Post Surgery.

Sorry about being real slack with updates lately... I've had a fair bit going on and I've been in canberra most of the time since surgery.
Everything went really well with the surgery apart from the not having the right tools and me having to wait an hour while I was super high on something they injected into me, and being asked about 20 times which shoulder is being done... It made me wonder if they knew what was going on?
The surgery took about forty five minutes and only left two little puncture holes on my shoulder which I'm pretty stoked about...






It's been about 10 days now and i just got the stitches out this morning, the front cut wasn't quite healed so another three stitches where put in just to make sure.
I can start my usual gym program up again in about 4 weeks but for the time being i'm just riding on the bike for about 40-60 minutes a day to stay a little bit fit.

Until next time.
SM

Sydneeyyy.

Usually I don't like doing posts without any photo's or video but I think this can be an exception as it's kind of important in relation to what's going on with my shoulder.

Last night we got to Sydney at about 5:30 or so. We checked into our hotel which is pretty cool, it's right in the city so yeah we went got some dinner at The Red Lantern... So good!

Our booking with the surgeon was at 9:15 this morning. He pretty much just looked at the MRI's and gave me three options. 1. do nothing 2. try a strength program (which we've already tried) or 3. get surgery and have 6 months off.
When he first said 6 months off I was a bit bummed... but I guess that's not so bad... At least I get to have a christmas with my family and it gives me a chance to get a job and make some cash. I should be back overseas for a Spring camp if it happens again this year.

We hung out in the city for ages today I got some new jeans and shoes. pretty stoked.
Anyways now we are waiting at the airport for my plane back to Canberra. Hopefully I'll hang out with Rob, Phoebe and Grace tonight and maybe go out in the city... should be good.

SM

Canberra

So it's Wednesday and I'm in Canberra hanging out at my dad's place.
This morning I went to Canberra imaging to get an X-ray and an MRI done on my shoulder. If you've ever had an MRI you'll know that it's super scary, they give you these ear muffs and it's still super loud. I was stressing the whole time.

Here are the MRI photo's... it makes no sense to me...



I've always though X-rays looked cool...



After we got this stuff done I got some COMRADES stickers printed i should be able to pick them up on monday.
Now I'm just killing some time before we fly out to Sydney to see the surgeon.

SM

Drifties at Luke's

So seeing as i haven't been able to go riding lately. Today I went out to my friend Luke's place. He lives on a pretty big property and for a while now we have been meaning to make some sort of rally track. After a bunch of rain over the last few days this weekend was the perfect opportunity to do it.

So this is the first track we carved out of the countryside. It's just a mellow figure eight the corner at this end is pretty long then the one at the other end is nice and tight.



Charlie getting sideways in the Hulk...



It was inevitable that this was going to happen. Kane just got unlucky in his RX Imprezza.



Such a fun day. Although I'm not sure how much more of this kind of punishment the hulk will be able to handle...

If you know anything about rallying/throwing your car around aggressively... send me an e-mail murphy.sam@hotmail.com thanks!


SM

Shoulder Surgery... lame

So about a week ago i thought it would be a sweet idea to learn backside rodeo's at the bottom of the pipe... it seemed like a good idea... the snow was soft and it was a super sunny day. i wasn't getting them at first they weren't flipy enough then i decided just to throw it straight over and it turned out pretty sweet until i landed. i put my arm out to brace myself. i felt that same pain i've been feeling everytime i put my arm out when i fall for the last year or so.

My shoulder has been progressively getting worse so it was inevitable that surgery was down the road somewhere.

I was my surgeon today and he's given me a reference to get an MRI and an Xray on the shoulder then we'll go from there and see if surgery is the only option.

I'll keep everyone posted on what happens with it when i know more info.

SM

Charlotte's road gap.

Sorry for not updating this past week i've been pretty tired and busy.
but about a week ago now Charlie, Pat, Ryan Willmott and some filmers went upto Charlotte's pass to hit the road gap.
the weather on the day wasn't the best but we still made the most of it and got some cool shots.
We rode upto the resort in these sweet over snow bus type things what where pretty fun.


And this is a photo of the road pat with Pato standing under the road gap.



Sorry for the short post but i have to get off to work.

Come back tomorrow for another post on a photoshoot in the pipe with Clint Shirvington

SM

while you where sleeping.

Sunday nights are usually very relaxing and it's a time to goto bed early.
But for Charlie, Belmore, Ash, Willy, Cohen and i we went out to hit this kink rail in Jindabyne.
I turned up without any boots... silly me. So Charlie was pretty much the only one hitting the rail.
Like all street rails it took a while but he got the shot in the end...



