Link O’ Roma

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The bunny slope at Angelfire MountainI’ve collected a handful of links to general snowboarding Web sites. These are mostly portal/community/zine style sites. I bring them to you in no particular order, enjoy!

http://www.snowboard.com/ :
This is the largest/most active snowboarding community site I’ve found. I have to give the site credit for providing great community features such as an active forum, email accounts, member photo galleries, and other goodies. The site also has tons of content including resort specific information, tips on tricks, art and humor. On the flip side, the site does bog down with a lot of ads including pop-ups. You can get a paid membership to remove the pop-ups, or you can just download mozilla/firebird and use the build-in pop-up blocker. My only other complaint about the site is the community itself. After spending a little time on the message board, I didn’t feel like there was much to be gained from hanging around.

http://snowboarding.com/ :
This site is designed in a template style, the other sites fitting this template can be found at boarding.com and include surfing, wake boarding, and skateboarding. The site does offer a forum with a mildly active community, but that’s not the focus of this site. Here you’ll find place to buy gear and movies, information on upcoming events, and well written articles and how-to’s.

http://snowboard.mountainzone.com/ :
In addition to snowboarding, MoutnainZone.com covers mt. biking, hiking, climbing, and more. The snowboarding section keeps tabs on the latest happenings in the sport and keeps track of some of the best riders around the world. They also have a lot of Xterra ads… which I totally accept because I drive an Xterra and love it!

http://www.transworldsnowboarding.com/ :
(aka twsnow.com) I only recently found this site. I should have explored this site a little more before I offered it up, but it seems like a nice comprehensive site. One note, the initial load time on dial-up sucks! (Hence why I haven’t explored it more, I can’t wait to get back on broadband.) Anyway, the site offers content for both the industry (biz side) and the sport (fun side). Community features include both chat and message boards as well as as a classifieds section.

http://www.snowboarding2.com/ :
My first reaction was “what? 2? dude, can’t you come up with a better URL?” Raising the 2 up to superscript in the logo as if it’s “squared” seemed to ease the mental trauma it initially caused me. Anyway, about the site, it fits the classic community model much like the phpNuke scene. The site has a company directory, snow cams, videos, chat, forum, etc. The forum seems to stay active and the site looks to stay well updated.

And now, a proper introduction.

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Angelfire New Mexico This is, perhaps, to be the most personal entry for this Web site… as it’s all about me. I’ll start with some quick stats. I’m an average looking 27 year old guy. I have an average build at 5’10” and 165lbs. My work revolves around computers and many of my jobs have been in the gaming industry.That aside, let me tell you about my snowboarding history, not to be confused with THE history of snowboarding: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7So lets go back, way back, to the mid-to-late 1990’s. At that time, I considered snow sports to be something that “other” people did. Not that I wasn’t interested, just that I never seriously considered trying them. That was, until my girlfriend’s father organized a ski trip to New Mexico. I found that I liked snow skiing, and continued to go on many trips with her family, even after the two of us stopped dating each other.

We went skiing almost every year, and I’d worked my way up to skiing black diamond slopes. On our 2001 trip, my brother bought a Kemper snowboard, boots and bindings. It turned out that he didn’t like snowboarding, and lucky for me we wear the same sized shoe. I spent a full day on the bunny slopes learning to ride a snowboard the hard way – without instructions. Lesson #1: Don’t start off going straight down the mountain. Lesson #2: Put your weight DOWNHILL. Lesson #3: BUY wrist guards!

My most spectacular crash flung me forward into a handspring that landed me square on my back. This drew the attention of many pre-teen boarders who quickly became my mentors. I’ll never forget their first words, “hey man, are you alright?” That night I found myself soaking in the hot tub washing down vicodin with beer. Still, I ended up buying that snowboard off of my brother and have ridden it ever since. And while I’ve continue to hit the slopes every year, I haven’t worn ski’s since that 2001 trip.

I’ve tried many of the sports that fit into this genre now popularized by the X Games: bmx & mountain bike, skateboarding & roller blading, water sports (ski/wake/knee), etc. But snowboarding has, by far, been my favorite. While snowboarding has a rather difficult initial learning curve (unlike skiing), it has a rather steady flow of achievement beyond the curve. Once you learn how to carve the snow, many doors suddenly open. It’s a great feeling of exploration.

There are many amazing riders out there, and every time I go I see more and more sick tricks. I don’t have the skills to ever be a sponsored boarder. Due to cost and geography, I only get to ride, at most, a few times a year. Still, every trip is marked with a new achievement which keeps me thinking about the next trip all year long. This season brought me my first 180, and it was good. Maybe this Web site will keep me occupied until the next trip.

That’s my story. As I’m currently in the market for my next snowboard, I’ll soon post the results of some of my recent research.

It’s snowing, and I’m at work.

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Tyrol Ski and Snowboard Area in WisconsinI’m in Wisconsin, tomorrow is $10 Tuesdays at Tyrol Basin, and there’s fresh snow falling right now… But I’m at the office right now and I have to be at work tomorrow. Gee, look at all that fresh snow… that I’m not going to ride in.This is the first entry for my new Web site dedicated to a sport I’m slowly falling in love with, snowboarding. This site will evolve as time passes. It will begin as a cross between a news page and a personal journal. I will be posting snowboarding related information as I find and learn it. I will also be tossing in a lot of personal stories and perspectives. Much of this information will likely be flawed, or better yet, useless. However, after I begin to reach a critical mass of good content, I will begin breaking that content down into appropriate sections for the site.

But this site isn’t for you so much as it is for me. I am new to snowboarding, but I’m not new to Web work. This site is my chance to record and grow my knowledge of snowboarding in a medium I’m very familiar with. Additionally, I’m using the development of this new site as an opportunity to explore and improve on some techniques that I have neglected in the past few years, such as XHTML and CSS2.

In an effort to keep my posts short and frequent, I will wait until later to follow up with a little more information about me, my snowboarding history, and some of the things I’ve learned up until now.

Edit on 10/29/09: I’ve merged my “iRide” snowboarding blog into my main blog on zaskoda.com