Blog: 2010

video reposts..

as i'm in the process of making a new video i thought i'd re-post a few of my favorites from this past winter. you can find all of my videos at www.youtube.com/justinlamoureux or hiding somewhere on this blog
enjoy!
jl

a good day split-boarding with dave B. and a bad day by myself! my last 2 adventures of 2009..

a day of noboarding. like learning how to snowboard all over again, just without your bindings. april 2010

the best opening week of my life, to kick off one of my best seasons ever.
whistler nov. 2009.

my 2nd run from the 2010 olympic pipe finals. pretty much the best night of my life.

birthday powder! does it get better? treble cone, NZ, aug 2010

burton canadian open. a few weeks before the olympics. this comp is when i really felt my runs coming together prior to the games. calgary

the world cup in calgary the week before the open was pretty fun too.. another podium

and this was just awesome to be asked to do. my grouse mtn olympic torch "run", on top of their tram.

mmmm powder! a lot of days like this last winter.

testing boards and off surfing..

My trip to the south island of new zealand wasn't quite what i was expecting. usually i just want nice weather and good pipes and parks to ride. this year, we got generally hell weather, only got to ride a good pipe for 4 days (out of 4 weeks!), and rode more powder in NZ then all my other years combined. which is obviously not a bad thing. So it definately made for a different style of trip down here then what i'm used to.

My last week in wanaka was spent hanging out with the guys from Bataleon snowboards. We had a whole stack of 2012 prototype boards to test out. The new line is looking pretty cool. We got some new shapes, a few new models of boards, and that's about all i'm allowed to say. We toured around the local hills, powder day at cardona, snowpark days and a day at remarkables, which was real fun. I'd only been to the remarkables one time before and thought the sidecountry terrain looked super fun. Snow coverage always seems to be an issue there, but not this time. As there was morning fog we cruised some park laps and tested the new boards. Then the sun started poking through to fun looking powder lines, which i was more than happy to hike to. Our web guy danny was keen to ride some lines so we spent the afternoon riding drops and skinny chutes. Danny almost drove himself into a rock wall at one point! I scoped a line with a little drop onto a snow patch, then you had to straight line out between 2 cliffs, dodge a rock then hook a good turn in front of a rock wall. I cruised the line, then turned around to watch danny. Seems the day's hiking and somewhat office legs were getting to him. He made the drop ok, stopped, then pointed it for the exit only to blow the turn. Luckily he had set enough edge before sliding out to just narrowly miss the wall. I had a good laugh, and so did the rest of our crew as they happened to see the line from the chairlift.

After 4 weeks in Wanaka, i made my way up to the north island where i picked up my good friend scott gaffney and headed out to raglan to get some waves for a few weeks. our first few days were really stormy with barely any surfing, but then the wind died out and the points started firing! couple feet overhead for 2 days straight and awesome times. Today the wind is still dead but the swell has dropped some, so we're surfing on the local beach breaks as the points are a tad too small. I'm here for a few more weeks (scott leaves a week early), so hopefully we get some more epic times out on the points.

I'll try and get some photos up from this part of the trip. but in the meantime, having more downtime at the moment my brain has been thinking of new things to build. So i thought i'd share a couple pieces i built earlier this summer. One is a key/sunglass box for the wall made from some scrap fir i had lying around. it has handcut dovetails, a carved front door, and a magnetic latch. The other is my new desk. I've been wanting to build one for a while and finally got to it. it's made from pine (stained black) and reclaimed fir flooring. the drawers and carcasses are held together with handcut dovetails again. the original idea for the top was supposed to be a slab of wood with live edges, but i found the flooring so i thought i'd try it out.

it's my birthday!

when you have a birthday at the end of august, a good powder day is pretty much the best present ever.
Spent the day at treble cone with 30cm and riding with my aussie mates (damon hayler, nate johnstone, chumpy, and big ben wordsworth) and a new friend alberto from italy.
super fun day.
jl

attack of the nutcracker!!!