SM

Stylewars finished.

Stylewars finished up on Friday with the only day on the jump. We had one hour of practice in the morning then from elven o'clock until one o'clock we had a judged session on the jump.
The jump was around 70 foot but unlike other 70's i have hit, you had to take alot of speed into this jump, which i wasn't too stoked on at first. After warming up on the jump a bit i started to throw some tricks...
The winner of the event was Sebastian Toutant with a backside double cork 1260 then a cab 270 onto the down bar and a 50-50 back 360 out of the flat bar.
Mikkel Bang won best trick with a switch backside 1260.

navigate on over to SNOWBOARDERMAG to check out some photo's and a video. I'll post up dome photo's soon.

SM

Stylwars - 28 Stairs.T

The Stylewars nighttime rail jam was on last night. The setup was the same as last years but defiantly still pretty gnarly.
Everyone was throwing down and it was really good to watch. I decided to let the rail dogs do their thing while i watched from the sideline and took some photo's.
Charles Reid and Sebastien Toutant shared first place which was cool because they where both throwing down all night and pretty much running back up to get in as many hits as they could.

There is a full wrap up over HERE at snowboarder mag or HERE at the Stylewars website.

Stylewars day two.

This morning we woke up at about 8:30 to hot breakfast which was amazing... the weather outside really wasn't very good... 100km/h winds up the top of the mountain so the contest got called off. Andrew, Charlie, Cohen and I still decided to go out riding so we could check out the jump. The jump looks like it would be super fun, it's not too big and not too small. it's around 60-70 feet.
Hopefully tomorrow is better weather and we get to hit the jump even though the forecast isn't looking too good.

Again i cant upload photo's because every man and his dog is using the internet here. I'll try upload some when it's a bit quieter.

SM

Stylewars day one.

Saturday night Andrew, Charlie and I arrived at Mansfield for Jason Maxfield's 18th birthday party. Hectic to say the least...


We found an even better trestle bridge then the last one we came across on our way down this way.




The next day we got back in the car and drove to Mt. Beauty and stayed the night listening to Charlie breath like a Lama, as we thought our accommodation for stylewars did not start till tonight, Monday night... it turns out we were wrong.

This is a sweet lookout we found on the road from Bright to Mt. Beauty.



In Mt. Beauty this morning the weather didn't look too bad but on our way up the mountain the weather came over and started to rain, all the lifts where on wind hold until about 12 when we when out for a few turns. We got a chance to check out the Jump which I'll post a photo of tomorrow when i get to hit it.
As you can see there isn't heaps of snow here at Falls.



Check out the Stylewars website for more updates on the event.


SM

Teenage Rampage

Today was the pipe event of the Ocean and Earth Teenage Rampage at Perisher.
The weather for the event held off which made for a fun day shredding.

Lauren dropping in for her first run.


The format was 30minutes practice then two runs, best run counts. I only did about three practice runs which kinda sucked and didn't get all the tricks i was hoping for. But my run seemed to be big enough and clean enough and i pulled through to impress the judges who put me in first place. I was pretty stoked with the result even though i knew i could have rode better. As this is the only halfpipe contest for this season I'm even more stoked to have taken it out.
Well done to the other boys especially Ben Randal who was riding really well on the day.



SM

NSWIS blog and Snowboarder mag video.

A while ago Chris who manages the NSWIS website asked me to write a blog for their website. Sometime last week i wrote it up and sent it off to him.
Here is what came of it.
CLICK HERE

Also Ryan Willmott has a post up on the snowboarder mag website about our shoot on Sunday with a little video CLICK HERE to have a look.

SM

Busy Busy.

This weekend has probably been the busiest weekend i have had in a while.
It all started by having to wake up at 3am on Saturday morning to let Jason and Simone (Jason is the rider manager and Simone is the producer of a movie I'm doing for ride productions.)into their accommodation as i had the key because odiously they couldn't check in at 3am.
Them on Saturday morning at a reasonable time i went up the mountain to meet Kris who was going to be filming Nate and I this weekend. Kris and I went out to find some drops and stuff that we had in mind. after we got that stuff done it was about lunch time so we got some food then rode the park with Nate and got some really cool shots...

Saturday night i went out to dinner with Jason, Simone, Nate and Benny A to discuss more about the movie and discuss idea's. Benny also told me about a photo shoot that Ryan Willmott wanted to do in the morning.

So on Sunday morning i woke up at 6:30 to catch the 7:20 tube up the mountain so i could get some riding in before Ryan showed up and i had to throw down for the camera's.
I was pretty flogged by the afternoon so i just chilled while about 4 people filmed Nate... i found it kinda funny.

