Maybe Twitter never blew your hair back but these days even in the snowboard scene the nifty short message service has become kind of relevant. The other day we posted a list of 11 Snowboarders You Should Follow on Twitter. Of course there are some more out there, but unfortunately many of them update their Twitter account through Facebook. While technically these are still active Twitter accounts, chances of getting a response or a retweet from these guys are probably as good as seeing another tweet from Peetu Piiroinen.

However, now that you’re down with some of the top shred heads it is about time you get acquainted with some of the more interesting snowboard industry folks on Twitter:

Todd Richards

If we could only follow two people on Twitter, we would follow Todd Richards twice.

Trevor ‘Trouble’ Andrew

This man used to be a snowboarder, then he was a musician, and now he’s both.

Jon Weaver

He is like a European version of Todd Richards, but he knows more about football.

BurritosAndSnow & Agnarchy

We’re not sure these two guys have a life outside the internet, but as long as they’re that dedicated about snowboarding, we don’t really care.

The Angry Snowboarder

The snowboard industry can rub you the wrong way in a lot of respects. The Angry Snowboarder knows them all.

Brooke Geery

Brooke Geery is the founder of yobeat.com (@yobeatdotcom), a former contributor to our mag, and a very funny person.

Liam Griffin

A big shot at Burton Snowboards (@burtonsnowboard) and the man behind all Open Series events.

Matt Barr

A contributing writer for our magazine and pretty much every other snowboard publication out there.

Rian Rhoe

The Salomon & Bonfire marketing girl, in her own words a ‘snowboard dork.’

Keir Dillon

Former pro rider, current Frends member, and the epitome of that snowboard industry guy.

Update 29/07/11: For some reason we spaced out including the infamous RUMORATOR, who, among many other things, likes to play ping-pong with Jussi Oksanen:

This is a faked shot of Basti Rittig checking Facebook. He was actually checking the weather... before he checked his Facebook. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi.

Jon Weaver returns with more musings from his experience of contemporary pro snowboarding. This week it’s a very 21st century addiction that’s in his Oakley-clad headlamps…

An addiction. It can take your time, your money, your friends, and all without you noticing as you crave even more for the sweet taste of the forbidden fruit. Through our lives many of us will have run into someone who we think is taking things a little too far – maybe someone on a season who was drinking that wine with breakfast which struck you as a little “too” early to start things, although Chalets and Hotels are notorious for their all day drinking sessions on a changeovear day.

It could be that friend who smoked the herb a little too much at Uni, and didn’t make it to lectures. Or, for that matter, didn’t make it up before the sun went down that day, or even the smoker who just chain smoked a little too much for it to be healthy. I always remember a guy in Tignes who when hiking backcountry would chainsmoke, leading him to the name of the Sherpa. It could even be the editorial office for whom October becomes not only the start of the glaciers but more importantly the most cherished of all drinking seasons.

It can happen easily and without us realizing and quite often it can take a good friend to slap some sense into you, or what the Americans slightly over zealously call an ‘Intervention’, before we realize the error of our ways. Normally when there is just one person with a problem then it is easily spotted. A few people and getting that group to stop is tough. Imagine thousands, even millions of people, all addicted to the same thing. Hard to stop, right…?

So what am I talking about here? Our passion and addiction for snow? No this isn’t the Daily Mail Ski and Snowboard magazine. Grow up, we already read that crap 100 times before, and even though Snowboard magazine editors [some, not all, Jonathan! - Ed] use it every Autumn for their opening paragraphs, if your reading this your already in way past that.

I am talking about…  Wait for it…  Breath deep…  Facebook. Yes, that’s right. You probably have it open in a window behind this one right? Your probably chatting to someone about what bad editorial this is as you read it.

It’s crazy though. Facebook has quickly transformed so many facets of life, from the way we communicate, to the way we flirt, stay in touch, and watch perversely at friends – or even better, enemies. Now for all 30 somethings, we have had to learn about technology and even email (we didn’t have emails before we were 20 kids, think about that) and so Facebook has been just another thing we caught onto late, if at all.

