We left around 10am after stopping by Starbucks of course. Anyone who knows me knows how addicted to coffee I am so there will be many more references throughout this post. The skies were blue, the road was clear, and we had my one and only Highlander set at a comfortable 78mph cruise control.Tthe speed limit is 75) With about 500 miles of open road in front of us, we thought it was necessary to set out at a diligent pace. Fortunately for me, I just got an I phone, thanks to my stepdad, so I had lots of entertaining things going on during the drive. I have become an instragram user as well so we took a ton of pictures.

Upon arriving, I was devastated to see how little snow there was in Tahoe, I had heard there wasn’t any, but it’s hard to believe until you see it! We checked into our place at the base of Northstar, and got to bed early to get ready for training the next morning.

Another beautiful spring-like morning in California had us up on the mountain around 9am. The course wasn’t open until 10, so we had a bit to check out the other features on the mountain. The rail line that was setup before you got to the course was really fun to play around, and get warmed up on, but the course was the place to be if you were trying to ride park.

I had a great day training on the course, and felt pretty good. Considering I didn’t compete until Friday, I didn’t want to push it too hard. A few more days of fun in the sun and Friday had already snuck up on me.

It was a crisp bluebird morning the day of the 13th, and the course was incredibly fast. I had no complaints about the course which consisted of; two options up top, on the right was a down box to a flat-down box, and to the left was a down rail, to a really fun wall ride. To finish it off was two jumps. I chose to hit the left side because the judges had determined it was the “more difficult” line of the two. I had a blast weaving my way through the course, and got two laps in before the contest started.

I was 3rd to last in the heat of about 30-40 girls, so I had a long time to try to stay warm, and focused. Being so early in the morning, I knew people would have trouble putting a run down due to the shady conditions on the course, so I played it pretty safe on my first run, and qualified 2nd for finals.
When finals started the top 6 ladies were gathered at the top around 11am the sun was just peeking out around the trees to light up the course for us. Again I was 4th to drop so I had to stay entirely focused, and warm while waiting for my other competitors to take their runs.

I stomped both of my runs, but in the end I played it just a little too safe. I took third on the podium behind some very talented girls that were really fun to watch. Lots of respect to all of the other women throwing down on this course, it was wildly entertaining! I did my research before awards and found there was a Starbucks conveniently located right in the village where awards were being held so once again, I got some coffee.
We left early the next morning to head back to Park City, arriving a little later than expected we were both so tired at the end we had to hit the hay. Now, off to to Breck for some training, big jumps, and S.I.A.

Thanks to everyone at the REV TOUR and NORTHSTAR for putting on a wonderful event, as well as a thanks to all of my sponsors for your support (Gatorade, Capix, Akinz, Fydelity)

And one special thanks to ECHELON SNOWBOARDS for making this trip possible for me!

I am competing in the USASA rail jam series for 2011/2012. USASA has hosted two events in South Lake Tahoe so far. The first competition was held off of HWY 50 by Reagan beach. A lot of locals came out to compete and have a great time! On 12/3/11 twenty five competitors came to Tahoe for the 1st USASA rail jam series. I took 2nd place in the event. The second USASA rail jam was hosted this weekend 1/6/12, this event also was a competition to get an invite to the Winter X Games in Aspen Co. I took 1st place, Natasha Sagucka took 2nd, and Julianne Brackett took 3rd. Along with taking 1st place I took runner up for the invite to the Aspen winter X Games. I hope that you can all make it to the 3rd event on 2/3/12 go to Usasa.org

(photo by Nathan Vetter)

I did two competitions this weekend the other being the Volcom Peanut Butter Rail jam. Volcom’s 1st stop of the Peanut Butter and rail jam was at Sierra Resort in Tahoe. The set up was a lot of fun: a down flat down, pole jam to pole bonk, and a down rail. There was a lot of great talent that showed up for event. Everyone gave it their all! Here are the results of the competition: Girls: 1st Rebeccas Bruce, 2nd Fancy Rutherford, 3rd Julianne Bracket, 4th Claire Hewitt-Demeyer, and 5th Tasha Sagucka. The top five finalists of each division got an invite to the championship in Mammoth Ca, April 21, 2012 for a winning of $20,000.

