Monday, September 28, 2009

Reppin' Large!

This season I'll be bringing it on a DC XFB, so as soon as the slopes open I'm gonna be terrorizing the locals for sure on this popsicle stick!

My hand is ripping me so bad, no sleep and ridiculous pain. Eating Vicodin like there skittles, not so good I guess. Hating my loss of complete independence, but at least my left hand is getting some skills. Still want both hands back though.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

US Healthcare Vs. NHS, Part 1.

Yesterday I went into Rochester General Hospital to have on the day surgery on my broken hand. It got me thinking about how very different our healthcare works back in England compared to here. Due to one handed typing I'm not going to go into full on-depth in this article, I'll save it till my hand has been fully rehabilitated.

The only downside of my experience was that my surgery got moved back and they couldn't reach me on my phone, which is fair, but when I arrived like 5 hours earlier than I should have been they didn't even think to point this out which sucked. Once everything got underway I found everyone to be really friendly & professional. Didn't hurt that I was English either though!

The only other thing I'm apprehensive of is insurance coverage, if I'm completely covered I can easily say that the NHS is pretty weak compared to US Healthcare, but like anything else you get what you pay for and insurance is nothing short of a small fortune!

Anywho, Mr Vicodin is here to help me recover. Also a big thanks to Megan who looked after my drugged arse through out the day!

'nuff said.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Niagra Falls

Even with my super gimp hand I have been able to do a few things, such as like . . . well nothing exciting other than learning to wipe my arse with my left hand annnnnnnnnnnnnnd heading to Niagra Falls. It was pretty dam amazing but not what I expected. it has been bastardized by tourism to the point that you can almost convince yourself that it is man-made just from looking at it.

On closer inspection when you could feel the water and hear it at a deafening sound you then convince yourself that you must be dreaming. It is nothing short of epic to fullest, the full on brutality and beauty of mother nature, a combination that is always stellar to me no matter what. All in all a good day with the guys from Toad Hall (minus Rob who is lucky enough to go see it today).

Hope you enjoy the photos which are available here

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Stolen Content

Stolen off a friends Blog because it's just that insane. Music is the acoustic version of Creep by Radiohead.

Check it out here

Monday, September 21, 2009

Reasons for lack of updates . . .

I have broken my hand, simple as.

My right hand too, super hard to type.

Surgery on Friday, not good.

Too frustrated to try and type.

Stupid football game, smashed my hand on the floor.

Nuff said.

Friday, September 18, 2009

I'm an idiot at best


It has been a crazy week so far, horse riding on Sunday, Golf, whiskey tasting and Monday Night Football on Monday, the drunkest I have ever been on Wednesday night ending in me being carried to bed and having no recollection annnnnnnd getting thrashed and half breaking my hand at football last night.

I dare anyone to check out my Facebook photos from Wednesday, consider this a forewarning !

Broken hand right there too ^^^

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The life of a Snowboarder, how it should be!

partysnake again teaser from leepipes on Vimeo.


This video has some of the best jibbing action in it I have seen for a long while along with some of the craziest riders you could ever wish to see!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Sunday & Monday are my Fundays


Soooooo it's been an action packed 2 days for me, not action packed in the sense of physical activity, just the fact I have utilized my days off for funness!


I was going to write about Sunday but I pretty much summed it all up in the short post without giving you boring details. Yesterday however was such a good day. Kevin had invited me to go play Golf with him and some other people from the industry courtesy of The Glenlivet. I hadn't played golf in 2 years and was pretty nervous to see how I would play. If I could play every shot like my first shot I would be the new Tiger Woods. I hit it beautifully, unfortunately my inconsistency was pretty consistent, just a but of fun though so it was all good.


After golf we had a quick lunch followed by some scotch tasting and just general chit chat. By the way Canandaigua Lake is probably the nicest place I have ever been, all you need to do is look at this blog post photo and see how beautiful it is. We headed back to the Toad and rinsed some more scotch. Monday Night Football was on at the Distillery and is was the Bills Vs Pats. Was a pretty entertaining game to watch and resulted in the Bills chucking the game away and a fan smashing his glass on the floor, pure comedies!


Our whole Toad Crew is out now too which is pretty amazing, excited to say the least!


Click this link to see all the photos from Sunday

Monday, September 14, 2009

Prologue to Yesterday


Didn't get any chance to update about yesterday and have even less time today with playing golf and scotch tasting so here is a tiny update.

The jist of it it all is that my friend Megan invited us to go to her grandparents farm and to go ride one of her horses. We did, it was insane and something I would totally do again. We also went for a whizz around the lake that her cottage is situated on in a speed boat, again insane and something I so badly want to do again.

