Allright, so most of you have probably heard of this weird fridge thing that goes on in Japan and the UK. People cramming up in massive lines to ride a 600-foot slope. Luckily summertime puts ordinary people in a less snowfocused mindstate so we can take over and reign indoors.

Oh, I forgot to tell you I'm not from either one of the aforementioned countries. Actually I'm from Holland, you know, that place with tulips, the grass and of course those skin-showing ladies with little to reveal in the redlight district. Sweet old Amsterdam. Or maybe not. It's kinda sad to see how little people know about other countries untill they've been there in person. I guess it's not something you can blame people for thinking, cause it's not like we all have rich parents or find inventive ways to discover something a little more out of our own, familiar ways. Yeah, I guess this is supposed to be about some thing where you glide down some snowcovered soil standing sideways. Or in my case an old garbagepile with a big fridge built on top of it. So I'll stick to that for now.

I may let it sound like it's a crappy thing that we ride indoors, but to be honest, everytime I go there I'm as happy as a little kid getting one out of the cookiejar. I mean, it's pretty amazing that we can ride 365 days a year don't you think? It might only be a tiny slope where you spend maybe 10 percent riding and the rest with a steel pole between your legs, but as long as it puts a smile across our faces I'm not complaining (that sounded pretty gay, but I think you get my point).

I help this skate/snowboardshop called Forties (cause they like those bumstyle bottles of gold they got in the States so much) organising a night every second sunday where we place our rails and boxes. We also install a nice soundsystem, get the beats and our beatup leather chillcouches rolling and let our local scene do the magic. So basically we have this local slope we shred to pieces on a weekly basis. It's an hour away from my house but it's the closest one. (oh yeah an hour doesn't seem like a big deal for all of you americans but in our flat pancakecountry you're halfway through driving for an hour). Now we had some stuff made that people got excited about, but since them corporate schmucks running that joint aren't willing to invest anything in not one of our ideas we gave up hope and just run with the ropes we got. Bunch of conservative, anti-freshness haters caring mainly 'bout the euro sign in their eyes. It frustrates me cause if this place had different people on the wheel we'd turn that place into a kingdom.

Enough bitchin' so let's get down to the point why I started typing this story in the first place.
Besides our dome there's a lot more of these indoorshredfacilities that me and my friends sometimes undertake trips to. Our place is probably one of the weaker ones but probably has the best vibe. All the other fridges have better rails so every now and then we bring our spirits over to the highroller parks.

The one we went to on this special occasion is called Ice-Mountain and had been on the top of my must-visit list for quite some time now. It is to be found in a different country, namely Belgium. The waffle and beercountry for you all of you stereotype lovers. Another thing, not every kid here (kid: 16-24 years of age, me being one since I'm 20) owns a car so it's crucial that we can borrow someone's parents car. And since they're discouraging people driving cars here everyone rides a small unit with the best gasmileage cause the petrol is damn expensive. You see where I'm getting at? Putting five guys and shredsticks into one of them little thingies is quite the challenge. We arrived after three painful hours and the first thing we noticed was that this one was actually built on poles so it looked pretty massive. Excited as housemomma preppin' herself for the 'Bold and the Ugly' we changed clothes in the lot and quickly ran inside. After the necessary payments we made our way inside where the snow was cracking under our boots. Coming from a 30 degree summer day it's always quite the shock when it's a shivering -5 degrees all of sudden (100 to 30 degrees in Fahrenheit or something like that). I'll sign for the cold though especially considering we now found ourselves in the surroundings of a handful of boxes, rails and jumps that were all shaped perfectly. Hot damn!

Strap in and let's shralp this place apart. On my first towroperide up I already saw some local kids killing it so that made me even more stoked.
Although I don't like comparing let me tell you this. When you're used to some improvised setups with mobile hits in front of them riding a fully shaped park is quite the pleasure. Although I'm not a freak I must admit I got a little aroused by the sighting of all this gewy goodness.

At the top you had a nice mellow roller for buttering and a downbox on the side. After that was a little jump, then a big jump or a big, skinny flatbar that was setup pretty sketchy, then you could still do a low, but fairly long flatbox followed by your boxflavor of choice. A stepdown, a flatdown or a c-box all setup perfectly. Oh yeah, I forgot this singlebar kinked rail that was 6 feet of the ground that no-one seemed to care about. We probably took somewhere near a hundred runs in the time we were there so you can imagine we had the time of our lives (not to sound like a Greenday fan or anything).

The last hour I spent some time taking pictures of my friends doing radical maneuvers since they want to show their grandkids what kind of tricky shit they did when they were young. Luckily one of them was so nice to ask me if I wanted a picture of myself as well and I could already smell my glorydays of summer on the snowboard-mag.com website so I gladly accepted his offer. Now I wouldn't want a claim to fame just for myself so I will include a bit of visual imagery from some of my fellow Dutchies as well. The weird thing was that right after I snapped a few the lights went off and the whole place went into discofevermode or some weird shit. They had all these red and purple lights going about and I felt right back in that one dirty city in my own country.

I could tell you some more about how chill it was afterwards hanging with some of the local kids and how we all drank Jupiler and ate waffles from Brussels but then I'd be making shit up and that'd be one hell of a shame. In reality we drove back in a hot and humid car with dirty shredgear spread all over the place having one of my littlest friends sitting on my lap and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way...

the author performing somesort of slide