November 30, 2006

Watch Travis Rice Live in Germany at Air and Style

Posted by Webmonkey at 09:01 AM on November 30, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 28, 2006

Demo a Lib Tech in Sweden this weekend!

Posted by Webmonkey at 08:55 AM on November 28, 2006 in Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 18, 2006

Danny Zapalac NY Photography Exhibit

Good day.

Here is a glimpse of the opening that
occurred at the Wooster Arts Space in NY.
An enthusiastic crowd made for a
fun evening.

Enjoy.
Danny

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (2)

November 17, 2006

Thanks Markku Koski

Markku has moved on, we thank him for a decade of ripping for Lib Tech Snowboards and wish him the best.

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:15 AM on November 17, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (4)

November 15, 2006

Downtown Throwdown

Posted by Webmonkey at 01:36 PM on November 15, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14, 2006

Stevens Pass Demo Days

Nows your chance to Demo Lib Tech Snowboards in the North West!

Posted by Webmonkey at 03:15 PM on November 14, 2006 in Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 09, 2006

The Ridge

POW

Posted by Webmonkey at 09:40 AM on November 9, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 08, 2006

Travis Rice for President

Posted by Webmonkey at 02:16 PM on November 8, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (5)

November 07, 2006

Travis Wins Icer Air

Travis Rice is no stranger to urban sketchy big air contests. He made the trip last weekend worth while, taking home 10,000 and the new FJ Cruiser. Photos by Tim Zimmerman

Story here:

VIDEO

This person is very happy the fire department made the event put up the saftey net.

Posted by Webmonkey at 01:02 PM on November 7, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (11)

November 06, 2006

Hollywood Lightweights Next BIG SHOW

Posted by Webmonkey at 06:47 PM on November 6, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (0)

Travis Future 2.3

Lib Tech Ripper, Travis Rice plants a very nice pipe preGrandPrix. Photo by Lib Tech Photographer, Tim Zimmerman.

Future Magazine 2.3

Posted by Webmonkey at 04:07 PM on November 6, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (4)

November 02, 2006

focus on TIM ZIMMERMAN

TIM SHOOTS ALL DIGITAL PHOTOS FOR US, RIDES A FLATLAND BMX BIKE, WILL TELL YOU A THING OR TWO ABOUT COLOR CORRECTION, HANDLES ANY I.T. PROBLEMS YOU MIGHT HAVE, AND HAS 226 WORDS TO DESCRIBE LIGHT. GET THE PICTURE...

How/who/what introduced you into snowboard photography?
Well, here’s the deal: I suck at snowboarding. Once I came to that realization I figured out that I wanted to be involved in any way I could even though I’d never be a rock star shredder. I was working in custom photo labs for a few years and decided to give shooting snowboarding a try. My first inspiration came from Mark Gallup & Eric Berger’s photography in Transworld Snowboarding. I dreamed that some day I’d be able to make the kind of photos they were making then. I’ll let you know when I’m finally able! Option rep Chad Perrin was the first person to see any potential in my photography and invited me to come up to Vermont from Pennsylvania to shoot the US Open. I have to give him the credit for really encouraging me to go for it full time.
So are you making a living solely from your photography work?
There are no chrome 22’s spinning on the Dakota but yea, I’m living solely from photography.

Where do you live?
I live in a 2003 Dodge Dakota but I pay rent in Mammoth Lakes, CA.

What kind of photo equipment do you use? And what kind would you use if you could?
I use Nikon digital equipment and Apple computers. Oh yeah, Adobe basically rules my life. If I had my way I’d have a 40 megapixel 35mm digital rig with a 10-400mm f/1.2 zoom lens that weighed less than my snowboard. A fleet of G5’s maxed to the gills would be nice too.

Still vs. sequence...?
Stills, stills, stills! Most things that happen in snowboarding can be most accurately and artistically portrayed by shooting a still shot. There are times when sequences work though. Tech lines or tricks can sometimes be best served by shooting a sequence. The old, “Standing on the side of a park jump while holding the button down” crap is so played out. If you want to do that you should just buy a movie camera.
Digi vs. film...? That’s a can of worms question, but for me it’s digital all the way. There’s no look I can’t get by shooting digital.
RGB vs. CMYK...? Really Good Beer is much better than Creamy Milk Yolk Ketchup.

How many cover shots this year? Ever?
I got the cover of Snowboard Magazine this year with a photo of Kyle Clancy. I’ve had the cover of a few magazines in my time.
What Lib Tech riders did you get to shoot with this year?
This year I got to spend time with Travis Rice, Jakob Wilhelmson, Eric Jackson, Sammy Luebke & Curtis Cizek.

