all the late night shenanigans go down. Katalyst were playing and the tunes were good (I think) but by that stage we were all to wasted to really know what was going on. The photos of the night seem to tell a better story, but sometimes its better when you can't remember.
Around 2am out the front of the pub it seemed to be common knowledge that people were going back to the Snowdrift apartments...
And so began 'the hallway party' - hallway scrums, ridiculous amounts of drinking, young local girls, boozed up pros and shenanigans that still cannot be talked about until the contest organizers and apartment owners have settled on a price for repairs.
... I cant wait for tomorrow.
(click on any image to view the gallery)
tags: transfer, feature, features, photos, stylewars, 2009, falls, creek, photo
