Photo Credit: Burton late nineties ad, not sure the photog

Over the past 48 hours, I have asked myself more than once, "what the hell is the point of all this?" No, I wasn't questioning my existence in the face of the inevitable 2012 apocalypse. Instead I was sitting in front of this damn computer, rebuilding the site from scratch, questioning if it was even worth it. There's no money in it, no fame, no fringe benefits, no real discernible return at all. Yet I continue to pour hours and hours into this site, a fact my wife never fails to point out. Because we have turned down advertising dollars, we are stuck in the web hosting equivalent of Pampers pull-ups. Compounding the misery, we are relying on my very questionable programming skills.

So why?

In the end, it really is simple, this is what we love. The very core of this culture is passion. Sometimes it is tough to spot as countless peddlers of smut vie for the fast buck of the youth demographic. Back at the start of all this, no one expected to get rich, we were not fighting to get on lifts in expectation of a payday. It was about passion and for some of us it still is.

In between the Mountain Dew and American Express commercials, you may not have noticed, but snowboarding is on the decline. The mainstream is squeezing the last remaining drips of opportunity out as they did to skateboarding in the 80's. Take a look around the mountain next time you are out, the packs of young punks are on twin tips skis not decks. The sort of committed riders of my generation are switching back to skis because they don't like bending over or so they can go with their kids. I keep hearing from former friends of how they rode for 15+ years but decided to switch back. And whether you want to believe it or not, skiers are laughing, they took our cool and now they are winning.

So here we are, on our long trip back to the beginning. Why do we do this? Because we are snowboarders, and at the core of our being is a spirit that we can do it regardless of what people tell us. We will never be as cool as skateboarders or as soulful as surfers, but this is what we love and this is what we hope to share through this site.