Secrets of the City

Personally, I feel Mason Aguirre is a terribly tragic figure, the way he ends up drifting on that raft in the Amazon covered with all those monkeys.

MN hosts some of the weakest snowboarding in the world. Most of us are saving up for trips out West. However, the greatest new sport, kiteboarding, is giving MN snowboarders some powder on the frozen lakes.

Agreed, MN is not ideal for snowboarding.

hey, it’s not bad for beginners. i think spirit mountain, mason’s home turf, rocks for snowboarding. welch and afton are good too, for a sprayer like me who grew up on skis and took up boarding as an old fart.

put it this way: minnesota is actually a lot better for snowboarding than for skiing.

but when MN produces three snow-sport olympians in one year, we must be doing something right. (OK, so they grow up and move to Vail, but they took their first diggers right here at Buck Hill etc.)

OK, hate to throw a McTwisty into this conversation, but I found the half pipe competition to be the least interesting event of the whole olympics, less interesting even than the 5,000 meter speed skating.

I mean, where’s the precision? The olympic effort? OK, I get that if you fall, you’re in trouble. But beyond that, I had a very hard time seeing any difference between any of the riders or whatever they’re called. Just a bunch of overly jocular, rich little punks who all feel the need to give some esoteric hand signal after their uninspiring little marketing vehicle of a ride.

Between that and Bode Miller’s strangely co-opted little rant — against, what, effort? — we Americans ended up looking like a very soft, rich and complacent culture. So, sorry, I don’t see the need to extol Mssr. Aguirre’s virtues. I’m sure he’s a fine kid — and I’m open to any convincing counterpoint to understand snowboarding’s allure. But until then, I’m underwhelmed.

Great point about MN being much better for snowboarding the skiing…just head over to Hyland Hills to see a middle school worth of kids ripping on the terrain park. Maybe I’m just bitter, cause I want some big runs and can’t hang with the rails/kickers.

Nosferatu-I can see from an outsiders perspective, the half pipe is boring to watch. Snowboarding is about being fluid and style, which doesn’t come across in a 30 second, high stakes run. I suggest checking out a video on http://www.transworld.com or some other magazine type thing. Sure they will still come across as rich white kids or whatever…but they do have some amazing talent. Personally, pointing ski tips downhill and going really fast is as boring as it gets. Its like Nascar, you watch for the crashes.

I agree…MN is not (nor close to) the ideal location for snowboarding/skiing, but as stated above, MN has produced some fairly decent professional snowboarders and downhill skiers.

I was just looking for some discussion on this topic and was a little curious about the lack of winter sports coverage here.

Nosferatu – I agree Bode was a disappointment to watch. I am curious though, what Olympic sports, if any, you enjoy?

from what i understand, snowboarding was far and away the most popular of the televised olympics (maybe just behind figure skating, which is always weirdly huge); i wonder if rex has any interesting, non-confidential info on what seemed most popular at nbc’s websites.

i liked all the olympics coverage, watched it every night with my kids, who liked almost every event. ice dancing is kinda boring, and i never did see any curling. actually, i was least interested in watching hockey, maybe cuz i see plenty of that at very high level of MN college hockey already. it just kinda bored me. i liked XC skiing, which is actually pretty exciting when they cover a whole race. snowboarding was way cool, IMO.

i work in a pretty mundane corporate office setting… my coworkers all thought snowboarding was the greatest. yeah, the kids are almost caricatures of themselves, but they embody something about the olympics which was almost non-existent this year: respect for the sport and gold medal performances over their own egos and desires to win.

for me, nothing beats the olympic XC skiing races… i luckily caught a few, including a fantastic men’s and women’s biathalon. they go and go and go, and then when they got nothing left, there’s a couple people sprinting down the last 100 yards with the cheering fans and the photo finishes. i’m usually on the edge of my couch by halfway through the race.

