Gnarly Dude!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
This past week, my wife and I were two of the volunteers at the Snowboard Cross
(SBX) World Cup on our local mountain (Vancouver's
Cypress Mountain, one of 3 local ski/snowboard mountains actually
"in" Vancouver). I worked as course crew and gate crew while my wife was a
gate judge. We had also volunteered for
the SBX Nationals last year, but this year's action definitely beat out
last year. There were some
exciting moments and a few spectacular crashes.
Some more photos that I took are here.
Although I'll stick with
skiing, I can see the appeal of snowboarding. The snowboard "subculture"
is a lot more relaxed, laid back, and fun-loving and that comes
through in the snowboard competitions (even top events like the SBX
World Cup). Like
programmers, boarders have their own lingo and, when one of the SBX
competitors did a forward flip during a trial run, one of the young
female boarders on our crew called out
"Gnarly Dude!". The same guy did that forward flip about half a
dozen times right in front of us during the trials, just for the hell of it.
I'm a bit
sore myself after all the hiking/skiing, setting up netting/equipment,
tearing down
netting/equipment, and all the early mornings & long days; but, it was a lot of
fun. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again next year when the
Freestyle Skiing and Snowboard events of the 2010
Olympics are up at Cypress.
