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I know it's been a while since my last post. Access to the internet, although available, was kind of a waste of time, very slow. I met up with the rest of the Vans team down in L.A. This was the beginning of a very long travel mission, without a doubt the longest mission I've been on. I met up with the rest of the Vans team, which included: Chris Coulter, Andreas Wiig, Zac Marben, Kyle Clancy, Filmer Brian Redness and TM Doran Laybourn, in L.A. From there, we got on a plane to Atlanta and rendezvoused with Larry Nuñez from Snowboard Magazine. The flight to Beunos Aries was long but I sat next to Andreas and drank Margaritas all night. Upon arriving in Argentina, our Beunos Aries liaison, Ana, warmly greeted us with a hug and kiss, kiss on the cheek and brought us to the next airport, which would land us in Bariloche, Argentina, home of the SASS, South American Snow Sessions camp. SASS pretty much kicks ass! Travis, our host and his fiance Asia, really took care of us and got us situated. Every night there was a feast, and the campers all were frickin' awesome, party all night, ride all day. In Argentina, the hours are very different, the earliest dinner you could possibly have is 8:30 pm, you ride all day, then come home and siesta until dinner. After dinner, you start partying, then at about 2:30am, you go out to the clubs, until the sun comes up and repeat. Argentina is also famous for their meat. If you like meat, the Filet Mignon's I ate there were better than any I've had in any country without doubt. Also, the wine produced out of the Mendoza region, specifically the malbec, a tasty red wine, are excellent.
The riding at the local hill was good, although challenging. I had a set-up problem for most of the first week that really put a damper on things, but that's my fault. Cerro Catedral is a big resort where they have extremely large condors flying around the lifts, good tree runs, and a large alpine area with a big blue lake in the background. It actually reminded me of Tahoe quite a bit. At the bottom of Cerro Catedral, snow was sparse and covered in thick bamboo vegatation. We would ride the camper bus every morning and get dropped of at the "Rave hut" where we got breakfast, beers, pizza, cigs and whatever else we would need to have a ripping time.
