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Apparently, shirts are for geeks

Daily Staff Writer

Editor’s note: Local snowboarder Rob Bak of Team Vail, who is competing in The Session today and Saturday at Golden Peak, is doing a rider’s journal for the Vail Daily. The following is a recap of Thursday.VAIL – I just got out of sitting at La Cantina with some of the CAPITA team here. We just had a corporate workout at the Vail Athletic Club, which consisted of the steam room and the hot tub and the steam room and the hot tub. That definitely got the blood flowing. I’ve got to say Jimmy at the Vail Athletic Club is the man. I have a little itch in my throat, so the steam room with the eucalyptus was good. I’ve been taking antibiotics for the last few days, but I’m doing all right. I’ve got a screwdriver in front of me right now, so I’m drinking my orange juice.Today was pretty fun. The CAPITA party last night at Art’s Bar in Vail was a lot of fun. There was some shirtless beer bonging going on. Apparently, shirts are for geeks. That’s the motto at Art’s Bar. It was a pretty funny night, and lo and behold, the box with the gifts for last night’s party showed up at my house this morning.

Tomorrow night at Art’s Bar, Bud Light is sponsoring a party and there are going to be some giveaways. So, that should be pretty happening there again. After a lot of fun last night, everybody slept in this morning because the schedule for today was pretty mellow. We got into town around noon after my box and my new board showed up at my front door. I’m riding a new board called “The Good Life.” It’s a 2005-06 board and it’s wicked awesome. It’s a 148 and it rocks hard. It was a lot of fun riding that board on the rails at The Session course. The rails today were pretty wicked, sweet, awesome, gnarly, rad – whatever you want to call them. The concept for this year’s course is pretty much the same. They have the same quarterpipe, but now there’s a vert-wall box on one corner of the quarterpipe at the top of the course. You’ve also got your down rail, your down/flat/down rail, and then there are two curved C boxes which are taking the place of the rollercoaster rail they had last year. On the left side, coming into the whole setup, there’s like a left-sided hip that you can hip into the quarterpipe and back down to the rails. Or, you can do like I did and try to run the whole thing up to the quarterpipe and run into an 8-foot wall of ice. I didn’t do it right and I fell hard. Hopefully, I’ll get it tomorrow for the real contest. I’ve got some tricks that will be fun. I will admit, there were some guys throwing down today.

I think I saw Shaun White do a double backflip to lip slide to 900 rewind tailpress on the down/flat/down box. It was crazy. Everybody was freaking out. Luckily, me and the CAPITA guys didn’t show up in dresses or skull outfits this time for the contest. We wore dresses at a team challenge in the spring and that was kind of weird. It’s tough when you’re doing flip tricks and the dress goes over your head. I think Mr. Potato Head was there, too.Yeah…He was hanging out with Yoda right at the end of the course. If you did the right trick – a backside blunt, fakie kickflip out to revert – you could totally give high-fives to both of them. Mr. Potato Head had his shred gear on and it was pretty dope. All in all, there was a lot of good stuff going on today. The sun came out and everybody had fun. There were some people hiking the rails course and some people doing laps in the park. I want to say good job to Stephen Laterra and the rest of the park crew at Vail for getting the park together.



After the rail practice and photo shoot, we all went to the rider’s meeting in the VIP tent, where they gave us our bibs and there was some pizza and some water. We had some fun with that. Tonight we’re going to watch Napoleon Dynamite. I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t know what’s going on. Everybody’s talking about it and I hadn’t even seen an advertisement about it until yesterday. And that was for the DVD! I’m a loser. I live in a little box. I think I’m gonna freak out when I see it. The last thing I want to say is that we’ve got to give my roommate, Brian Peters, a job. He just needs a job in town. He’s my roommate and he got fired from his previous place of employment recently. He can sell wine and move things. We call him the big, dumb animal. He’s not very smart, but he can lift big, heavy things. If anybody has got a job out there for my roommate, he needs to pay rent. He’s a struggling photographer. Without a steady income, I’m kind of worried about him. Rob Bak rides for CAPITA, Oakley, Team Vail, DC Shoes, Emagesnow.com and Colorado Chiropractic Sports Medicine.Vail Colorado


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