Snow Flakes Are Falling On My Head. My Next Test And “Adventure-Preneur” Mission Is Upon Me…
I am writing this post for two reasons.
1. I am giddy with excitement to go snowboarding. It’s almost here, snow is falling and I am coming back from a year away from the snow due to a blown out ACL. Business is also going better than ever so I am getting new equipment (board, boots, bindings that are long over due).
2. After going over my blog and looking at lots of other highly successful blogs, I have found a new plug in I wanted to test called aperture. You’ll see some super cool little nija tricks in this post, and you may want to use them… yourself, so I’ll share my thoughts on them with you. Read on for cool snowboard tricks, apps, places to ride, etc. And some stealthy blog super tactics.
Stuff To Get You Stoked On Snowboarding! Yay!
I’ve found a bunch of cool little apps for my iPhone, blogs to read and other cool snowboard related stuff. And, I’m on the search for a snow mobile, with the goal of being able to ride at a minimum of three days per week. (I don’t ride full days anymore, not very often anyway)
The Adventure This Year:
Ride a lot. And get lots of powder days. And use a snowmobile to go deep into the back country. And go on a trip to Whistler, hopefully a heli-shred session in AK (Alaska) or down under in late July in (NZ). I know it’s a bit ridiculous, but you have to understand who I am, and how long I have been playing in the snow. (Oh and I’d like to re-upgrade my camera set up and get a decent video camera again so we can make more movies, I have lot’s of friends who are really good, and I used to actually get paid sometimes to shoot snowboard photos when I was 100% focused on photography.)
Here’s My Old PHOTOs+Action = PHaction, Blog. (and here is… maybe, a stealthy use of aperture.)
Why Snowboard/How So Much?
Simple really. If you have ever read flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi you’ll understand the renewing power of doing something that get’s you into flow. For me that is often snowboarding, plus I live in snowboard heaven, and it just brings to gether so many good things I love, friends, photography, adventure, and time outdoors.
How I ride makes it work… I use to be into jumps and stuff. And now after knee surgeries, broken wrists and discovering that I am just not that good at some of it, I’ve changed things up.
1- I like to ride a lot more often, for less time. It helps that I can go from my front door to the chair lift in 45 minutes or so. And it only takes a few good runs to satisfy me.
2- I like to focus on riding cool stuff, steep stuff, cliff, and things that generally don’t have the same chances of hurting me.
Anyway, that’s enough about my snowboard adventure and stuff. Here’s some cool gadgets and things I recommend if you’ll be riding this year… And yes this stuff works for skiers too.
Season Pass To Snowbird: first time having a pass there, one of the greatest mountains ever to ride, so I figured I’d spend a winter there, searching for powder and steep lines. (I mainly put that in so I could try aperture, try clicking on the word snowbird and see what happens… The point is to enhance your blog posts with content, but without driving a reader away from the page… I guess we all like to think that the amount of time a reader spends on our site is indicative of the quality…)
PS: If you watched the you tube clip (click on snowbird) I included in the link above, you’ll see avalanche control guys… watch this video about that.
Otter Box: The best way I have found to make sure you get apple care and protect your phone. I recently upgrades to the 3Gs, I cracked the screen on my other iPhone, so this time I wanted to make sure nothing happened, after resisting a case for more than a year I bought this for snowboarding so that I keep my phone water free, and don’t void the warranty. These things are bullet proof.
The North Face Snow Report App (pictured at the top of this post): I looked at about 5 different snow report apps and this was by far the best. Layout, GPS and best of all it syncs to avalanche reports. It’s also free.
Some Inspiration: I love snowboard movies. And lately I’ve been loving the big mountain rider, Jeremy Jones Blog. Here’s an amazing clip from his new movie, “Deeper.”
The Aperture Plug In…
What do you think of the cool little pop up links in this post? I think it’s kind of cool, and it makes it fast to add reference material that helps readers understand a post. I am not sure what the SEO ramifications are, it seems that you might be leaking page rank. I’ll have to look at the code.
Action Items From This Post:
1. Try the aperture plug in… and check out some of the bigger sites that use it. ( You have to download it from their site, you can’t find it by searching from within wordpress
2. Pick an adventure or something you are really excited about doing over the next few months and work towards it. What kind of time/income would you need to create to make that a reality?
I broke down my snowmobile goals and realized that I could have all the stuff I described in the earlier paragraphs if all I did was get 300 targeted visits a day to a new site I am setting up. You’d be surprised how little it takes.
3. Share your thoughts and comments below, if you’re a snow sports enthusiast, let me know below! Also, I would love to hear what you think of this aperture plug in….