Greetings from Mammoth Lakes,
A news clipping service notified me of this post. Thought I would comment. We started snowboarding at Spirit Mountain for fun when Mason was 6, Molly was 9 and Tyler was 12. It was really all we knew as far as resorts were concerned. It was difficult in those days to try to get Spirit to get the Terrain Park and Pipe built before Christmas because there were so many kids looking for anything to jump off of or into. Spirit catered to skiers, so the snowboarders had to wait. Sometimes Giants Ridge or Blackjack would get a pipe up and everyone would head there. Hyland and Buck had to deal with the Minneapolis weather which was sometimes too warm to get a decent pipe up. I remember some guy named Tom that ran Giants Ridge that used to give us free tickets so we could train there getting ready for Nationals cause their pipe was better than Spirit’s. He used to send a crew of guys out to the pipe to try and make it better for us. Tom, whoever you are…thanks!

When we started going to Nationals in 1996, I was surprised how well Mason, Molly and Annie Finnegan placed. They were always getting on the podium. What I figured out was that there were not that many resorts around the country that had lights at night like Spirit did. Kids that lived in Big Mountain towns had to go to school and by the time they got out, the mountain was closing down for the day. Plus, mountain resorts are much larger and the trip up the lift a lot longer of a ride. At Spirit the kids were up, down, up, down and so on. The number of repetitions in the pipe is what gave them the edge over other kids nationally.

Here in Mammoth, even though we have great terrain, the resort closes at around 4PM. if a kid is in school, there’s no way he’ll go pro unless the parents are willing to take him or her out of school and home school them. We moved here when Mason was in 8th grade. There was a high school program set up for athletes like him whereby he would go to the school for 15 minutes each week, pick up his homework for the week, and then work on it at night. He has never spent one day in a typical high school setting. He would get up in the morning, train all day then do homework at night. That’s how he went pro. But it takes a dedicated parent to help make it happen. And it takes money, untill the sponsors kick in. He knew what he wanted to do, he was creating the results, so I supported him by enrolling him in the alternative school program.

Snowboarding isn’t for everyone as is the case for Nosferatu. But there is no doubt, that in only 3 olympics as a sanctioned Olympic sport, it is one of ther most exciting to watch, especially if you understand it a little. Snowboarding has attracted the younger generation to watch the Olympics. That’s huge. Without snowboarding, the ratings would have been dismal.

Thanks to all the Minnesotan’s that support snowboarding. I have a blog site if you’re interested. http://www.blogs.org/user/?P=snwbrdmike
You can e-mail me if you like at: coyoteposse@yahoo.com

Later,
Mike Aguirre

Great stuff!!

yea iam from mankato ,MN and my turf is mount kato I love snowboarding i know iam better then anybody i know around here its just the people out west that think their better snowboarders then the riders in the midwest they think jus cuzz they ride hills that us midwest kids dream about the thing about us is that around MN you have to be good really good or you might as well not ride around here i can hit up 15 rails like 100 times or more with in just a couple hours I cant wait to move out west and when i do you will here of me iam gonna rep the midwest and all the kids that are left riding hills that are mainley ice.

I think I’m going to have to agree with Wilmes on this one. You see my home town is Hibbing MN and i moved up north when I was 2. My main snowboarding places are just local icy spots around town. You see as I was growing up I had no money to just WASTE or throw away on fancy snowboarding trips or clothing so here I am, rotting(stuck), in a hole in the earth town learning the old fashion way (proper exercise and trampoline). I mean my only real dedication in my life is, well was, snowboarding until I ran into a few bad apples along the way who think there skills at sports just fell out of the sky. I mean the years I spent not going to actual skii resorts were spent making make shift ramps and rails in my back yard or out at some random hills. Sorry to say but I cant live without snowboarding and I plan on moving to a year round snowboarding resort just so I can get better and I indeed will rep all the kids stuck in Minnesota’s hellbound location who think they can’t make it in the so called snowboarding industry, that is if I ever get out of this racist enviroment.