sequences pt. 3

Phoebe went six for six yesterday after a couple of days learning this alley-oop bs rodeo. This was todays second try on a firm wall with poor light. I will replace this sequence when the sun returns.

 Congrats on the new trick.

Day 13 in the Hood

Absentee blogger back from the fray with much to report. First things first. Difficult news. Best of luck, all of our support and prayers for Kiley and a speedy recovery. After a morning of seamless return to form in the Halfpipe that included a dozen front 'fives', Kiley went too deep spinning a front three over a 15-20 foot table top about 1:15 on Sunday. She bounced onto her arm and broke her humerus. Transport and evaluation took most of the day and evening. Ron Chiodi helped get the rest of the crew down from the Mountain and Chris Tierney Sr. sat house with pizza and videos until we got home. Tues am Kiley flew back to CT for complete treatment and recovery. Really tough to watch such a hungry rider have her summer season cut so short and not be able to remedy the situation. The pain of crepitus seemed irrelevant to Kiley compared to the feeling of being robbed of the opportunity to ride. Thanks for being such a trooper Kiley and Kiki. Thanks to Chris and Ron for being the community we can count on.

Meanwhile the rest of the crew continues to use their opportunities. Karen Kobayashi is getting back to her smooth style in the mold of Makayla and Meghan Tierney. These girls let the board run with low edge angle, an effortless look and flow. Lots o' bass. Marian Lobell and Phoebe Novello ride a more tilted board that speaks of an aggression to push their comfort levels. Two contrasting styles with similarly sweet results.

Mike Perle is playing with switch alley oops and continuing to hammer out the nines. He took a cab nine attempt a little too far and stomped out a monstrous cab ten on the big uppity single jump line on riders left.
JP is piling up the front sevens and bringing nice amplitude to the whole run. He might skate his brains out If someone isn't cutting him off. I remember being told when I was young that a cow would eat and eat until it died if given the chance. I think I have a chocolate lab like that. I don't think that's quite the case with JP and skating but it does remind me of that. He is handing out the s's, the k's, the a's, t's and e's like Kermit the Frog on "The Best of Sesame Street".  James Haffner thinks he's watching a rerun of himself at 12.

Big Time "Old Time" SMS Love is everywhere out here this week. India Stevenson is out to tune up her skills before two weeks of training with the British National Team. Jo Mensch stopped by for a visit today. Danny, Haley and Layla are Living like a king and queens in the pop-top camper parked in front of the Burton house while Sebastian and the Rest of the Frends crew have created a tent ghetto just off the sidewalk. Scottie and Jack put on a pretty show in Large style in the grey lit pipe this afternoon. Both holding cameras while blasting away. Louie rolled in last night or today and like Ellery is living in some slightly more comfortable accommodations with the US Team.





JP showing his love for High Cascade and handing out the letters.

Three Days "Off".

We kept pretty busy on our three days between HCSC sessions. We rallied over to Hood River for a big day of R&R that was nonstop action.  JP was patient and polite with me when I dropped in on an old employer that has relocated to Hood River. Once he had taken that stroll down my memory lane I was happy to hit every store in town looking for two things. "AfterSun" cream and a windbreaker/shell. You see JP's winter weight shell is not only getting small but it's heavy. That combination of fit may or may not have contributed to his slight overexposure to the sun and wind of Mount Hood on our last day of the session. Probably the coat combined with an oblivious coach, an incredibly enthusiastic young snowboarder, the awesome Half-pipe, airbag-jump and lap park to result in JP's first seven twenties in the pipe... and a little sunburn. We found some aloe-gator green stuff pretty quick but the jacket was more elusive. While the girls swam and tanned between windsurfers and kite boarders we went up and down main street into every surf, skate, snow and windsports shop in the Columbia River Gorge. The important detail here is that he now has a sweet old school surfer's windbreaker by quicksilver and a less oblivious guardian who has harped on him to put on on his creams and neckies all day long everywhere he goes so this will never happen again. All kidding aside the youngest guy on the trip, JP has handled himself commendably. He wants to send Aloe-Gator the before and after pictures of his tan. He has competently pulled the legs of intense young women three years his senior, facebook-married one of the snowboarding nations toughest catches, kept up with Hunter Wood on his skateboard, hiked repeatedly with sms snowboardings's all-time female box-jump world record holder and not missed a meal or a wink of sleep, so far from home. So cool. Kevin and Donna you have prepared this young man well and he is having a great time.