I'm currently working on photos for it and only have a few done so far and need to edit the rest and arrange them, but here is a little taste, which incidentally is one of my favourite photos I have ever had the chance to take.



Sunday, September 13, 2009

Actions > Words #2

Pat Moore first came to my attention in That's It, That's all and blew my mind not just with his skills but his ability to appear more insane that the maddest madman you could wish to meet.

Anywho, check out this edit from Forum Forever.

Dean Gray = Hero


Ever since the end of February this year I have followed Dean Gray's work at Blotto Photto. It's one of the best blogs I have ever come across in terms of content. I love his photography work and this guy is all about sharing his knowledge and experience.

Well worth a check if you are interested in photography, snowboarding or just good old fashion blogs!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Actions > Words

Tore Holvik reppin' it

Where's George At?

I'm deciding to jump on the bandwagon here.

It's just a little fun to see where your money ends up, and who knows, you might even get the exact same note you spent back. The note I'm tracking is a $1 bill that I'm going to make sure I spend tonight somewhere

Serial Number : D02153632D

I'll try and keep you all updated when i figure out where its moved too. Here is the tracking link if you want to track it on your own accord.


Friday, September 11, 2009

Best One Liner Ever

I was talking to Mr Scotney recently, just shooting the shit and how tricks are over here and over there when he just randomly dropped this line:

'nuff said.

Sharer and Carer


I like to share sites that make me luagh uncontrollable and that are a little twisted and mildly disgusting to some people. Today I share with you Texts From Last Night (TFLN).

This is mainly for English people, most Americans I have spoken to know about it, well worth a view to make your day a bit brighter knowing someone out there is having a worse day. The odd case it's a better day there having than you, don't be jealous, deal with it. It's all swings and roundabouts!

Epic Video


Tiff e-mailed me the link to this epic snowboarding video, a bit unorthodox to say the least but it keeps it fresh!


Thursday, September 10, 2009

Entrepreneurial Behavior, A Question of Nature Vs. Nurture

So I decided to share some of my better written reports from my university work for people to read and peruse over. Only things that I think will interest people outside the business world as well as in it will be posted.

Here is a short 2000 word report on Entrepreneurial Behaviour

Final Enterprise is the document name

Nikon D70

I have just purchased a sick second-hand Nikon D70s for a bargain price! My first DSLR so I shall be very much snap happy to try and get some pictures up on here super quicktimepro.

Also got some of my Fisheye photos back from NYC, not a happy bunny as several of the films were blank, which leads me to believe that the film must have been fucked up from when I purchased it back in England then dragged it through several X-ray machines, never fun. As soon as I get chance to digitize these photos I will do!

Hot pocket time for breakfast, the life I lead huh !?

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Modern Morality


Someone at the bar today mentioned the way in which we judge certain things in history. We always judge with today's standard of morals and not of the time period. It's really important for us to again understand the evolution of ourselves in terms of behavioral patterns. It's by far the most interesting thing I have ever heard while at work.

Fashionable Networking



Before work today I had a little talk with Ro Ro about blogging. I have been trying to get people to get a blog (mainly so they can comment really) to share what there doing. Many have a twitter account. What I can't understand is if you have a twitter account and update frequently, why can't you condense this into a daily blog ?


Direct quote from Ro 'You should ask all your English pals with the excuse it's the perfect way not to lose touch and scope of each other's lives. Could work! :P'


A simple look at how I have communicated over the years made me realise how social networking is such a fashionable activity. In my experience this is how it went. First up we had Chat Rooms on Yahoo, or chat rooms in general. After this MSN followed, allowing IM between friends. Next for me was MySpace. I believe this to be the first significant social networking tool. This is down to the ability of artists, musicians and actors etc to be able to promote themselves and for people to have an actual profile to put themselves out there in virtual social society. It is literally a virtual socialising world.


After MySpace we had FaceBook, still very much used today by virtually everyone I know. This evolved as a tool for students to communicate to a worldwide tool available to everyone. FaceBook & MySpace very much take ideas from each other and put them across in the way they want for there target audience. Mainly MySpace being for 13-17 year olds and 18+ for FaceBook. This is just generalities, I'm not being exclusive.


Somewhere in the mix Bebo got added in for the younger generation, followed more recently by Twitter, which is obviously sweeping the world and everyone is jumping on the latest social bandwagon. I did try it but I wasn't commited enough to post every 5 minutes of my life about what I was up too. Plus no one would read something as dull as my daily life in 5 minute segments. Now Stephen Fry, I can understand why people would read that!


So I'm a bit perplexed as to where blogging came in, for me it came only this past couple of months. Driven by my responsibility of keeping people up-to-date with how I'm doing in NY and what I'm up too, I actually find it a good outlet for things like this. I also think its good discipline to get into a regular routine of something like this, not get obsessive but keep it going.


I started writing this blog before I had to head to work when I had a clear idea of where I wanted this posting to go, no it just got lost in the ether. Only thing I really have to say is that like clothes fashion, social networking is just as fast moving, constantly evolving and for some people a huge addiction. Bad thing/good thing, down to you I guess . . .

Monday, September 7, 2009

Labour Day Fun


I feel weird even celebrating American only holidays (Canadian too in this instance), but I'm down with any excuse for us all to have a day off together and have some fun. We spent the day drinking a little, wolfing down some burgers then shooting the shit for a while.

We all get aching to do something energetic and fun and 6 of us played a little game of touch (American) football. Needless to say a mix of my QB skills, Matty's RB skills and Clay's kicking skills we owned it! The most fun though was when we all had a little game of softball. Was great to get everyone involved and just have some giggles and banter. I tried not to let my super serious competitive nature out and tried to keep a handle on it, I hope I did anyway!

This morning I moved into my new room and had a bit of downtown after getting it all settled and rinsed Bataleon for all it's little teaser and trailer videos. Well worth a look if you like snowboarding.

Hopefully some photos of today will be up and about somewhere soon for all to see. I'll link in the album when I get chance.

Cheeky Update




Just a quick update to wish everyone a happy Labour Day and to also check out this insane snowboard video. Not insane in crazy, just insane at how well its shot and the content!


Sunday, September 6, 2009

Inglorious Basterds at The Little

So I went to watch Inglorious Basterds on Thursday. Pretty dam crazy film as you would expect from Tarrantino. I'm not going to type much about the movie due to the fact that I want whoever is reading this to be utterly surprised by the movie, I will say one thing though 'The Bear Jew'. Was great to go to a small independent type cinema, pretty much like the Showroom in Sheffield.

One thing that angered me about the film is how Hitler was portrayed. He was portrayed as an absolute whack job. Fair enough he was so wrong and radical about his views but I have no doubt in my mind he was not as crazy as the movie suggests. I'm not agreeing with Hitler on how he wanted no Jews in Nazi Germany, he was influenced by others to use genocide as a solution to this 'problem', but I believe he would have been a much more poised, charismatic and an awkward charm about him. After all he was voted Times man of the year in 1938 and managed to incite racial hatred in a whole nation.

If you want an entertaining film with gore, violence and the odd laugh then go see Inglorious Basterds. If you want to watch a Hollywood movie with some truth and (sort of) realism in it then go see Valkyrie, the bad side about Valkyrie is that even the Germans speak American. Then again the only people in the film are Germans virtually so its not so bad I guess.

Side not, got Brand New tickets for Novemeber, get in!

Saturday, September 5, 2009

My NYC Trip





This blog is taken directly from my personal blog. I have decided to start putting my thoughts out here into the blogsphere for anyone and everyone to look at.

So with me heading to NYC this weekend and having a terrible memory I decided to jot everything down in my little Moleskine. I’m going to write it up exactly as I wrote it down in the journal, mistakes and sillyness will remain unchanged. I have also decided to start posting this posts on blogspot just to put them out there to the general public too. I also want to apologise for lack of photos. It’s pretty difficult to get film put in digital media so I’m saving up for a scanner!


So here goes nothing:


8/29/09


I wanted to save this moleskin for a special occasion. Today is a special occasion. I’m heading to NYC for the first time + I’m going solo. Nervous, excited, nervous. Also surreal. Another epic trip, hopefully for an epic time, that time being 3 days. I have a book to accompany me, music to drown the sound of the world + several cameras to catch its beauty/uglyside. This is NYC, the beginning of the story


After dropping to and from consciousness I finally come truly awake in Albany, the state capital. Grim weather, reminds me of home. A good + bad thing. Kind of just want to arrive there now + familiarise myself with the City. What I see out of my window is very much the same as every other train ride so far, but what was I expecting to see though ? Unicorns maybe !? Infact just a waterfall pulling into Poughkepsie, seemed out of place but nevertheless impressive!


Heading into Penn Station in half an hour, the hills look amazing, covered in trees with mist rolling down up into the air like it’s trying to escape. mesmerising.


After a journey of sleep + non-sleep I arrived in Penn Station (note the switch from present to past). I get out into the city air and my perceptual senses are overwhelmed, flashes of yellow, a shrill horn, the rattling subway, the taste of the air and the stellar mist covering the tallest buildings, truly amazing, but expected I guess. That makes me sound ungrateful, I’m not. My expectations were high + they were met, full stop.


