It’s finally over. The Freeskier Ten Year Tour concluded yesterday with our triumphant return to Boulder, Colorado after nearly two grueling, booze filled weeks on the open road. For those not familiar with the 10 Year Tour, let me give you a quick rundown before I go into the dirty details on what actually went down…
Background
We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary and in celebration of this momentous event we chartered a 45 foot, $2,000,000.00 rockstar tour bus for two weeks. We’re hitting the open road thanks to the support from the folks from Spyder, Skull Candy, Red Bull, 888 Vodka, 48STRAIGHT and Inkmonstr. Here are the stages of our trip..
1. Boulder, CO > Aspen, CO for Winter X Games.
2. Aspen, CO > Las Vegas, NV for SIA.
3. Las Vegas, NV to Copper, CO for the US Freeskiing Open.
4. Copper, CO to Boulder, CO for detox.
And now, for the story…
Stage 1: Boulder to Aspen
All aboard for Aspen. The Freeskier staff packs up and heads to Aspen. Clothes, skis, electronics, interns… Everyone on. Of course, what trip to A-Town would be complete without a stop off at the local Coors brewery & distribution plant to stock the bus up. Typically, when you load up for a road trip you buy a few cases. Right? Wrong. We got so much booze that Coors had to use a forklift to load the bus. True story, check the video.
Times were a bit hectic, we had our crew spread all over. Harvey, Mike and Shay were at pipe finals while the rest of the crew was getting the Freeskier party at the Hotel Jerome squared away. When the night was finally over we had our pipe podium, folks partied it up at the Jerome and the Freeskier bus was in full VIP mode for late night partying.
Over the next couple of days we covered the Slopestyle, King of Quarters and shot a bunch of footage for the TV show. Tanner won yet another event while Dumont pushed the boundaries of physics attempting to break a world record.
Stage 2: Aspen to Las Vegas
Originally, our plan was to leave for Las Vegas on Monday afternoon. You know, relax a little, get some turns in and then pile onto the bus late in the afternoon for the 8+ hour drive to Las Vegas. Unfortunately, due to a storm that was quickly moving in the last minute decision was made to leave during the mens snowboard pipe finals. Phone calls were made, troops were rallied and the Freeskier Staff along with Michael & Peter Olenick, John Symms, TJ Schiller, Scott Hibbert and Tyson Buldoc boarded for what would be one of the most drunken road trips of all time.
Thankfully the bus has dual satellite receivers and plasma televisions, we didn’t have to miss a single second of pipe finals. It didn’t take long for us to crack into the beers or 888 vodka either. Within a couple of hoursthe majority of our crew was smashed. Scott Hibbert was double fisting Coors Light, Pete and Michael were downing 888 vodka like it was going out of style, John Symms and Matt Harvey were entrenched in a heated Guitar Hero 3 tournament and I was somehow teetering on the line of sobriety. I’m willing to bet that Symms and Harvey have blisters, I didn’t see them emerge from the back of the bus during the entire 8 hour trip, nor did I hear the game turn off either.
As the hours ticked away, so did our supply of booze. Eventually, people started dropping. The first victim was Peter Olenick, he passed out during his turn at Guitar Hero. We woke him up for his solos, he crushed them and then immediately went right back to sleep. One by one people made their way to the bunks, couches, floor… Hell anywhere there was room someone was passed out. Just ask Harvey, he was under a wicker chair in the editing room.
Eventually, we made our way to Vegas. According to the timestamp on my digicam, we all passed out around 6:30 AM. Just one hour shy of our arrival in the city of sin. Dang, we almost made it. In retrospect, it was probably a good idea to get some shuteye. Seeing how we’d be up really late the next night.