But I digress. After our shopping romp we ate some great fish tacos with Mikey P and gathered up our women for swimmin.  I took directions from the Kayak-Shed to the legendary punch-bowl falls near the bottom of the west fork of the Hood River a few miles upstream of it's confluence with the east fork to become the main Hood. We found our destination and were not let down. Ice cold twelve foot waterfall into a deep pool. I eased in to check the depth under the launch pad. Sure enough it was cold. We all had a couple of good jumps and climbed back out of the canyon to drive back into Portland to pick up India. We saw a great waterfall draining a cliffside(and complete with its own rainbow) into the Columbia on the way and made PDX on time. India's Boardbag was of course diverted en route but happily United Airlines would deliver it to HCSC at 1 am (and did too.).

So the next morning we picked up the bag and India got her practice legs back. Mike and JP and I ( the boys) had a breakfast at Huck's and then we rendezvoused with the girls for some dryland. Mike went running and kept protective watch over Marian and Meghan who did a core workout and a walk. Makayla, Phoebe, JP and I headed out from the rte 26 on the Mirror lake Trailhead. We cranked out the loop and met Chris Tierney Senior out in the wilderness who happened to coming down from Tom Dick and Harry mtn. Might sound silly and made up but it is true. The girls swam again and the view of Mt Hood was spectacular. We lapped the lake and ran down most of the trail back to the van. Somehow, somewhere in the day we picked up some demo gear from Burton Snowboards, picked up India again and did a massive food shop. Marian and Meghan cooked us Hot-dogs and CT sr. had dropped off a flat of fresh berries.
This morning I picked up Karen at the Airport. New Haven has "little Italy", San Fran has "China Town", Dummerston has "little connecticut" and PDX  was like a "little Stratton Mountain" this morning. Skiers, freestylers, Tony Zazarro, Dylan, Ron Chiodi and company, Scott Horwath's crew...The airport was teeming with familiar faces, incoming sms student athletes and a fresh-back-from-Isreal-with-Dan-Landy, Josh Cohen. Great to see everybody. Karen and I waited for her board bag's slow materialization and went back to Rhododendren. Karen took the day to recover and the rest of the crew and I headed up to MT Hood for some Hiking into the OB. This has gotten far too long so I will be brief, the hike was beautiful and epic and we made an excellent choice when faced with crevasses. We stayed away by riding back down the easy way.  Maybe we will try the other side later in the week. Back to Govy for one more round of Huckleberries milk shakes and home. One more airport run for Kiley and special surprise visitor James Haffner. A great reunion trip back and one long break is over. I can't wait to get back to the grind of training.

sequences pt. 2 Hunter Wood

Hunty likes the alley-oop and so do I. but I love the haakons.
Switch Crip Sev. the house band. so punk.

sequences pt. 1 Mike Perle

Pirate Radio Style

Coming to you from a coffee roasters driveway because one of the really great things about smssnowboarding@blogspot.com is that we get to feel like we are traveling and riding with our friends and family even when we are not. So when I can't get online for two days I will go get on the internet by whatever means are necessary. I shot 871 photos yesterday and a pile of video and then could not share with the world. My heart nearly bursted.




What an awesome couple of days we have had. The riding level came up through the roof. The threes turned to fives, the fives to sevens and of course the sevens turned to nines. The Backside mute is a Tierney family classic. Marian has roast beefs. We do our frontside tricks on backside walls if we want. Mike and Hunter both nailed some big jump clips down and owned the Halfpipe. "The kid on the Capita" is an HCSC sideshow all by himself. Girls spinning to the left and right in the same runs. Both genders getting some upside down representation and that's what summer riding is all about. PROGRESS.
Today near the end we got to sample some local airbag action and the result was exquisite. Video highlights will show Scott Sweitzer going home knowing just what it feels like to spin frontside seven twenty full degrees on a big jump. JP put some down in the pipe too. I have to admit too that we rode so hard for six days in a row that we are skipping d-land tonight- right now even- and need our days off. But even sore and tired I can't wait to see what session two brings. India hits PDX tomorrow night. Kiley and Karen make it on saturday. It will be rad.     
After editing out 864 photos I had a few left. I will make more details clear during our down time but for now this connection is failing and I can't load any more shots so "peaceout" from "just another smiling guy on a computer in a white van in a parking lot."

