Austin S. Lin Snowboarding

{ SKETCH FROM THE LODGE SNACK BAR AFTER CLOSING TIME AND THE TOURISTS HAVE GONE HOME }

excerpt from an old snowboard mag on the snowboarding lifestyle...

Holidays Away from Home

Right around the time when your average person is boarding a plane home with a wicked holiday party hangover, that's when resort towns are blowin' up. No time for going home--it's dumping, and work is hectic with the influx of vacationers. Besides, you have a new family now--it's called snowboarding...
When all the bank tellers and computer programmers [and chemical engineers] are tightening up their ties for the day, you're crunching across the cold morning snow to hop on an early chair. You have to work later delivering pizzas, but whatever. It pays the rent, and you can ride. Let's face it, The Man will probably catch up to you sooner or later--but for now, you're free.

{ THERE IS NO FORMULA OR ROADMAP }

A few inspiring words from Josh Dirksen in the January 2012 issue of Snowboard Magazine:

"...luckily for snowboarding, it's not what you do, but how you do it." Dirksen calls out the "simple aspects" of snowboarding that are "difficult to overlook and impossible not to appreciate", key characteristics that maintain what he refers to as the balance of snowboarding:

powerful turns
unexpected tweaks
creative lines
spontaneous buttering
gaining speed when one should be slowing down

He closes his words of wisdom with this thought:

"There is no formula or road map that needs to be followed therefore no one is excluded from the possibility of being the best. Everyone has the same chance at inspiring the masses, no matter how young or how wise or how dumb, energetic or mellow, handicap or fully capable, naturally talented or hopelessly clumsy. When the rules are simply to inspire, then the possibilities are endless."

{ SNOW IN THE SUMMERTIME }

Despite being within an easy weekend road trip away from some of the best snowboarding on the East Coast (And not taking advantage of it nearly enough), when winter vanishes, it's good to know that just a frequent flier trip away is a year round training park like Woodward, at Colorado's Copper Mountain, or Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge in Oregon, waiting to treat aspiring pow chasers like myself. I'm nowhere the shredder extraordinaire that compose the majority of the snow seekers around me, but I'm good at practicing.

{ FIRST CHAIR }

The benefits of being a professional snowboarder are obvious: fame and fortune, a travel budget, and a team manager to book your travel, enter you into contests, line you up with photo/video crews, wake uou up in the mornings, arrange your feedings, and so on. Easy street. But reaching that level of pro isn't easy...pro shred status requires serious skill and dedication...You make new friends, you travel to new places, you feel the pure joy of winning (or learn to cope with the suckfest of losing), and best of all, you have adventures.We guarantee you, those winters spent chasing the dream living five deep in a two bedroom apartment, competing in local contests, taking runs doing follow cams through the park, and getting more days on the hill than there are days in a winter will be the best memories of your life. All those friends you make will be friends for life. And whether you "make it" or not, snowboarding won't just be what you do, it'll be who you are forever--the kids piled into sketchy sedans fishtailing it to the mountain, the ones scrounging for contest entry fees, and the ones working the late shift and still making first chair. - Annie Fast, Editor-in-Chief, Transworld Snowboarding

While I have no personal aspirations (or physical capability for that matter) for pro snowboarding, I feel the best way of pushing one's self towards new levels of skill and evolving capability is still the contest setting. Contests seem to get heaps of pros and cons on both sides of the fence, but in contests, practice is over, training is over, you have to perform at your peak and by winning or losing, know where the gaps exist in your skillset and then pursue with all your heart (and bone, aching muscle, bruised joints...)to become the physically best you can become in the sport. By competing against others, you understand where you stand relative to your abilities.

In the April 2011 issue of Transworld Snowboarding, writer Joel Muzzey spans the process of "going pro" as a destination for some and for others, a process of self-betterment. The journey is the processes one works through in order to even begin to approach a level of skill; it's working to develop professional skills whether or not you actually "go pro" or not. It still comes down to the slope-hours logged in order to attain a specific level of skill. The hard work that remains is up to Y-O-U, baby. As Muzzey states it, "Few jobs seem as awesome as professional snowboarding. But the hard part is getting there. Because the level of riding processes every year, it become more and more difficult to reach that level, to break out and make it. The state of things is heavy."

Heavy indeed. The definition of excelling in the sport is a moving target--jumps are getting bigger and corkier; new kids appear in the park and further present the illusion that the physical laws of gravity are becoming less and less relevant. Muzzey summarizes a few characteristics on that aspiration to become not just a better version of your self, but the best version.

Balancing Talent and Physical Ability with Good Old, Puritanical Hard Work - Or as Jake Blauvelt says, "Natural ability will only take you so far is you don't have the work ethic; and you can work your ass off, but if you body just can't do it, you're in a bit of a predicament as well. When these traits mesh together in one rider, that's when they really shine."

Committed to the Snow - Icon Jeremy Jones posited the importance of doing what you do seriously and with dedication, "If I'm not doing everything in my power to get better, then I'm taking up space in the sport and it's time to step aside and make room for th enext guy. So I've never felt like I've made it...People forget quickly what you did last season...the hard work is what is done off the hill, in the off season. Snowboarding hard all day, every day is the fun part...If you don't love it, you will not make it."

Style and Form No one said personal style isn't as significant a part of any rider's personal brand as the logos of one's sponsors. Making hard work seem effortless, getting judged on overall style and execution with perhaps figure skating elegance as an indicator of the precision at which one kills sick tricks up and down a pipe. Again, Jake Blauvelt, "..style doesn't necessarily mean you have to have quiet arms and a hunched back. As long as you're having a blast, style will follow naturally." Muzzey finishes, "It's up to you to put your signature style on everything..." So I suppose--much like a painter, musician, tennis pro, golfer. The personal brand equity developed is king.

Compete, Compete, Compete - "Love 'em or hate 'em, " Muzzey writes, "contests are one of the only avenues into the big time. All our experts agreed on that." Jed Anderson adds that competitions allow you to know where you measure up to the rest of the best, "Riding with people a lot better than you makes you want to push harder."

{ 2010 MARCH 26-27 ACADEMY SNOWBOARDS CAMP - Boreal Resort; Tahoe }

Beginner's Group Award for Best Fall

An award for infamy? If there is infamy to be won, of the non gnarly kind, then I'm the man to win it. If you thought you couldn't start worse than zero, then this is the award for you. As a result, I scored a nice Pro-Tec Snowboard helmet out of this ("The winner of the best fall should win a helmet" was part of the judges' rationale")

Can't wait to personally test the impact rating of this fine, new skull protector