Extracto Coffee.  Yum, so good for the drive up from Portland

Walking through the Timberline Day Lodge on our way to hit the Palmer Snowfield

Some snowboards and feet in line for the Palmer Chairlift

Sean Genovese and Jeff Keenan taking care of business in Government Camp

Leanne Pelosi with some post-shred tweeting.  Bev can’t wait to get those end of summer shred season boots off.

This is Pier Park in Portland, Oregon

Shadows on 1/4 of the full pipe

Spectators and camera people

Trash

Product toss gone bad

I’ve been skating a lot to keep myself busy before the summer shred season begins at Mt. Hood.  This weekend I went on a skate trip to the Southern Oregon Coast.  A group of us skated Reedsport, Port Orford, Shoey’s Backyard Bowl and the highly anticipated Mingus Skatepark.  Yes, another Northwest masterpiece is finished and opened, this time the location is Coos Bay, Oregon.  In classic Northwest style it’s made of concrete, pretty large and super fast.  The main bowl has a 6-ish foot shallow end, 9-ish foot deep end and a cradle that is positioned perfectly for both regular and goofy foot skaters to have good speed line options to get into it.  There is also a pretty gnarly clover bowl with an 8 foot deep end and 4 foot shallow end that is almost all vert.  The majority of the park with the exception of a couple hand poured areas, has the best pool coping ever made by Phil Tetters.  Shoey and Liquid Stone Designs headed up the project.  They totally killed it, I approve. 

Coos Bay: The monster cradle makes the deep end look tiny.

Coos Bay: The clover bowl.  

Kelly Clark and I at the Burton European Open.  I’m a total fan.

Things that come to mind when I think of Kelly Clark are, snowboarding, Olympic Gold Medal, big smooth technical halfpipe runs, Vermont and on-fire in so many ways.  Hopefully the true or false questions answer a few of the other questions that you may not know about Kelly Clark.

Here goes, Kelly, True or False?

Kelly’s full legal name is Kelly Clark- False, Kelly Lauren Clark is my full name.

Kelly is sometimes confused with Kelly Clarkson- True

Kelly drinks coffee each morning at the Side Door in Mammoth-True

Kelly is sponsored by Black Velvet coffee, False, I wish maybe I can talk them into it.

Kelly won the 2009 TTR World Snowboard Tour-True

Kelly won every Grand Prix halfpipe during the 08/09 season False- 2 firsts and 2nd, but i won the series

Kelly has landed a 1080 in the halfpipe- False, hopefully soon.

Kelly started an organization to help aid families who can’t afford to send their kids to snowboard schools called the Kelly Clark Foundation. - True

Kelly is originally from the east coast-True

Kelly knows how to ski- True, but it has been a long time

Kelly Blasting at the Breckenridge Dew Action Sports Tour

Kelly loves riding icy halfpipes- True

Kelly listens to music when she snowboards-True

Kelly likes to blast heavy metal music in her Chevy Silverado.- False, not my style, but i do have a Chevy Silverado

Kelly loves Jesus-True

Kelly has 1K status on United- False, I came up 7000 short last year

This week only, May 16-25th the photos will be hanging at The Artery @ The Lab in Costa Mesa.  I still have three photos in the show so get her butt down there and buy stuff.

I had the pleasure of spending a couple weeks with Jamie this winter.  Some words I’d use to describe one of the youngest, most successful women in snowboarding today.  Fun, adventurous, living in the now, positive, values friendship, loyal, productive.  Jamie spent some time out of her busy schedule to answer some of my silly questions.  

Jamie chilling on the hill in her backyard near South Lake Tahoe.

Yo Jamie, True or False?

Jamie is 18 years old.  True…..I’m getting up there!

Jamie is an only child. haha good one, definitely false…I have 5 sisters and 2 brothers.

Jamie started snowboarding at age 13.  False…I was like 9-ish, my 2 older sisters got me into it.

Jamie lives in South Lake Tahoe.  True and False. I live in Meyers.

Jamie has a sweet hill in her backyard that she likes to hike around during the summer and snowboard on during the winter.   True….like right behind my house!  It’s great!

Jamie isn’t afraid to hit big jumps.  False…I’m definitely scared, I just….don’t really know, I’ll talk to the homies that are hitting them, and they always help a girl out. You just kinda have to send it.

Jamie broke her hip in the European Open halfpipe competition this year.  True…Well, fractured my pelvis.  It suckeddddddd!  I missed out on X-Games and a few other big events. 

Sweet Style at the Burton European Open

Jamie ruptured her spleen at the US Open this year.  Trueeeeee.  Damn, bad memories! I was really blessed to have gone so long in my little snowboard career without ever getting seriously hurt, and you know…..things just happen, what can you do?  I just know that things could always be worse.

Jamie still won the Burton Global Open Series.  Trueeeeee!  That was kinda ridiculous!

Slopestyle wizard at the first ever Wintertime Dew Action Sports Tour in Breckenridge, CO

Jamie is spending the month of May on the island of Kauai. True….life is good! thank you god! 

Jamie went skydiving for the first time the other day. Trueeeee again, it was amazing! I went with one of my best friends, Chanelle, and we had an awesome crew….good times! I would only do it in Hawaii though, the views are out of control! 