This is an example of what evils await on Facebook. Bad photos of intoxicated mag editors and riders.

On the road with a quiver of Pro Snowboarders back in the day if they checked in for an event and there wasn’t a bar, there would have been hell breaking loose. Ah. I remember watching fondly from a distance, The alcohol problems, serial womanisers, out late, causing havoc everywhere they went, I remember the late 90s pro snowboarders as real superstars, and all the baggage and rumours that came with it.

Now fast forward to 2011. If the Pro Snowboarder is to check into a hotel and there isn’t wireless, then seriously all hell is breaking loose and London Bridge is falling down. The first thing they need to do is update their status about where they are, how bad the journey was unless they got a free upgrade, and then set about trying to undress anyone within a keyboard’s contact.

It’s not just the quick update at checkin. The week descends into a constant barrage of “Yep, I just need 5 more minutes” as you look down and see them chatting away to some young lady they just met online. I mean to that generation it’s perfectly normal. Did you know that many online specialists agree that in just 5 years we wont have emails anymore, and people will just use Facebook. If you look to the younger generation now 70% of those around 16 years old don’t have email addresses already and instead rely on facebook mail.

Now I am not trying to shout down with Facebook from the rooftops – I use it as much as the next man – but I do wonder what western society would be like without it today. Think in your own personal terms. What’s the first site you go on, after onboardmag.com and the-goodlife.co.uk of course? Most probably it’s Facebook. How many hours would you say you spend on it a day? At least one I’d imagine. So just think collectively what could be achieved if an entire nation cut down there intake of this sweetly blue-themed toxic addictition? What did people do during seasons back in the day before the internet? Send letters, call each other and actually go out and meet girls in bars, and whilst maybe you had fewer friends back then, maybe you had more actual friends.

Anyways enough ranting from an over 30 year old who has to battle against Facebook for team riders’ attention on a daily basis, you’re probably bored of reading already and that chat you have open in the other window looks much more alluring, and there is more chance of getting her to write something sleazy to you than me. I am going to write a blog, and yep, post it on Facebook, to see how many of my friends will actually interrupt an online flirting session to read a blog. Heaven forbid what would happen if you tried to get someone to read a print article.

Former chalet girl Jenny Jones takes her first of 3 Winter X Slopestyle golds. No biggie.

In his latest contribution to his swelling sack of Gossip from the GoodLife articles, Jon Weaver trains his keen eye on the phenomenon known to people not fortunate to be born at the foot of a mountain as ‘doing a season’, and recounts the tale of one seasonaire who went on to make waves in the scene.

“What you doing this winter?”

“Doing a season, innit!”

That expression, despite taking its cues from some pretty average British TV, is something which means a lot to many of us, especially those of us from the UK and our flatland bredren in Holland and Belgium.

In what is a yearly ritual many thousands of eager snowboarders pack up a car (which should preferably be older than some of the people in it), fill it to the brim with their crew, and head for the hills. It’s a ritual many of us know well and have various stories from it, one of my best being when driving in a Ford Fiesta 5 men (Josh Wolf, Nelson Pratt, Tom West and Mark Ruperelia) deep with BOB (boards onboard on the roof) only for the car to break down on the French highways on a stretch without hard shoulder, just as Josh was about to drop in on a good bottle of red. You can imagine the French repair man who came out to see our wagon, complete with Wolfy merrily swigging red wine, thinking his day couldn’t get much worse. It’s the precursor to one of the best times of your life – a season.