Who do you want to shoot with in the future?
Lando, if that bitch calls me back. Shooting an elusive Lynn method would also be wondrous.

Funnest trip this year?
That’s a hard one to nail down but I’ll have to say that filming Eric Jackson with Standard Films was truly a pleasure. Those
guys do it right.

Posted by Webmonkey at 12:30 PM on November 2, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (8)

Carl Smith

06/07 TRS art by Carl Smith

So Carl, how did you get hooked up with doing graphics for Lib Tech this year?
Jamie recommended me.

What is your art background?
I have always been involved in art. I have worked professionally since 17 & have shown fine art internationally for the past 6 years. I love art.

What was the inspiration for the art you submitted?
This piece was very characteristic of the line paintings I was doing in 2001. Life and Death was the theme.

Does it (the art) mean anything in particular?
The main element in the art is a skull with an embryo in its eye. Confronting death to see life.

Other artists you admire?
Mike Parillo, Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, Alfons Mucha & many many others...

Hobbies besides art?
I am fascinated with any new locations and experiences. I surf, snowboard, and I enjoy the everyday adventure that life is with my wife (and son to be!!!).

Posted by Webmonkey at 11:00 AM on November 2, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nick Russian

A SNOWBOARD IS MORE THAN A SNOWBOARD

A SNOWBOARD SHOULD BE ALIVE, SEXY, BEAUTIFUL AND A LITTLE BIT EVIL, LIKE WE ALL ARE. NICK RUSSIAN’S ARTISTIC VISION OF WHAT A SACRED SNOW TOY SHOULD BE, HAS BEEN EVOLVING FOR 20 YEARS.
ARTISTS LIKE RYAN DAVIS, CARL SMITH AND MATT FRENCH HAVE JOINED NICK RUSSIAN, MIKE PARILLO, & JAMIE LYNN TO CARRY ON THE TRADITION THIS YEAR...

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:55 AM on November 2, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (2)

Matt French

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:50 AM on November 2, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (0)

NORM NELSON, CAUGHT IN A MASSIVE BRAINSTORM...

FROM THE DEEP SOUTH OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, NORM NELSON, HEAD OF LIB TECH’S environMENTAL DIVISION, DEEP FRIES HIS LUNCH, THEN BURNS THE GREASE TO GET HOME:

HEY NORM, RUMOR HAS IT THAT YOU AND OLSON HAVE A LIB TECH BIODIESEL STATION IN THE WORKS?
Yeah, Mike and I have been running biodiesel in our vehicles for about four years now... since right around the start of the current war in Iraq. When we started, someone would smell one of our rigs drive past them in a parking lot, then ask us about it, and we’d explain to them that it was biodiesel... but nobody knew what we were talking about. Nowadays, there’s a lot of publicity surrounding biodiesel, I’m actually surprised at the press it’s gotten... so people are a lot more hip to it, and they see our biodiesel bumper stickers, so we’re always getting asked “Where can I buy some?”
Four years ago, biodiesel was maybe $2.25 a gallon and regular petroleum dinosaur diesel was maybe $1.25 a gallon, but we were buying biodiesel anyway, just on principal... everyone thought we were crazy. This week, biodiesel is $2.95 a gallon and dino diesel is $3.30 a gallon, so now it makes even more sense. Biodiesel isn’t available locally out here on the Olympic Peninsula, so Mike and I started off by buying it a tankful at a time when we were visiting our Seattle factory... one of the biggest biodiesel retailers in Seattle is in Ballard, really close to Mervin’s Seattle shop. Since then, Mike and I formed our own co-op. We bought a little tanker trailer and a couple of totes and some metal storage tanks, so nowadays we buy the B99 in Seattle and tow it out here on our own. We have our own pump and we sell the biodiesel at cost to anyone that wants to buy it, anyone can join the co-op.

DOES LIB TECH MAKE THEIR OWN BIODIESEL? IS THERE A MAGIC SOYBEAN FIELD AROUND THE CORNER FROM THE ALTERED GENETIC FOREST?
No, we don’t yet make our own biodiesel, but we hope to soon... before the end of the year. I’ve started building a processor, but there are so many other projects... Mike’s busy inventing the best snowboards, narrow-ass snowboards, skateboards, surfboards, etc... and nope, there isn’t any magic soybean field out here... we don’t have the right climate here on the Olympic Peninsula for soybeans, it’s not hot enough. However, I have been talking with a local organic farm about growing mustard seed, it’s the best local crop for making biodiesel, other than algae. I think the future of biodiesel is in higher-yield crops like algae, not soy... but soy and the mustards like rapeseeds (canola) work for now and they are the most readily available, so that’s what the biodiesel we buy is made from. There are also two big biodiesel plants that are supposed to be built here on the peninsula, one of them will be one of the biggest in the US, so we’re stoked about that.