I wonder up (+down) 8th Ave for a while + shoot off a text to DC aswell as shooting off a few snaps with the Diana(mini). Mosts shots are of taxis, don’t ask why but I was fascinated. So I end up taking a ride downtown instead of uptown, these things happen I guess. So I decide to walk all the way from 14th st to 34th street, stopping off at the triple crown. Here I discovered I was starting to turn into a dreaded beer snob, not so good. What was also not so good was the fact that my hostel had no vacancies left (sold out as the put it). Thankfully DC had offered me a place to crash ( Praise Jésuz)


So me + DC meet + take a trip downtown + hit 1894. A nice bar + grill style place. For some reason our server ran outside after ‘us’ thinking we were dodging out on the cheque. We were just in the bar area, bless her huh !? So we head to a few shops, 3 different heavens in the form of WeSC, Burton + DC (the brand) shops. I got some new cans I have been after for a while + some nice Nike SB kicks.


We hit one final bar before I retire to DC’ pimp bachelor pad + he heads to see his girl. I’m sat here writing this (back to the present) while chilling to some Bon Iver and obviously reflecting on the day. Honestly I’m exhausted, but its to be expected to a certain extent. It’s going to be fun typing this up exactly how I have written it, poor sentence structure, grammatical errors, important things missed + the refusal to use the word ‘and’.


I wanted to sign off saying something profound or something with heavy weight behind it. Only thing I have (is weak) is that sometimes you gotta get away to the city. I guess thats it, I’m off to make more progress on the Gunslinger, half way through the book already. It may turn into a long night indeed. Every word I add reduces my attempt at a profound sign-off, guess I just don’t know when to shut up.


8/30/09


So I get up at midday + clean up the mess of inflatable bed + sleeping bag and chill out for a few minutes. I head out to broadway where I’m finally greeted by some sun + blue sky, get snap happy + finish off my roll of Diana. I rinse some chicken fajita panini and head to central park (the direction of Central Park anyways). I stumble upon a little seating area with a dark iron statue in the middle, it stands on a pillar 8ft high + the statue another 8 more.the horses front leg (right) is off the floor, this means that the guy died out of wartime I think, horses on hind legs means he would have died during battle, I dunno. All thats important is that it looks amazing, Puzzled by the fact it looks like plate armor the statue is wearing, so he might not be American. At this point I think screw it why don’t I just look at the front of it. Turns out its Joan of Arc (edit: the main picture at the top is the best view of the statue I got on the old iPhone), ‘nuff said.


3/4 quarters of the way through Gunslinger, getting quite interesting to say the least. Just waiting on DC before we head to CP on the bikes, should be epic! Ended up heading DT again. Spent far too much in the Lomo shop. DC got hooked up with the latest Fisheye2 too. Back at the apartment + prepping to hit CP, just had the realisation that it’s my 2 month anniversary today, its so craaaaazy!


31/8/09


The rest of yesterday was amazing. I fell in love with CP something rotten, pure stellarness, cannae beat it. Cruising around, awesome views, like nothing else, utopia for me. The night time was just as fantastical. Off the wagon for a few drinks then Club Wha? It was crazy, food, good beer, good friends + amazing live music. Such an eclectic set, All Night Long by Lionel Ritchie blaring out, Creep by Radiohead later, I’ll be missing you by sting, 70’s funk that would make the god father proud. I’m back at home as I write this, happy in the fact I have had an amazing day, amazing night + connected DC to Lomography, ‘nuff said yet again.


31/8/09


I was going to write about last night before I realised I had done it last night, only had about 7 or 8 beers, light weight. O I did remember last night that I had a double order of wings for the table, apparently most were vegetarians so I had to eat them all one (bar one). there were equal amounts of awe and disgust, make that mostly disgust ha.


It’s weird, I’m sat in CP surrounded by what seems an infinite amount of people, yet I feel alone, not lonely, but alone. Its invigorating to sit and look out at the lake nd write in here, yet I’m saddened as to not be able to share it with anyone. This + a couple of earlier conversations has led me to the conclusion that I’m ultimately an experience sharer. I like doing a lot of stuff on my own, but to be able to share somethings with someone else special + talk about that + have that memory + bond forever, that to me is more worthwhile than having a solo story to share.


Excuse the terrible 5 minute sketch (edit: my moleskine has a little stupid sketch on the previous page), just one of those things. So I spent the rest of the evening getting food + ended up locking myself out out of DC’s apt. Neighbour found me face down alseep. Once DC got back we shot the shit + ended for some fine Chinese cuisine. Wasn’t too bad actually, good value for money at least.


Now back at the apt solo listening to Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (re-mixed) crazy album! Gonna hop in the shower, bang on my jim jams (shorts + a stolen shirt) + read esquire for the rest of the night. Up bright + early for a 7 hour journey again. A Journey worth every second!


Post edit: Gunslinger is now finished, bring on The Drawing of the Three!