This first photo was from when i woke up at 6:30. I thought it was cool so i put it up.


The gang chilling after our pipe session.


Kris getting the cool angles with Nate. A bit hard to see in this photo but he's up there.




SM

Big man big flip.

Every Friday afternoon we have a trampolining/gymnastics session in the gym with Anthony. We've learn stuff like standing back flips on the ground, front flips on the ground, all sorts of hand spring stuff and a bunch of stuff on the tramps.
But what we did today was the creme de la creme... we learnt those crazzy running up the wall then flipping things that you see in the movies. Pato was the only one to get them without being spoted. i got a few good ones round but wasn't confident enough to go solo. Jarryd also got some nice ones.

When you watch the video below look at how high Pato goes... and how far from the wall he lands...

Pato wall flip. from COMRADES on Vimeo.

Such a fun afternoon in the gym.

SM

Pipeing.

Sorry for not really keeping this updated the last few days. I've been flat out with school and riding.
Anyways, Perisher got its pipe up last weekend and i'm pretty stoked that it's up now. We've been working on trying to ride it switch a bunch so we can eventually move onto switch backside tricks.

Here is a quick photo of the pipe.


SM

Stepping Up

Last Wednesday the new issue (Issue 3) of Snowboared Magazine came out.
Towards the end of last season Ryan Willmott sent me some questions and told me he would run a check out for me in the second issue. Turns out the checkout got run in the third issue which is still pretty cool.
So if you get a chance, go and grab yourself a copy.

SM

Baw Baw night shoot photo's.

Jason sent me an e-mail with the photo's from the Baw Baw shoot a few weekends ago in it. The photo's turned out really well. Brendan started his photography life as a fashion guy and is trying to make the switch to snowboard. I must say he is a very talented behind the camera.
He was very picky about getting the shot and Charlie ended up doing about 20 gap back lips on the double kink rail just for Brendan to be happy with himself.
Once again it was a very fun weekend and thanks everyone who joined in.


Gap back lip. Charlie


I dont even know what this is but turned out to be a dope shot. Chris


Back One over the rail. Me

SM

Friday Film.

On Friday i went up the mountain with Andrew again and this time I took my camera. I was just planning on taking pictures but we ended up searching everywhere for some cool stuff we could film which I would turn into a little video for here.
The blog has been a bit boring lately so i thought i should make a little movie to spics things up.
I know this is no Mack Dawg Production but it's kinda cool and I had fun making it...
So here goes.

Thirty Second Friday.. from COMRADES on Vimeo.

Thanks for watching.

SM

Avalanche?

I must say that today was probably the most fun i have had riding in a long time... I rode with my sister's boyfriend Andrew and some of his friends. We got up around 9:30 and went pretty much straight over to Interceptor quad chair. Then we hiked out over the top to North Perisher T-bar. We found some pretty sweet lines over there and did some more laps on the t-bar. After we shredded that for a bit we hiked over the top again and Andrew dropped in to the right and i went to the left to hit this little rock line. After I landed I heard Andrew yelling and looked over and saw that he had set off a little avi. So that was one of the small highlights of the day.



Such a fun day shredding!

Tomorrow we are heading up again hopefully its just as fun as today was...

SM

Tripping to Baw Baw

On Friday afternoon Charlie and i Ventured our way down to Victoria for the Forum Battle At Baw Baw. We stopped at most of the little tourist destination's along the way to waste some time.



And even stopped in at Super Cheap to buy some flood lights.


The Competition was on Saturday morning so we stayed at Jason Maxfield's place in Mansfield, woke up the next morning at 5:30 to continue down the road to Baw Baw which none of us really knew the location of, so it was a bit of an adventure. The drive there wasn't exactly cruisy... after the long stretches it was a solid hour of narrow windy.



We arrived at about 9:30 and sorted out our lift passes and parks pass for "The Hulk" (my car). After that stuff was all sorted we pretty much got straight into practice for the rail comp. Now as some of you may know I'm not the best rail rider so i needed some practice for sure.
The rail comp didn't finish till and 2:30 with Robbie Walker taking out the open's and Andrew Roth taking out the juniors. Once this was over we got some food to eat and decided we wanted to do a night shoot on the stair case rail the competition was held on.



The view from the top of the mountain was pretty cool, it looked way down into the valley and all the plains below.



Sunday was a super bad weather day so we had a meeting the with producer of the Ride productions movie and spoke about her ideas and our ideas and really brainstormed and asked alot of questions. We also got given our contracts so this is pretty legit now. Just waiting to get a bunch of filming done.