WHAT ELSE IS RUN BY LIB TECH BIODIESEL BESIDES YOUR GUYS’ CARS?
We’ve got some other people who are running it in their vehicles, landscape trucks and tractors, and we supply two of the local organic farms with biodiesel to run in their tractors. They like it a lot, especially on the planting tractors, since they are so close to that exhaust all day. We also burn biodiesel in our furnace here at the factory, so the factory is heated with it.

WHAT DOES IT (LIB TECH BIODIESEL) SMELL LIKE?
The biodiesel itself smells mild, sorta like vegetable oil. When you burn it in your vehicle, the exhaust makes you hungry... some people says it smells like french fries, others say it smells like popcorn or chinese food... I don’t know what it smells like, but both Mike and I love it... we’ll never go back.

SUSTAINABLE SNOWBOARD MANUFACTURING?
We try to do the best we can. We use lots of renewable, sustainable products in our manufacturing. Some of our polyethylene base materials are made from recycled polyethylene, milk jugs and bottles and stuff like that. Our wood cores are made from fast-growing renewable trees. We take the wood core sawdust and most of it gets donated to a local soil company, who composts it and mixes it into their topsoil. We also have a hydraulic press machine that we’re experimenting with that will compress the rest of the sawdust into hard pucks, like Presto-Logs, but shorter. We have an oil / wood burning furnace for the factory that I’d like to modify so it will automatically feed in the sawdust pucks and burn them cleanly... so we can help heat the factory with our wood waste. We’re also looking into generating some electricity with this stuff, either through small-scale steam or small biomass gasification units... I’m not sure yet... it takes a lot of research. Generating electricity is one thing, but the easiest thing to do is to use less electricity in the first place. Scott & Daylin, our facilities guys have been working with our local utility company to do conservation methods in our factory... upgrading factory lighting and trying to optimize the big loads like the air compressors and such. I recently took a class on utility-interactive photo-voltaic systems, so hopefully in the near future we will have a grid-tied system with some solar PV panels on our Marketing / Art Department building and we’ll be able to sell the excess electricity back to our utility... we’ll see, little by little.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LATEST HYDRO CAR ADVENTURE?
Well, if I told you, I’d have to kill you. Ha ha ha! No, it’s sorta out-there kinda stuff... I have a friend that’s a mechanic and he’s working on running engines off of water. He stops by my office every couple of days and bounces ideas off of me, and I help him source materials... we’ve given him lots of surplus plastics and stuff, and we’ve cut parts for his projects on our CNC knife cutter and things like that. He’s working on about five different things right now... some of them are pretty straightforward, like electrolyzers that produce e-gas (hydrogen / oxygen) on demand, and then feed propane-style carbs on regular car engines... but others are kinda outside mainstream thinking, like Joe cells and stuff like that. I don’t know much about it, but I’m all for it! Most of my vehicles burn biodiesel, but I have a couple of small tractors and a portable sawmill that has a VW motor, and they all burn gasoline... so I’d love to switch them over to hydrogen, water, ethanol, whatever... build tractors, not tanks...

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:15 AM on November 2, 2006 in Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

We Miss You Tommy

Every coin has two sides and sometimes it needs only a second to get to the other side. We all love what we’re doing, we enjoy every step of our lives, and we all have a dream. Tommy Brunner is one of us.
He was a snowboarding pioneer, riding for more than 20 years all around the globe, setting new freestyle and freeride standards for the next generations. He was a multi talented person – snowboarder, surfer, climber and artist, but mostly a true person and real friend. He died last spring during an avalanche accident. He left this world with his strongest passion in his beloved mountains.
We will miss his smile, but we will feel his energy every time we go ride. Tommy is free, free of this world and we all will meet him some day, but not yet.
Thank you Tommy for your time you spent with us.
Peace, Love, Unity.
~Martin Cernic

Posted by Webmonkey at 10:10 AM on November 2, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its Snowing!

Posted by Webmonkey at 09:41 AM on November 2, 2006 in Rippers | Permalink | Comments (0)

Art Show at Sno Con Tonight

Posted by Webmonkey at 09:07 AM on November 2, 2006 in Artists | Permalink | Comments (0)