we had a fun 6th grade class with ms allen and ms loomis
we were allowed to imitate wwf wrestling and we had a table saw and carpentry tools even though we were only about 11 years old
i made an aircraft carrier and a battleship but the battleship didn't really look like one and wound up being disassembled with the main board being attached to a pair of children's skates in a failed attempt at making a skate board for riding on ice
that winter 1975, there was a hard freeze causing the snow on the taconic golf course 9 th hole hill to freeze extra hard causing a number of skiers to break their skis
9th hole
someone had also tried to slide down the hill with one of the college cafeteria's lunch trays
attaching the broken front half of the broken ski to the battleship after removing the skates proved enjoyable, so i decided to reach beyond myself and add a layer of carpet for traction
it still needed something, and i found it with the corner of the lunch tray
my classmate raymond had a skateboard that had like a lever on the back he could step back on to turn easier
ray founded icarus creative media ?
the lunch tray broke correctly and the part was added in imitation of ray's skateboard
it took a whole winter of trying but eventually i was able to ride it a little ways down the hill before falling off, then i started getting used to it and learned to turn by leaning back on the lip of the lunch tray, which would raise the front of the board making it easy to pivot left and right
ray's skateboard was tan
the next winter was one of my happiest even though i was tormented horribly at school, because i became pretty good at riding my ski board, and it remains one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life swerving down the hill like a zephyr !
my friend joe made a board and learned how to ride it and one day as joe was riding down i was climbing to the top of the hill a cross country skier asked if he could see my board
lindsay reports that whistler, british columbia is now vegan snowboarder friendly :
the cross country skier was wearing one of what were at the time burton ski jackets which were very colorful he said his name but i didn't hear him clearly and thought he might be jim bouton, but he pointed to the collar of his jacket where the "b" was located and said he made ski jackets
jake burton carpenter
burton snowboards fb
i told jake burton that all the cool kids at my school had burton jackets - they were really nice looking jackets - and he asked me why i didn't have one and i had to confess i wasn't a cool kid
i have a picture on my fb of a burlington coat factory jacket that looks very similar to the old burton jackets i'll try to find it
bret, sammy s, sarah p, andy k and scott s had them they were on the mt greylock ski team and they may have been the cool kids just because of the jackets which actually made them look cool
joe is fire investigator for the north adams, mass fire dept ?
joe once singed his eyebrows trying to...maybe i shouldn't say !
jake burton asked me why i didn't have bindings and a few other things then told me there might be some money in it
thinking he wanted to market what i thought was an invention, i had a strange epiphany and told him that if he could make money with it he should just go ahead and use the idea
i didn't know at the time i met mr burton that there was an invention just like the board created years earlier called the snurfer and mr burton had been competing - and winning - snurfer completions for years until i wrote to burton snowboards back in ...2003 and later googling the history of snowboarding
sherman poppen's snurfer
13 year old vern wicklund modified a sled deck in cloquet, minnesota in 1939 and with his relatives harvey and gunnar burgeson, patented the first snowboard in 1961
vern wicklund's " bunker " board
who knew you could enter yearly snurfer competitions in 1976 ?
then maybe win some prizes, or at least learn some tricks ?
but i did mention the lever like back part of the board as being very important and if you go to the burton website you'll see some of their early boards had a definite rising tail
flip tail boards circa ' girls just wanna have fun '
whether it mattered or not, the epiphany not to be possessive about the board in hopes it would lead to millions enjoying the blissful whoosh of easily riding a board down a hill in a much easier and safer fashion than skiing came true and has remained a valuable lifelong lesson which has helped me avoid the many pitfalls of greed awaiting each of us like a patch of ice hidden by snow
vegan stuffed shells
who can say why i ran in to one of the pioneering founders of the sport around the time he began his company ...
...is it part of a story that shouldn't be owned or something as intriguing as a public fate ?
back to story
burton pioneered snowboarding and gender equality
~
williams college annual mountain day
"Mountain Day dates back to at least 1838, when the students of Mount Holyoke College headed of to Mount Holyoke. [1] Smith College declared its Mountain Day in 1877.[2] Juanita College established its Mountain Day in 1896.[3] and Williams College students have been climbing Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, to celebrate Mountain Day since the 1800s.[4] "
burton ceo donna carpenter transferred to williams college at the end of her sophmore year at columbia university
"According to a survey, more than a fourth of U.S. Millennials consider the label "vegan" as an important factor for purchasing food products. "
"Interest in a plant-based diet, also championed by Jared Leto, Gwyneth Paltrow and Mike Tyson, has grown in recent years as studies show it is beneficial for heart health and even lowers the risk of some ."
...september 2008 a month and a half after her husband's song got me to quit smoking 8 years after i was told evil would be destroyed if i quit smoking
- by Christine Birkner in Adweek April 20th, 2017
