Snowboarding in the middle of the summer, is there anything better? Boreal brought a smile to every local rider in California this weekend! They opened one lift, with a run including two jumps and eight jib features. Boreal was charging only $20 to shred from ten till two! every rider/skier came to the resort with great vibes, it was another amazing day in Cali! I to want give a big thanks out to Nathan Vetter for posting up and taking some great shots! Boreal will be opening in October for some early pre season riding. Hope everyone out there is going for a never summer like myself!

Then we were off to make our bike deliveries, as promised. Started the day super-focused and fast and then around the time we realized we only had 2 bike deliveries left to make, we got a little sad that it was coming to a close. We were having so much fun seeing sides of Fort Collins that we normally wouldn’t and enjoying the sunshine. That’s why we decided to KEEP BIKE DELIVERY! Woohoo! Yep, that’s right… we are going to continue offering bike delivery to the Fort Collins area as long as weather allows. Who knows, I may even get brave and deliver by bike in the wintry months. But, for now, it will be available until further notice and can be expected to be delivered one day a week, the day depending on the weather conditions.

But, the best part about the bike deliveries is this: Instead of continuing to offer free bike shipping, we will be charging standard shipping costs for bike delivery and donating the shipping money spent to a charity that you choose. Each month I will be asking you to submit your favorite local Fort Collins charity and let the local public vote on which one we donate the money to for a month.

So, of course, you have from now until the end of June to buy a commuter t-shirt for the $2 to go to the Fort Collins Bike Co-op and then we’ll start on the next charity on the 1st! Please submit your favorite local Fort Collins charity by commenting it on this blog post.

So, what would be fun to do on Bike to Work Day? Bike, of course! Starting now up until June 22nd at 9:00pm, if you order online and live in the Fort Collins area (which we’re defining as between Vine and Harmony and Taft Hill and Timberline) you can choose “By Bike” as your FREE BIKE SHIPPING method and an Akinz representative will deliver your purchase by bike on Bike to Work day. Check out the Bike Delivery Zone map to the right for visual clarification.

Then we got excited about the event and since we make t-shirts, we started wondering about a bike t-shirt for the day… so we’re making a special “Commuter Tee” for a Bike Month promotion. Now when you order $50 or more online during June, we’re throwing in one of these sweet t-shirts for free. Also, $2 of each Commuter Tee purchase is being donated to the Fort Collins Bike Co-op. We’ll even donate the $2 when you earn a free t-shirt by buying $50 or more of gear. The t-shirts are available in 2 colorways in both womens and mens fit and are for sale now online.




Stay tuned for more details as we will be setting up a breakfast station on Bike to Work Day as well. You will also be able to pick up the t-shirts at The Wright Life starting June 15th.

Akinz was invited to come out and sell our Akinz Shenanakinz sunglasses in the crowd, so we dressed up like cigarette girls with an 80′s dress code.

Having come down to California for a vacation, the last thing I thought I would be doing is snowboarding. However, when I found out about the Campus Rail Jam Tour San Diego stop, things changed. Just one problem…. I didn’t bring ANY of my snowboarding gear with me.
My scramble to begin finding gear started on tuesday the 4th of May. I emailed my wonderful helmet sponsor CAPIX to see if I could get a helmet by Friday the 7th (the day of the competition.) Thanks Ronnie for making that happen! I also contacted my most recent sponsor ROXY to see if I could get a board, boots, and bindings from them in order to participate. Unfortunately, I contacted them too short of notice, and they were unable to get me a board in time. But I did get an amazing setup from them the day after the competition! THANKS NICHOLE AND ROXY!

So I had a helmet to use, but no snowboard, boots, bindings, or snowpants. Fortunately, Raelynd Tarnove brought me a pair of her snowpants to use, another friend from Irvine let me borrow her board from about 8 years ago with one of the first models’ of Burton bindings ever, and I rented some Salomon boots straight from the 80′s from Sport Chalet.

The competition started at 5p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Garrett and I arrived down there a little bit early after happily missing the heavy traffic. While standing in the registration line I was excited to see lots of the same guys putting on the event. Feeling pretty confident going into this competition, despite being on an old setup which I had never ridden before, it must have shown. Before the competition started I got interviewed by ABC 10 News, and Fuel Tv. . . they asked me the usual stuff about competing, and asked if I would be competing in my swimsuit. My immediate response “No i’m going to represent the ladies in a decent and respectful fashion.” And thats just what I did.