I want to thank my sponsors: Flow Snowboards, Akinz Boardwear, Essi Eyewear, and Shred Betties Magazine.

Tandem foxes design by local artist, Allie Ogg, with a small center back print of the commemorative bike to work 2011 tree. To help with the temp on your morning commute, we decided to make the bike to work shirt a bike to work sweatshirt in addition to the tshirt. $4 of each sweatshirt sale and $2 of each tshirt sale will be donated to the Fort Collins Bikes program to help improve your daily commute in the future.

If you find a mini beanie, you will win either a $5 off coupon, $10 off coupon, free t-shirt, free t-shirt with beanie purchase, or free custom beanie. If you take a picture with your mini beanie and send it to us at suzanne@akinz.com then you’ll also be entered to win a free hoodie. Keep an eye out around town and on our Facebook Page for hints to nab one.

Party details:

When: Thursday, October 13th 6:00pm – 10:00pm
What: Sales, deals, and free bevvies (for those 21 and up with a FB rsvp).
Why: To celebrate the start of winter and our new permanent custom beanie creation station.

Please RSVP on Facebook: Beanie Bash Facebook Event

and please ride your bike if you plan on drinking.

We’re having a little fun this season with hand dying and hand distressing if you haven’t noticed. And there’s more to come, but the biggest experiment we are launching this winter are our women’s logo shirt for the season. These t-shirt dresses have a distressed wings logo print on the lower right, but the best thing about them is we are making them in limited edition colorways.

All of these are going to be hand dyed in small batches (think as many as you can fit in a washing machine) and then printed. That way we can play around with the colors more than if we made just a couple colorways. After dying, we’ll be choosing an ink color and printing them with the distressed Akinz wings logo.

Since these are a limited edition experiment, once we run out of a colorway, they are gone, and we will move onto a new fun color combination. So, if you see a color combo that you fall in love with, grab it when you can. The first batches of these we did are purple with white, pink with white, yellow with red, and blue with orange (as seen in the picture above).

These also layer really well with our acid wash hoodie dresses and color block hoodie dresses (to be released in October). Keep an eye on our womens clothing section this winter for new colorways.

You take your car to work and I’ll take my board! from kimkirch on Vimeo.

HoodLife with Erika Vikander from Alice Owens on Vimeo.

“Oregon is truly one of the most majestic places I have ever traveled to. Low clouds, rolling green mountains, thick forest, cold rivers, and amazing hot springs just to name a few things that took place while I was there this summer. I did a ton of snowboarding too, but thats not what I made this edit about. This is more for fun to show what the lifestyle is like up there when you’re NOT riding. And let me tell you, it’s a lifestyle I could definitely get used to.” — Erika “The Viking” Vikander

Woodsy Shenanigans with Erika, Jonny and JP from erika Vikander on Vimeo.

One of our favorite items from the upcoming fall/winter line is our acid wash hoodie dress. Each one is acid washed by hand, so the variations in pattern and coloring between each one is absolutely unique. We kept them pretty simple by letting the colors speak for themselves and just adding a print of our wings on the lower back left. I wore mine nonstop last winter ever since we made the first samples and they seem to be everyone else’s favorite too since my team riders keep nabbing them from me everytime they see me. (Evidenced below by the pic of Erika Vikander (left) and Claire Hewitt-Demeyer (right).

And the ones we sent to Woodward at Copper as an early release for their summer camps sold out in the first few weeks of camps. I just sent Woodward a new box of freshly acid washed hoodies, so if you are lucky enough to live close to The Cage at Woodward at Copper, go snag one while they’ve got them. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait til they hit our site around September. Although it seems like everyone’s favorite is the aqua acid wash colorway, it will also be available in fuchsia, a navy-pink acid wash, and bleachout black.