It’s a story that all snowboarders know well. Now when I was 18, I wasn’t in any snowboard school, wasn’t already on a fast track by a brand, and was pretty much still learning to snowboard so doing a season with like-minded people was amazing. Off we headed to Val d’Isere to work way too many hours and snowboard every spare minute, drink a fair bit, and sleep as and when it allowed. It was amazing, and sometimes seemed that the people “doing a season” have been consigned to people just drinking and not reall getting anywhere snowboardingwise. Now on the second season in Val d’Isere we would spend many a day building jumps and trying to huck something off them for the rest of the afternoon. On one such afternoon, when I was actually stuck in the kitchen, word came through from a couple of the other kitchen staff of a very good-looking English girl doing a season over in Tignes who was doing backflips left right and center. They were A) Impressed, B) In love, and C) Jealous beacause none of them could really land any of their tricks at the time.

No, this is not Jenny Jones, this is the author back in his seasoning days. Pulling a punter frontflip. To flat.

Throughout the season this girl continued to turn heads with her amazing riding, and information filtered over to in Val d’Isere about her. It turned out she was working in a chalet over there – she was one of us! Remember, this was before Facebook, and pretty much in the early days of email, so information didn’t spread as quickly as today.

Fast forward a couple of months, and she cleans up at the Brits and very quickly we find out this girl’s name is Jenny Jones. That’s right: the Jenny Jones. Her of X Games fame. She didn’t go to snowboard school, she didn’t get special coaching, she wasn’t on some fasttrack by any brands, she was, well, doing a season. That’s sometimes all you need as a snowboarder: not a coach, not some airbag, you just need time on your snowboard.

Jenny went on from there to then win a few more events and become a pretty big deal in the UK, with deals on Salomon and Oakley supporting her from the outset. After a couple of injury setbacks along the way, including one dryslope injury (yes, we hear you scream, why did she try dryslope?) Jenny really started writing her own history a couple of years ago with her first slopestyle gold medal at the X Games. People still say that they are surprised to hear of a snowboarder from the UK living the dream… damn, Jenny is making the dream her own. So a year later, Jenny goes back, and again walks away with a second gold medal in one of the most emotional finals ever. Good work EXPN.

Then with all the hype around an X Games moving to Europe, it was with baited breath that the industry traipsed over to Tignes, France, to check out our very small accommodation, and the ‘interesting’ slopestyle course. They always say, though, “the course is the same for every rider so get amongst it”, and that’s exactly what Jenny did. It was a challenging course but she made it her own, and wrote history by becoming a threepeat X Games Gold medalist. An amazing achievement, which she made even more special by dedicating her victory to the gathered thousands of British Chalet girls on the hill that day. She was effectively saying to them: “Look, if I have done it, why cant you?”  And she is so right. Jenny has become one of the most successful female athletes of our sport, and I know everyone from the British scene is so proud of her for flying the flag for us.

Here's Jenny with one of her 3 X Games golds, and a drunk-yet-impressed member of Onboard's editorial team.

The only sour note of the whole thing was that the day after the X Games I was watching Sky News, waiting for the news report of Jenny’s success… and it didn’t appear. There must have been a problem with the report, or there must have been a delay, so I waited. And nothing. Just more football. I tried BBC, and the same. Checked all the newspapers, and the same. Now I love football as much as the next man, especially when Swansea City are running the Championship as they are right now, but this, well, it was a a joke. We have the most successful female snowboarder in X Games history coming from the UK, and it didn’t make TV or the papers? Our media needs shooting. In Europe sometimes our media is so backwards, and they wonder why kids only want to play football – it’s so damn impossible to get anything else any screen time. Either that or the PR agency for X Games and Jenny need a good prodding.

So what’s the moral of the story? Well, I’m  just saying that winter is here, we are mid-way through a recession, and jobs are hard to find. So if you’re stuck for what to do and can’t find work at home, just sack it off and head for the hills. You will make friends, snowboard a bunch, and have the best time of your life. You might even becomes the next Jenny Jones. It just takes time, and belief in yourself.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he identifies what it takes to be one of the best in your sport or chosen fieled, and he found that you need on average 10,000 hours at whatever it is to be prolific. Well, I just think Jenny has probably done 10,001 hours, as she is in a league of her own.