After a few days of riding at snowpark, we started thinking of a quick trip up to one of the club fields around christchurch to ride some pow. The weather was looking good, new snow, and a fun crew. Will jackways, abby lockheart, their friend ruoriu, photog greg roebuck and myself heading out from wanaka and missioned up to My olympus.
The club fields are notorious for their nutcrackers. Generally the hills are rope tow access only. And in true kiwi fashion, the rope tows are fast, steep and run through several pulleys. So you need a nutcracker to hold on. You wear a harness around your waist, and have a metal clamp attached to it via a chain. as the rope passes by you grab on with your hands, and clamp the nutcracker onto the rope and hang on. and a big tip is don't get anything caught (ie your fingers) in the pulleys. Neither Abby or my myself had been on the nutcrackers so we were stoked to check it out.
we navigated the hours of dirt roads at night, in the fog, with dark glimpses of cliffs right next to you, to find ourselves at the bottom hut. Basically a bunk house built for club members and visitors at the bottom of the acccess road.
We woke to new snow, semi clear skies and a slight dilemma as we'd forgotten out chains (chains on 4x4 to make it up). We easily hitched rides up with the few cars passing by.
We were greeted up top with a series of rope tows, and a whole bunch of awesome lines all around the ski hill. Our first trips on the tows worked out real easy, and our crew was all smiles as we got some good powder runs in bounds on the hill.
Then my day drastically changed! On one of the top tows, i put my nutcracker on crooked and thought i could make it up no worries. after a few sketchy pulleys, the nutcracker finally ripped out of my hand on the last one and whipped straight into my knee! It seemed to hit the perfect spot and my knee just swelled right away. Bummed, my knee wasn't that stoked on bending. into the top hut i went to try and ice my knee and so i could get a few more laps in. A few hours later, my knee was feeling a bit better and i went out for a few more runs as the crew were out hiking and getting some shots.
Our next day dawned super clear, and my knee was even bigger! i did all i could to convince my knee that riding pow would be good for it, but it was just too stiff. With all the swelling, I was scared of doing actual real damage in my knee so i sat the day out and went for a mellow walk around the valley. Pissed that i missed an awesome day. The crew got some sweet lines in and had a great day. ahhhhhh. stupid nutcracker!
Back in wanaka for a few days now, and the swelling is going down in my knee, and i'm hoping to ride tomorrow. we'll see what the physio say tomorrow morning.
later
jl

will and abby scoping lines from the top hut


this is busy for mt olympus!


dinner time in the bottom hut


sidecountry lines at mt olympus.


patroller out scoping the snow


fat right knee.


out for a paddle on lake wanaka


greg, abby and will down day mini golf in queenstown

nz open and down days.

NZ open was this past weekend. the slopestyle riders had a pretty crappy foggy day for jumping, but for saturday and the pipe it cleared up and was super nice. Pipe was riding pretty good. a few weird kinks in it, but in general it was riding sweet as.
They were trying out a new judging system for the contest where each trick is given a score (instead of the whole run). I think it's good in theory but really hard in practice. For slope a little handrail suddenly has the same value as an 80 foot jump, which it shouldn't. and in pipe there's no way to fairly compare someone doing 4 hits versus someone doing 6 hits. It needs some work still, but right now i'm still a fan of overall judging.
I'd planned on arriving in NZ so i'd have a week of riding before the contest day, but due to poor weather i'd only managed to get 3 days in. Which kinda sucked. Not feeling extremely on point to do really well in the comp, i tried to challenge myself and do runs with tricks i hadn't practiced yet. I tried 2 different runs. i fell on the first one on a switch backside 720. Then for my second run started with a mctwist 720, switch backside 540, cab 900, switch backside 720 and finished with a backside 900. The run went ok, but with it being pretty tech and me being out of practice it was a little lower than what i would have liked. So i ended up in 15th place. All good. Was a good way to kickstart my trip.

The following day i headed up to snowpark to take some jump laps. After a few warm ups I ended up hitting a step up to the bagjump airbag a few times before they shutit down. red bull had the setup for a few weeks for some of their team shreds. Pretty cool setup with a step up into the bag and a step up to snow right next to it. and now its open to everyone for their hucking delight.
We tried to go up there yesterday to hit it again but the weather was turning and it was way too windy for the bag. So we messed around all over the park. couple jump laps, hit some rails, over to the pipe. SNowpark is pretty fun as it's really small, everything is usually pretty good and chair rides are entertaining as you can watch people huck themselves all over the place.

new zealand has pretty unpredictable weather and we're on another crappy weather day. When it's thick cloud or snowing here it's really hard to ride as there's no trees or anything to give definition. So generally we go skating, play golf or everyone's favorite blogging!

I'm staying with Will jackways and abby lockheart in they're sick little house right on the lake and has a small mini on the side of the house. which gets hit up whenever it's dry out, which is not today! mini golf in queenstown.

