March 25, 2008

WHOAH, This Just In: Discrete Earns Adobe Site of the Day!!

WOW! Just as I was writing the last post I got word from Adobe that they've elected to feature DiscreteSport.com as tomorrow's site of the day. Check it out!

This is my 4th site of the Day from graphics industry standard software developer, Adobe. It's always an honor since I check their showcase every morning for inspiration. My previous winning submissions were Northeastern University's "Discover Northeastern Flash Tour", Sunday River's Interactive Golf Course Tour, and American Skiing Company's MeTicket.com.

Discrete Earns Cool Home Pages Award

Again, it's not a big deal. But once in a while it's nice for a designer's ego to know that colleagues think you're doing something right. Discrete is a site I did a while back for Utah-based freeskier, Julian Carr. Julian and the late Billy Poole founded Discrete Sport, an enigmatic, ski inspired headwear brand focussed on the individualistic lifestyle-oriented pursuit of Newtonian research. That's long-hand for the fact that they love to jump off stuff. Billy, who recently gave his life to this pursuit, is remembered by the big-mountain skiing community on this site and others around the industry.

You can also vote for this site's recognition at MyDesignAward.com

or vote for Fetchdog and/or Joe-art.com (please).

March 3, 2008

The Circus Comes to Town


This weekend was a blast from the past as a bunch of my old high school buddies converged on Salt Lake from across the country. The occasion was Chad Knowles' Bachelor Party. Two ski condos in Sandy played host to several Berwickians (Chad, Peter Clarke, Tom Beattie, Brett Richer, Chris Knowles and Pat Knowles) and various other really cool guys from Middlebury and Vail — about 14 guys in all, armed with alcohol, testosterone, and a raging passion for powder. They were here to ski hard and party harder. One theme of the weekend was their creative facial hair competition, the winner of which is anybody's guess. They also spent some quality time in a dirty hot tub which I dubbed "New England Man Chowder".

I met up with the crew Friday night as they were already well on their way to long night. I decided it might be best to crash on a spare futon downstairs, much to Tom Beattie's dismay as I snored him out of the room. The next day, we hit Snowbird for some great turns despite less than ideal snow conditions following 5 straight sunny days (yuck). The group of guys turned out to be pretty hard core and the pace was intense. That night, it was straight back to partying. I'll leave it at that. But I managed to sneak back to Patty and Gary's house for a much needed night of sleep.


Sunday morning — POW! The forecast was conservative, calling for perhaps up to 8 inches. Instead, we woke up to about 16 inches of fresh Utah powder. The group was ready by 6:30 am. From the first chair it was an epic day. There was hooting and hollering all over the mountain, and the large group quickly dispersed, invoking the "No friends on a powder day" rule. But Pete Clarke, one of my oldest friends in the world stuck with Sarah and me. I didn't grow up skiing, so it's a relatively new form of bonding for these two boys from Epping, NH. It was great catching up with Pete and charging fresh lines with him. We even egged each other on to huck a cliff or two.


Overall it was a fantastic weekend and I'm just glad no one was seriously hurt. Good times.