News From Osiris

Hanging with the Canadians.

John Lupfer and I started our journey taking a few flights from good ol’ SD and showing up in Vancouver, BC in less than four hours. I had talked to my homie and Canadian rider, Dustin Montie, to meet up and meeting up we did. After we dropped off our stuff at the hotel, we met up with Mike Scott our Canadian team and marketing main man and Jay Good our sales expert for some dinner at Earl’s. If you haven’t been to Earl’s while you were in Vancouver, then I recommend rolling there. Good Caesar drinks and Good times! Marius Syvanen and homie Ben Gore met up with afterwards as it was going to hit prime time. Since it was a Thirsty Thursday we proceeded to go to this bar, the Bourbon, to grab some drinks. Color Magazine puts on skate nights there every Thursday. Let me tell you, the Canadians are not scared to have a good time and keep everyone in a good state of mind. I was thinking to myself “this is only the first night, Damn Son!” It ended up being a super fun night with minimal hijinx. All in all, good stuff!

The next day was practice for the street and a bowl competitions. The contest was held at a skatepark called Metro, right outside of downtown Vancouver. A fun fact about Dustin Montie is that he’s the first person I know with an adult beverage sponsor. He told us at the beginning of the day that his drink sponsor’s party bus was going to be at the contest the whole weekend. Lets just say that people were not bummed that the bus was there. As for the practice, everyone was taking it pretty easy. Lupfer was skating well all day and Marius was mostly in the bowl and even skating the rail a bit on the street section. Dustin and Mitch Barette, our other Canadian rider, were killing it on and off the course all day. The bowl contest started at 3 and Marius entered it and came up on 150 bucks for this quarter pipe to quarter pipe transfer. Gnarly! It was also fun watching Alex Chalmers rolling around in the there as well. The second day was mellow and everyone was having a good time just skating all over the park. There was an after party that people attended but Montie and I decided to stay back and watch the Olympics. USA was doing well last I checked.

Saturday, the day of the street contest, was finally here. The Canadian forecasters were claiming 90% chance of rain and with that being said, we took our time getting to the park. Dustin and Mitch were skating in the 7th heat while John was in the 8th and Marius was in the 12th. John, Dustin, and I showed up while the 3rd heat was going on and I would like to say that most Canadian skaters skate pretty damn well. I found this out after watching the rest of the contest. As the 7th heat came around, Dustin jumped in there and went ahead and cab back lipped and nollie flip back lipped the five rail both first try. Lups and I were pretty amazed! Mitch was also skating well. Right behind Dustin, Mitch back nosegrinded the whole manual ledge and consistently back over crooked the five rail. Lupfer was in the following heat. John was cruising around casually with some long manuals and ended his heat with a feeble to back smith on the straight and then down flatbar. Marius got bumped from 12th heat to the 9th heat and mashed around the course full speed and had a lot of fun cruising. By the end of the contest it started raining pretty hard, but it didn’t stop the kids from skating. The best trick was in the rain down the bigger rail and Mitch got an over crooks on it and almost had the back tail bigspin. Even though the rain came down it was still a rad contest all in all. Everyone skated well and Dustin and Mitch even came out with a couple of hundred between them. Dustin ended up getting 8th and Mitch got 11th. Good shit guys! I can easily say it was a great inaugural Vancouver DamnAm.

For the rest of the trip we ended up skating around town and even got to see Pineapple Express. Vancouver is a very beautiful city and has a lot to offer on and off your board. I want to thank Dustin Montie aka Lieutenant Dan for being such a good host and a special thanks to Mike Scott, Craig and Jay Good. Thanks for a great trip guys, and we’ll see you next year!