Coincidentally, our German ed was on the same trip Weaver mentions in his post. Does this look like the rock'n'roll life? Kevin Backström, Jamie Nicholls and Gjermund Braaten in Halifax.

A New Generation – A New Way of Thinking

Following on from my last column about snowboard schools, I spent the next couple of weeks on the road along with riders who have been through the school’s process, and are now living the life they have been waiting for. Travelling the world, winning big contests, and enjoying everything that goes with it.

However, this generation seems a little different…

Now, back in my days as a very average snowboarder, preseason to me would mean working hard, saving money, and maybe going to the gym once in a while. Even to pros in the upper echelons, only a few years ago, early season would mean a good few nights out on a movie tour, and a good few late mornings trying to shake off the alcohol or ladies from the night before. Whichever was nastiest.

On our tour through the UK last week, visiting Halifax dryslope with the British wonderkid Jamie Nicholls, whenever we got some downtime, the riders were stretching, going to the gym, squeezing a quick run in (admittedly to the Apple store), but throughout they were all very conscious of the toll that travelling can take on your body.

Jamie's house he said? Here you go. 100% ghetto, innit?

When you think about snowboarding, every year the standard gets higher and the level just to get noticed gets notched up a bit. Jamie Nicholls is now getting recognition around Europe for his consistent riding and amazing attitude, but if he’d had those tricks on lock just two years ago, he would have been heralded as the new King of the Free World. It all means that now the bar has been raised so high, you’re having to put your body through the mill day in day out and then to make it even harder you have to travel the world to actually show everyone what you’ve got.

I imagine you all know one local guy at your resort, or your local park, who rips and everyone says, “That guy should be pro, he’s amazing!” Just before you join in the chorus, ask yourself would he ride that well if he travelled 200 days a year, and rode a different park every day all season? Probably not.

So how can riders now put up with this constant abuse their bodies receive? By being a lot more professional about everything is the short answer. The days of riding hungover or drunk, as many of us will have tried at least once, are behind us. Today many riders have gym routines, plans for how to get over sitting in aeroplanes, how to get ready for events and how to recover faster after riding. Many riders also have physios and coaches behind the scene as well. You might never see them at an event – in fact, that’s the point: Keep up the image of being the rock star who rolls in and wins the event, but more and more riders are looking after that stuff, too.

When you look at our friends from the surf world, its not uncommon for them to have physios, chefs, and everything else they might need when on certain trips or at contests on-hand, and in that respect it seems the surf world is perhaps a couple of years ahead of us. Maybe it’s because we don’t see the dark side of surfing and also that the physical build of a surfer is more impressive to the naked eye, but when you see some of them they do look like they could leap mountains in a single bound. We aren’t there yet, but we are mighty close.

Gjermund Braaten's idea of pre-season antics.

Whilst some might scream that having these kind of outside forces involved in our sport takes away from how we all see snowboarding in a perfect world, if we want to continue to see the sport evolve, and provide us with new superstars and tricks every season, then their off snow exploits have to make sure they are 100% ready to drop the hammer when the time comes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that snowboarding remains one of the sports on the edge of the term ‘sport’ and laugh every time I see the things which make snowboarding true to its roots. I have found riders in fields asleep, I had riders missing planes, disappearing into dodgy parts of Spanish cities, with equally as dodgy looking women, and just generally overdoing it more often than not. That is still commonplace.

In fact only this weekend, I had a rider miss a plane, but he did a great job of using planes, trains and automobiles to get to where he had to go, which is where the rider back in the day might have said: “You know what, fix me a new ticket.” I just get the feeling the new generation is slightly different. A little more grown up, a little earlier, and ready to work for it.

Check back in two weeks time for more of Jon’s thoughts on snowboarding. In the meantime, check out his blog www.the-goodlife.co.uk!

On British Snowboarding

“Yeah, Gary has a good part in Isenseven, got some good tricks, and couple of bangers, and then Pleasure ran a bunch of him this month, Tyler’s in Pirates is cool too, with a pretty funny nollie backflip attempt, did you see his interviews last year? and yeah have a look at this of Jamie Nicholls we filmed in Norway, cab 10s, back 10s, he had a pretty good year especially getting top 10 at NZ open, he just mailed me to say he has a checkout in snowboarder mag US.”