Jamie once had her ichat address reviled in a TW online interview and had kids hitting her up like crazy…Trueeee, gosh who the hell did that to me?!

Jamie currently has 459 photos posted on her facebook page…I honestly don’t know..could be True. haha

Jamie has partied at the Playboy mansion. False….I mean True!  Gosh, I don’t even know whats going on at this point! That was a super fun night though! But seriously, what the hell is going on here? Is everything in my life for real?

Jamie has met Robert Pattinson. False…who is that?

I drove a lot this winter.  This was a more memorable sunrise.  

Under that mitten Janna is flipping me off.  How rude.

This is what I do when I’m waiting for the kids hitting the jump to hike their butts back up the trail.  I take stupid photos of my shadow. At least there was a sun to make a shadow, that was rare in my world this season.

Oh artsy, another shadow.  How do I do it?  Hiking back to the truck after a sweet day of shooting shred.

Easily the scariest road I’ve ever been on.  Icy, windy, narrow, no guard rail to 1000 foot drop.  How is this even legal in the US of A?

Silvia is from Germany - true, true…

Silvia started snowboarding in 1994 - the first three numbers are true, but in the end it’s false because I started in 1997!!

Silvia learned 360’s her first day snowboarding - very,very false.  I broke my arm the first day snowboarding, since I didn’t want to be explained how to fall and of course did it wrong then.

Charging in the Whistler Backcountry, she’s come a long way from her first day snowboarding.

Silvia spends much of her winter riding in Breckenridge, Colorado - true! It’s the best place in the world, that’s why…

Silvia has been snowboarding in Japan 4 times - true I think? Yeah… 2 pipe world cups pretty long ago, an Oakley filming trip and then this year I went to the Asian Open…. that makes 4 times! How did you know that?

Silvia has never been injured snowboarding - I wished! But that’s very false. I wouldn’t call myself a person that’s always hurt, but through my snowboarding years I broke my arm, elbow and collarbone. Additionally I had 2 ACL tears and more concussions than I remember.

Competing in Pipe at the 2009 Roxy Chicken Jam

Silvia can do all four 7’s - true, true… not!!!  I can do fs7s and swbs7s on proper jumps, but that’s it. Cab7s kinda make sense to me, too, but i think the last 7 I will be able to do will be a bs7. That’s kinda hilarious but I don’t really get that right feeling to huck-spin backside.

Silvia placed 1st in the 2009 Canadian Open Slopestyle - hihi, that’s true. I was stoked; I never really win big stuff. I am kinda good at getting 2nd and 4th but I never win. So Canadian open was a big day for sure.

Silvia competes in both Slopestyle and Halfpipe - true. I used to do pipe a lot, and then made it on the national team what ruined pipe riding to me within a couple years. I don’t like being told what to do and the worst you can do is tell me to stop jumping and instead make me ride a shitty pipe to practice straight airs. After quitting with the national team, I was so happy not to have to ride pipe anymore, I didn’t touch a pipe for over a year or maybe even 2 years. This year at the European Open in Laax I decided to do the pipe contest, because the Laax pipe is special to me - it was the first ISF world cup I got to do back in the day, I was 17 or so, and all the big pipe girls were there that I was looking up to. I ended up 4th and couldn’t believe it, I was so happy.  That’s also the day I started with Oakley. So yeah, whenever I make it to Laax I ride the pipe in happy memory.  Practice pipe day at the euro open was so fun, so I kept riding pipe a bit this year. I counted the days; I had 9 days of pipe riding this year. Most of them in contests. Actually I really enjoy it again. Maybe next season I will make it to 15 pipe days, we’ll see… :-)))

Filming with Runway Films in Whistler.

Silvia will compete in the 2010 Olympics for Germany - I would estimate 70% false, 30% true. There’s still a way to qualify through the world cup in NZ this summer. I will be there anyways, so I may do it if I like the pipe. If I ride well it could really happen that I qualified - I am the only girl from Germany to potentially make it so I don’t have to battle anybody for the start spot.  The other side of the medallion is, that I had a start spot already for the Torino Olympics, and then the German federation didn’t let me go. It made me realize how much bureaucracy is on the way to the Olympics. I think the best way is not to care much about Olympics - if you make it, sweet surprise, if you don’t make it, whatever, there are tons of cooler events in snowboarding anyways. I can’t imagine many worse things than focusing 100% on Olympics and not making it. It’s like throwing a year of potentially amazing life into the garbage to me.

Silvia was a gymnast growing up - true and false, I did gymnastics about 2 or 3 years long, but I was never able to do the cool moves. I was a ballet girl; I danced ballet for 10 years, from 4 to 14. So I think I was more a ballet dancer than a gymnast.

Silvia likes to play the piano - true!!! But I don’t get a chance much with traveling…

Silvia loves to play chess - true! And a chessboard and pieces are way easier to fit into a travel bag than a piano!

Silvia loves myspace - false. I don’t do myspace and facebook because I don’t want to spend more time on computer than I already do. People that really care about me and that I really care about, I write them emails or we talk on skype. So yeah, so far I managed to stay away from the evil myspace and facebook.

Silvia likes to eat burritos - true. But I quit eating meat a while ago, so it’s only veggie burritos for me now. I think I liked burritos more when I used to eat meat. I am actually really into cooking myself now; probably my favorite thing to make these days is all kinds of veggie curries.