2009 Aussie Winter #1

Great place to sit and enjoy the sunset with your manfriend

It's been 2 months and 25 days since the last time I posted a load of crap on here for you all. You'd thank me if you knew the kind of shit I considered writing during that interval.

Anyway, winter's doing it's thing on and off, and I took myself off to Mt Buller on Monday after a late night phone call from Mr Williams absolutely fizzing his pants about how good it was up there. Right after that call it stopped snowing, warmed up and pissed rain. Sick.

It's a very different drive after the fire.

Hopefully in a few months Stu can tear the ass out of this.

Tuesday greeted me with brilliant weather, perfect bluebird and not a breath of wind. I was pretty stoked with this as Steve from Ballistyx had just sorted me out with a Lib Tech Skate Banana and Mt Buller was looking after my lift passes for the 2 days. I hadn't been up there for a while, so I needed to do a bit of scouting around to reacquaint myself with the mountain and do some spot checking. So what if I had to do so on the funnest board in the world. Well, it turned out that all that rain had turned the whole hill bulletproof, and the weak winter sun wasn't doing much to help out. Stu Macqueen and I searched high and low for something to stoke the camera out, but to no avail, so we ate hotdogs. We figured that maybe the sun would ramp it up a little in the afternoon. Not the case, but Stu got to end the day with some backflips and spins over a hip that was getting sessioned.

Stu Macqueen finishing off a less-than-eventful day with some crowd-pleasers.

On Wednesday I hooked up with the TSC crew, and I don't think I've ever hung out with a group of kids so stoked to be strapped into snowboards. We got a little session going under the direction of coach Luke Skywalker and there was style thrown around in buckets as the kids went after it like they have a photo shoot every other day. There is some definite talent among that group, keep your eyes open for more of their work. The afternoon went how an afternoon spent with Tom Pelley does: getting shit done. If you want a set-up built to work, Tom's your man, and Nick Woods and Chris deCampo were along to learn a thing or two. It was a productive afternoon that we milked 'til the last light.

Mikey Williams can poke for days, front 3.

Chris deCampo not the TRZA front 7 tail.

It's cool to be shooting good shots here in Australia, and I'm hoping to do a lot more before the last snow melts. It would be nice to see a solid collection of local shots in next year's mags, rather than rely on crews' overseas shots for the majority of content.


What's Tom up to over there? You know it's going to be good though right?!