Late report on Days Three, Four, Session One

Yesterday started a little foggy but cleared for a few good hours before it came back in solid and drippy-windy. While the weather held our crew was really starting to get the heavy skills back and I saw back fives, cab fives and front sev's emerging from the tool chests. Smoother drop-ins and real pipe edging made for more efficient production up and down the line. High Cascades pipe is one of the best ever and they have the raking team dialed in on the art of the lunch hr. fix-up. They fan out like a flock of geese and the last wave is raking the footprints of their leaders.

JP, and Scottie skated with Hunter under the cover of B.O.B. when we returned back down to the drizzle. We did some burly core work on our plush living room carpet and step ups onto the coffee table. We ran the 2.5 in the woods again and when we grabbed our skate crew we added EB and brought him home to couch for the night. Chris Tierney Sr. put the cap on our day with a team dinner at Burro Loco and everyone was asleep by 9:45.

This morning we woke to the fabled MT HOOD blue bird singing our tune. They didn't cut the pipe but it was still sick. When the diggers finished with it at lunch you would never know there were tracks in it in the morning. Instead of cutting last night they were out building the new lap park so now we have one more whole park at our disposal and the line is fun but the pipe is really holding our attention.  By tomorrow we expect to be trying the other big project that has been getting set up these last two days; the DC MTN. LAB air bag.  We hit Huckleberries for a quick shake and rolled down the other side of the mt. hood to Hood River for the afternoon.  Scottie Sweitzer and JP McArdle fell in love with the Hood River Concrete Skate Park that every town should have while I caught a cup of soup and  Mike, Phoeb's, MakT , Marian, Hunter and The Pit Bull did some shopping. We rallied and caught a showing of the A-Team before calling it one more full day in paradise.

jp mcbackpack.

2010 Hood Camp Underway

Without a hitch into Oregon, Phoebe and I found Mike P waiting by our baggage claim. I located and signed away for our big van and they grabbed my gear. We loaded gear and in no time were joined by Marian. A simple route 26 commute and we checked into our ZigZag River Chalet. A kayaker's dream (if you have a boat...) nestled in the big trees with decks looking down over continuous class three "boogie boating". The deck bar makes for the coolest tuning bench I can remember...

 Once we arrived we were joined by Makayla and SMS's newest Tierney, Meghan. In the morning Scott Swietzer dropped off Scott Swietzer and we moved on up/east on 26, eight miles to Government Camp. I picked up our passes from Meagan at HCSC and we made the scene on snow. Scottie was almost immediately after his threes, Makayla front boarded the first rail I even saw this summer and that's how we are getting back into the groove. "Easy but after it". Play on snow is the theme of the week with regular dland and skating at HCSC as soon as the drizzle lets up in "govy". Yesterday I had to wake up the napping crew to go run a few miles in the woods at Wildwood Rec Area and get our warmed up bodies a stretch. We were dog tired and sore this morning so we are only going to workout every other day until we are walking on legs of steel again in a few more days.
Today on snow we battled heavy patches of fog with the patience of ninja assassins and I was impressed by the feel for snow these guys have in marginal visibility. As these unedited photos show we are getting our skills back and the fog is only making it hard for people to see what they are doing.

When the sun burst through we added the public park to our lap and have to salute the Timberline resort crew for a great jib and jump line to compliment and lengthen our cool HCSC terrain and killer pipe lap. Down the road camp owner Tim Windell might appreciate this old school brand-name drop even though we aren't camping there this year- It's a "Killer Loop". (old snowboarder only joke).
JP McArdle joined us at Timberline at 1:00 so I let the kids finish up by themselves while I went and loaded him into the van and our session is officially almost full.( Eric B is on his way to sleep on a couch for a few nights while he gets Ready for His First Pro Invite Only Contest up in Canada next week. "Billabong Ante Up." Watch it online. Seriously. Also in the category of "visitors-with-purpose" India Stephenson will come ride a couch for a few nights on her way to train for camp with THE British Snowboard Team in our next session...). JP reports that he has skated almost every day since leaving SMS and he is banging out six and occasionally seven stair kickflips! Nasty.
Kids are in the kitchen and I am on the way. Happy father's day fellows, I never knew even when I thought I knew what I was getting into.

Chicken, pasta, salad and green beans. Kids are taking care of coach. Hunter is over to visit. Makayla and JP are married already (on facebook). Cookies are in the oven and girls are getting their wax on to the sound of water blowing bye. Ah snowboard season.