ReNo said:
You do much snowboarding AtM?
I would consider myself a beginner. I've gone snowboarding a couple times each winter for the past two years, doing greens and blues and normally either borrowing gear or renting it at the slopes. The rental costs add up, and I decided that I like the sport enough to invest in the equipment. I bought a season pass to the local mountain near my school (20 minutes away) and so all I need now besides snow is a helmet. :razz:
The coolest thing about buying the snowboarding stuff yesterday is that Burton's first store was in Burlington, and so now it's their American headquarters. Burlington is only a 50 minute drive from here, so that's where I headed to get my gear. At first I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find their offices/the store because all I had was some mapquest directions, but then I'm driving by this building with an old chair lift strung out across the parking lot and a huge skatepark in the back...
Anyway, I walk in and I see this huge display of Burton snowboards mounted on the wall, year by year for the past 10 years or so. The store is just amazing... they have snowboards under glass displays on the floor, they have snowboards for sale that are signed by the Burton World Team members... and in fact there were some Burton World Team members skating outside, and in the middle of my purchase they all walked in and just sat down on the couches to shoot the s**t.
The salesmen bring their dogs to work, so there's a couple of dogs with names like "Titan" loping around the store following their masters.
The guy that helped me for about an hour and a half has been snowboarding for 14 years, and I imagine he's only 27 or so. Apparently he has a metal plate in his wrist from when he fell off a 45 foot tabletop.
There's a curved snowboard display which has a long and shorter version of every single snowboard in the Burton catalogue, ranging from the 300 dollar starter board to the 950 dollar Vapor, plus some boards you can't find on the site like customs and stuff designed for specific riders like Kazuhiro Kokubo. Everything is just really sweet. It's like a mecca of snowboarding, and I'm just a beginner so I felt like most of the experience was lost on me. I'll make a trip back during my 5 year college reunion or something, when hopefully I have some more experience, so that I can actually appreciate it all.
Wow that was a book.
Edit: The only thing I don't like about my board is it has a spinner.
It's the model and the price I wanted, so I think I can forgive that one aspect. :smile: