Japanuary living up to the hype in early 2017. Photo: Bob Plumb You have a decent social media following, almost 40,000 followers on Instagram. Do you use this platform to share any type of message? That’s tricky—It feels like everyone in snowboarding just says the same shit anyway. Obviously, we have Drink Water, which is a mes-sage in itself. But we’re not lobbying for government involvement or anything, we’re just trying to give kids a perspective of what we think is cool. More specifically, I have a really hard time promoting certain environmental legislation. I put a psycho amount of miles on my car every year. I use a shitload of jet fuel flying in both airplanes and helis. I snowmobile a ton, I go to cat operations and I eat meat. To me, it reads as pretty hypocritical when environmental messaging is used to market disposable products. A big-name rider might have more of a voice to preach good ideas to kids who might like those ideas, and they can blossom into huge things that could change the world. I totally understand and respect that perspective, but I also think it’s hard when it feels like some of it is just completely hot air. Like how certain people have a lot of environmental messaging on their Instagram accounts, then they’re flying around the world on vacation and for their job, using all these resources. Basically, I’m just saying practice what you preach. If you’re at a Toyota event driving trucks around on the beach for fun and “mar-keting,” don’t follow up that post with some “Earth Day” heartfelt bullshit. It’d be like if I was promoting Drink Water while also taking money from energy drink companies. Of course, most people can agree that promoting drinking water is a good thing, and, of course, promoting environmental awareness can also be a good thing. But there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in promoting [environmental responsibility] when it’s not something you actually practice. Is snowboard culture one-sided in its beliefs? I’m weirded out that our culture seems to always be promoting and supporting more government regulations and laws while the whole basis of snowboarding is to pursue life on your own terms and be free. It’s good to surround yourself with people that have different ideas and have a debate with them, I think. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat—I just look at the government as a poorly run business that people continue to shop at. When my brother interned at the White House, and then worked for the Federal Government, he was disgusted to see people milk the system and waste taxpayer dollars. So, he bailed—quit and moved back west. It was sad for me to see that, because making a difference through politics was his passion and life goal, the same way snowboarding is mine. Why did you start Drink Water? Drink Water started as a reaction to how big energy drinks were getting. It’s weird that these companies are now big brands and if you want to look like a pro surf, skate or snowboarder, you wear these energy drink stickers. Let alone the fact that [the energy drink companies] are selling terrible shit to kids. It seemed crazy that these companies started taking over the industry marketing-wise. [Austin Smith and I] started writing Drink Water as a joke on our boards, then Stephen basically came to us and made it all a reality and trade-marked everything. With his past work at USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development], he already saw access to clean water as a solvable global crisis. He said, “If you guys are going to be wear-ing shirts around saying ‘Drink Water,’ you’d kind of be jackasses to not have some back end going toward this problem.” That was really cool for Austin and I, because we didn’t really have that perspective at first—now we really care more about that than flipping off the energy drink companies. With the Rat Race, it seems like you said, “Let’s make a hell track and get everyone killed.” When we were diggers at High Cascade, we would build this thing right in front of our zone that was called “Hell Track.” It was a one-snowboard-wide whoop section. We would have 50 whoops and salt it until it was bulletproof ice. We would spend all day just trying to get to the end. Then we were like, “We should make this bigger, faster and longer.” The Rat Race grew out of that. I really don’t want anybody to get hurt, I just want to make it sporty enough to make everybody nervous. And through the race you guys are giving a lot to water.org. I’m proud that we donate money to Water.org. I don’t think we are better than anyone else because we do that. It feels good that the three of us—Stephen, Austin and I—have gotten it to where it is. The Rat Races alone have raised over $145,000, just through the snowboard community. We have a good time raising the money. We put eyeballs on Water.org to try to raise awareness for a profound problem across the world. No matter what your political views are, I think we should do what we can to positively affect other people, and this is our way of doing it, of practicing what we preach. 078 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 15.3 : Page 78