We might head up to some clubfields this week to chase some pow and get a few shots.
we'll see what the weather brings!
jl


abby with a rock to fakie with will watching


me with a front rock

back in NZ! waves and powder


2 of the lines from the video, pre-shedded, just getting light.


post shred on the tight line


first chute in the video (lookers left one). i was kinda scoping that middle tight one, but the runout wasn't the best. as you can hear in the video.


mellow hike and voila


mmm powder


me, myself and i. enjoying my first real day of shredding in NZ for this year. and my first day ever at lake ohau. 30cm and blue. loving it!


jumped off the plane and went looking for surf on the banks penninsula


magnet bay post session. the wave gets fat when the tide comes up (as in this photo)


most roads have no guard rails, in other places they like to pretend with wooden 2x6s..

what i did this summer..

so far this summer has been pretty sweet. got rid of my glasses, learned some environmental stuff in nashville, went surfing and snowboarding. all awesome. what else went on?

got some climbing in. usually bouldering in squamish but here i'm on lead on some whistler rock

biking in squamish

and had a great trip to quebec with kimmie to see my parents. lots of canoeing (day and night paddles)

haven't water skied in years. so we got on that one evening

and i learned how to hover. can't go up yet though...

more summer adventures coming

summertime shredding

just got back from mt hood last night. super fun trip. Was hanging out with Jj thomas, luke wynen and the ISTC crew from colorado. I was down there for a week and got to sample pretty much all that hood has to offer. Windell's camp had an airbag setup at the bottom of their pipe. So i'd generally start the day off over there trying some new stuff, then head over to high cascade's awesome setup for some pipe and park laps for the rest of the day. We had a week of bluebird sunny days, but a few those were pretty windy.
Since we were staying down the hill in welches, and close to windell's camp, we'd head over to their campus for some nighttime skating and tramp sessions in B.O.B. (foam pit!) and the cement park. so much fun. awesome times. thanks to both camps for letting me shred. It's pretty much a 17 year old's dream down there. or a 17 year old trapped in a 33 year old's body...

short head cam video from one of the windy days. i wanted to get some more runs but the battery ran out in my go pro..

climate project summit in nashville

a few weeks ago i was able to attend Al gore's Climate project conference in nashville Tennessee, to learn how to present his new slideshow ""Our choice".
you can check my trip on snowboard canada magazine's site at:

www.snowboardcanada.com/justinsblog/post/96/Saving-Our-Snow-Justin-Lamou...

also in the same vein there's an interview with me being eco-conscious on push.ca

http://push.ca/blogs/mikesn/archive/2010/06/15/eco-conscious-justin-lamo...

justin

laser eyes

i can see! unreal.

I've been wearing glasses for around 20 years. When i first got contacts a few years later, my snowboard ability virtually doubled overnight. I went from not being able to see when riding to great vision overnight. a few weeks ago my vision went from quite good in my contacts to 20/20 overnight!

I had the opportunity to undergo laser eye surgery with Dr leger at lasik MD in vancouver, and 2 weeks later i couldn't be happier with it. and i was about to not do it.

I'm a little squeamish when it comes to my eyes, so i had my reservations about laser surgery. But it was super easy and the staff at Lasik MD were awesome.

For the curious, here's the details on the operation. It's kind of creepy but in a weird way i enjoyed the experience. I started by not wearing your contacts for a week. It's to let your eyes return to their normal shape, but being primarily a contact wearer i think it's so you hate your glasses even more! Show up for the operation, sign some paperwork that ups your anxiety level, and get a few drops in your eyes. Dr leger greeted me upon entering the operation room, chatted for a few minutes and he talked me through the Lasik operation. OK, let's do this!

you lie down on a table, a few head adjustments and they tape up one eye, and place a metal clip on your other to keep it open. Once that is in place, a suction cup is placed on your eye and your vision blacks out. A flap is cut on your eye in 5 seconds and your vision returns. mellow. Don't feel or see a thing.

now this is where it gets interesting. You see a pair of tweezers (or something) come down to your eye and flip the flap up! you vision goes from normal to a really foggy pair of goggles. WHOh! ok, watch the red light, 35-45 seconds and done. a drop on your eye and the flap gets placed back. Done. next eye. When you sit up, you can see. But it's a little foggy.

I think the operation took less than 5 minutes!

Afterwards, you chill on site for little bit then have a check up and you're free to go home before heading back the following day for another check up.

They tell you not to read, or watch tv or anything the day of the surgery and i'm not sure how i could have. My eyes just wanted to remain shut. I had a hard time just opening my eyes enough to apply the drops i needed to. So i napped all day, and listened to a movie, then went to bed.

Then the coolest thing in the world, you wake up being able to see. It's unreal. I went back to Lasik Md for my post-op check that morning and was able to see at 20/20. A week of being really mellow later, i was even better at 20/15! crazy.

I'm still marveling at the surreal-ness of the whole thing. Just being able to see little things that i couldn't before is awesome. Like stars outside my window when i go to sleep. I'm just starting to get back into normal sporting life and i'm loving it. No shifting contacts, no dry contacts, no vision problems. awesome

thanks to Lasik Md and dr leger for the vision.
can't wait to snowboard in a few weeks.
jl

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