So these words came out of my mouth, and I thought “how blase can I sound?” I mean here we are, with British riders, part of the furniture in many of the world’s best print and video titles. A few years back, having a British rider in anything European let alone world wide was amazing. We had my own personal hero Danny Wheeler to look to for a long time, but no one really made a big push, until James Thorne came out and filmed with Yeahh, and took on Europe, but then had some bad injuries along the way. Apart from that though it was always fairly thin on the ground. Then all of a sudden, much like buses we have a whole grip of guys just on fire. Take Ben Kilner for example, making the Olympics, in an amazing field Ben stood to toe with everyone, and without doubt will continue this season where he left off last year.

Tyler Chorlton is a live wire. Photo: Matt Georges

Tyler Chorlton has been putting down amazing video parts with the Pirates – one of Europe’s premier crews for the last few years, and getting more coverage than many top level pros, with interviews and pictures across Europe, English mags, French, Spanish and all the Germanic ones, too. Tyler has been taking it onwards, and seeing snowboarding in his own personal way. He also managed to pretty much nail frontflip shiftys as a signature trick. That’s one of the signs of a great rider, if they can just find their route and follow it, which you see Tyler doing on a daily basis.

Tyler with a Switch Back 5 in Meribel. Photo: Matt Georges

Then Mr Gary Greenshields. After a couple of years with the Yeahh crew, Gary was ready for a new challenge, so after last year’s amazing interview with Whitelines it was time for Isenseven. So now we have two of Europe’s big movies taken care of. And Gary straight away got in amongst it, filming, picking up riders, organising, killing it and just becoming one of the regulars. They have even given him a lockdown style intro to make him feel at home. The thing with Gary is you feel that he is only just getting started, too. His riding is progressing so much each year, and you really feel that when he gets into some proper pow he can unleash yet more.

Even the filmers. Tom Elliot, who came from his bread and butter roots, through some Hungerpain, into some Tearoom, and then finally onto the big stage with Isenseven, has his name on the box. Who knew three years back that he would be one of the main reasons 3000 german kids would come out, drink all night, fall in love with snowboarding all over again, and have a whole new crop of heroes. Yes the kids love Isenseven. Me too.

Jamie Nicholls double-grabbing on a back 7. Photo: Danny Burrows

Of course that’s all not forgetting Jamie Nicholls. He of the Bendek movie “In Short” a couple of years back. It’s amazing, most people don’t even realise it’s the same kid, they just see someone who has come along, and within a year gone from UK based shredder, to European and global threat at any event. He went through qualies at BEO, to finals, same in NZ, and I would bet my house on it, that he will be podium at a big event this year. You see him ride and you can see why. If you have never entered an Open, you can’t begin to imagine how hard even qualifying through to semis is. 140 guys to 40, then the best 10 go through. That is one of the hardest things to do, and to do it time and again takes a great deal of composure.

I dont think I have ever seen a British guy that consistent, damn there’s not that many guys full stop as consistent as he is right now. Watch his edits from dryslope. Yes. He still rides dryslope, whilst you were in Bali, and he loves it still.

Jamie was on a couple of end of season shoots this season and really stood amongst the world’s best, and showed what he is made of. Wait for the D pad video to see what I mean.

Enough of all this British love in stuff. These guys are flying the flag round the world, and the preconceived image of a dryslope is gone, it’s just guys who can stand up and be counted wherever they are from. and it’s my pleasure to get to try and kick out a method with them all once in a while. Winter’s nearly back. The UK kids have been riding it all year though, and have probably already learnt half what most of the pros already have in their video parts. Get after it!

Jon will return in (roughly) two weeks time with more thoughts on European riding. In the meantime head over to his blog under www.the-goodlife.co.uk!