The ladies were in heat two. We all watched the men’s snowboard category in anticipation of getting on the setup ourselves. I was happy we didn’t have to waste time practicing. In a jam format like this, there really is no reason to practice. Not to mention I have hit this exact setup about 3 or 4 times already this year. Trying to encourage the rest of the girls who looked a little nervous, I dropped first for the ladies. I chose to hit the gap-to-downbox first, the speed was fine, and my confidence grew just a little bit.

After about a half an hour to forty five minutes later, I had laid down at least a couple of solid tricks on every feature. Half of the battle was landing and riding away- due to the warm weather the landing was quickly melting away straight to the asphalt. Luckily, I didn’t take one hard fall and wreck myself. They announced the top three girls to move onto finals.
Including myself, two other girls, the top 5 skiers, and the top 10 men’s snowboarders the finals lasted for only 30 minutes. That was more than enough time for me. The judges were judging us on overall impression. After landing almost every trick I tried , I felt good after it was all over. After they announced the results, I took 1st, and my friend Raelynd got 3rd! Joe from Fuel TV asked to do another interview with me, it felt good to have another solid result on my resume. Oh, and it was a LOT OF FUN! Great job to the guys at the Cricket Campus Rail Jam Tour- you guys always know how to do it right!

Saturday the 17th of April marked the very first Beach Bash competition hosted by NEFF and Brighton. Garrett and I picked up Cory from Arkade Magazine in the morning and headed up to the hill. We met Cory at last years Campus Rail Jam Tour’s Finals in Portland. Cory asked me last year if I would like to do an interview with the magazine, but unfortunately we couldn’t get together until the last weekend of the season this year. So we planned to get some pictures for the magazine, and the boys watched me compete.

We couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. After registering, I was pleased to see lots of other girls around ready to compete! However, since this was a “Beach Bash” most of the girls were there to hang out in their bikini’s and not to try hard and throw down on the course.

Practice lasted long enough for me to get one run in on each of the features which included; a flat rail all the way to the right, a fun box in the middle with a 5 foot gap off the end, and a wall ride, all over a pit of beach balls! I was very eager to get going, and after watching the 14 and under boys destroy this course, I was inspired to do so as well.

I like dropping in first and setting the standard for everyone else in the competition. To make sure I had enough speed to make it to the landing of the fun box, I charged in fast, and popped hard. No problems there. I decided to next hit the flat bar rail. After competing in multiple rail jams this year, I felt comfortable enough to just go right for a front-board to switch out. After doing that I moved to the wall ride- which was actually not as scary as it looked. I think the look of it got the best of most of the girls, because it was only myself and one other girl who even hit that feature.

Before I even knew it our heat was over, and I was covered in sweat. I ended up competing in a tank-top and my straw hat- to get into the spirit a little bit. I loved the layout of the competition. The heats were a perfect amount of time, and they presented us with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd right after our heat was over.
I was delivered my first place goodies from none other than Shaun Neff himself. It was a great honor to meet the guy behind the “Neff” name, and he had nothing but encouraging and gracious things to say to me. It was nice to meet a guy who was actually impressed with my snowboarding, and didn’t seem to care about looks. This event was so much fun, and for their first year doing it, it went flawlessly.
After I was done competing we all took a couple of laps around Millicent, and enjoyed the rest of the party.

I was sad to realize this was my last competition for this season, but thrilled I ended on a high note. The Neff Beach Bash at Brighton was definitely one of my favorite competitions I participated in this year. Great people, good music, good weather, and a fun atmosphere.

preparation for the mayhem

The party started at 9 and the early party-goers started up the dance floor by 9:30 and it didn’t stop bumping until the party ended at 2:00am. Team skiiers Josh Satterfield and Brandon Krentz, being the youngun’s they are, avoided the mayhem that was the bar and dance floor area and started up their own hacky sack game by the entrance… enticing others tipsy and sober alike to join in.

I don’t think Amante knew what was coming their way, considering they had to make 2 separate beer runs to the local liquor store and still ran out of beer before midnight. Of course, after the beer was gone, the liquor was soon to follow. By the time we decided to stop taking cover at the door around 11:45 , they had already run out of vodka, and were on to rum and whiskey. At the end of the night, they only had 2 bottles of white wine left.

Overall, there were plenty of shenanigans for stories the next day and everybody was of course wearing the new Akinz Shenanakinz sunglasses which was a lovely sight to behold. I’ve heard reports of them being spotted all over Steamboat for the past couple weeks and there were quite a few Akinz sunglasses spottings at the Copper closing weekend.

Shannon Johnson of Shayboarder.com

Josh Satterfield

Akinz owner Suzanne with team skiers Brandon Krentz and Josh Satterfield

Check out all the photos from the party in our Facebook album.