'Tis the season. I'm sitting here at my computer in Big Bear on New Year's Eve, winding down from a pretty hectic past two weeks. To make a long story short, after flying back from Portland when we finished laying out Issue #4, it was full Christmas travel mode. My girlfriend and I were on a tight schedule, and we had lots to do when we arrived at my parent's house in Western New York.

When we arrived in Buffalo, after a long night of travelling and redirecting through other airports (thanks to the Denver storm), there was no snow on the ground, and me being the optimist, I looked like an idiot toting my board bag around. Hopefully it was going to snow in the next four days. My parents picked us up, and we headed to Niagara Falls.

Niagara is the spot for some good photos and stuff. It was windy as Hell there, but it didn't stop us from getting a few shots of the falls. My brother John and his girlfriend London made the trek from BroCal as well.

The second day, we woke up to a dusting of snow that melted almost instantly. Mother nature was toying with me.

There was one option for me, though. Luckily, Holiday Valley was open. They blew lots of good base snow a few weeks prior to our trip, and there was still some left over to shred. I called up some good old friends of mine who were in town as well, and we met up on Christmas Eve, about an hour and a half before closing time. I'd like to say thanks to Pat Morgan and the rest of the Marketing Departmant at Holiday for hooking us up with the passes.

Pat Morgan and I go way back. He and my brother were in the same grade growing up, and we used to skate in the summer, and snowboard every possible moment of the winter. Our paths overlapped on a regular basis.

There's nothing like getting together with old buddies and taking some runs with eachother. I was in town for Christmas, but I would still fly across country just to take a few runs with friends.

Myself, Pat Morgan, Eric Langman and Steve Pelc. Barely any snow in sight, but stoked as Hell!

Steve Pelc moved to SLC two years ago for school, and I'm sure that the surrounding resorts had nothing to do with his decisions. Regardless, the kid I used to ride with five seasons ago keeps getting better and better.

One of the greatest things about the East Coast is the quality of grass rides. No rocks, and nice, wet grass. I must mention that the base area of Holiday Valley is a golf course. My eyes were opened to fairway and tee-box quality grass. Amazing!

The next day was Christmas. We didn't have much planned, so it was a mellow day. Santa brought my girlfriend an engagement ring, and luckily she accepted. We're thinking of getting a dog now. Big step. An old Basher Christmas tradition was to go cross-country skiing in our woods. Since those politicians swear that Global Warming doesn't exist, yet there is no such thing as winter anymore, we went out in the woods, and shot up some old rotten tree stumps with our bows and arrows. Lots of fun.

Another fun thing to do when the ground is saturated with water is digging up the yard with the rear tire of a dirt bike. My dad warmed his RM125 up for my brother to trench up the place.

My brother swears that he didn't crash on this, but I saw the elbow of his jersey afterwards.

After packing in plenty of fun into nearly four days, we had a problem on our hands. How did we fit five people and all of their bags into the car. Nobody was stoked on my board bag (except me), but somehow, we managed to make it all fit. Luckily, the flight home went smoothly, and I'm recouped after all of the action. On that note, I'm off to the SNOWBOARD Mag and Log Cabin party in Big Bear. Look for a post on it soon. Happy New Year!