On the way home as we where going through Wodonga i copped a speeding fine. Not very fun at all, $243 and three demerit points for going 99 in an 80 zone. I didn't even mean to be speeding, there where cars both in front and behind me. I must have just vagued.

I was super excited for this trip on Thursday and Friday and it more than exceeded my expectations! Was super fun hanging out with Jason again.

Sorry for such a long post but... Thanks for reading!

SM

Transfer blog post.

Just after i got back from Mammoth i was speaking with Russel Holt the editor of Transfer snowboarding magazine and he asked me to write up a blog post for his "Pro-Blogs" section of the Transfer website.
It seems that he likes what i wrote and posted it up on his website. there are some cool photo's on there and a little video that has been featured on here too.

Click HERE to have a look or jump on over to transfersnowboarding.com and navigate yourself to the pro-blogs section.

Hope you like it.

SM

Flagged.

Just as we got to perisher this morning to go riding we where walking across the bridge towards front valley. Then Jarryd yell's out "oohhh ssaammbboosss" i was a little puzzled at first then i looked back and saw him pointing at one of the flag's up ahead. It seems one of the photo's from a shoot with Ryan Willmott last year ended up getting used by perisher. Super stoked!



This was a good way to start out the day which turned out to be super fun just shredding around the mountain.
Perisher is still yet to get up a decent jump. When they get some more features up i'm sure a few posts will come with this.

SM

Sunday.

Sorry for this late post I've just been waiting on the photo's from Shirvo.

We got up the hill pretty early on Sunday. Did a few laps of the park while we waited for the Filmer Kris. Once he got there Charlie and i went over to finish off what we had semi set up the day before.
Charlie and I rock paper scissored to see who would hit it first. It came down to the last draw and unfortunately i had the pulled the short straw and was up first. I was a little bit scared but thought that it was pretty make able so i just sucked it up. We waited a bit more for Shirvo our photographer to get there and set up. Then i did some run-ins to see for the speed, and hit it straight away.
Stomped it first try but needless to say it defiantly wasn't the most stylish thing i have ever done...
Second try didn't stomp. went tumbling straight over the top into a tree further down the landing which we all thought would be the worst case scenario of this hit. Glad to get that out of the way early.
Charlie had a few goes. first try not quite enough speed and he hit the rock... pretty scary.

We kept sessioning it for a bit longer until Shirvo had to go back to the burton demo tent to finish up the day.

Although the light was super flat and Shirvo couldn't get his flashes working we still ended up getting some good shots.

Here are a few from the days work.

Spare Change...

So tomorrow will be the first day of filming for the Wet Socks production Spare Change. I've been told not to give out too much info on the whole project but you now know that i shall be in a movie this year.

Today we spent most of the day building stuff for tomorrow so we can try and get a few things done.

We have found about three or four possible things to do. So it should be a fun day.

Here is a little sneak peak at what we have planned for tomorrow.



So we are going to be taking off from where I'm standing at the top and landing in the bottom right of the frame. well... That's the plan anyway.

I'll put up another post with some more photo's after tomorrow.

SM

Shooting Guthuga

Friday afternoon i got a message from Photographer Mike Cooper asking if i wanted to do some photo's the next day. Of course i wanted to get shreding but i wouldn't pass up a chance to get some good photo's.
So saturday morning, myself, Charlie Steinbacher and Matty Gillings all met up in Nuggets at 9 and discused what we where going to do. We all decided to head along the road to Guthuga and try to find something along there somewhere that would look cool.
We found something pretty quickly, it was a tree tap type deal.
We started to build the jump right away so we could session it. The speed for the jump was super fast and it didn't put you up very high so our approach changed a bit and we decided to start jumping through the tree we where tapping and another tree that was only about 1 or 2 metres away to the left.


Here are a few photo's from the day.

Issue two of snowboarder magazine.

The second issue of Aust & NZ Snowboarder magazine has hit the shelves and i seem to have managed to score myself a nice little photo. Super stoked on this as it's my first real published photo.
The photo was from one of the days that Mike Cooper charlie and i went out to Charlottes and worked hard to get shots. Well all that hard work seems to have paid off and we both got shots from those days. Charlie's photo is the big one, mine is on the right.
anyways here is a snapshot of the page for you to have a look at. Also stayed tuned for my checkout coming in issue three.

First shred at the new perisher not so blue.

I had to go and get my pass from the ticket office this morning which i couldn;t get without my letter from NSWIS. So after signing about 10 pages of forms i got my letter and then went and got my pass!
By now it was around noon so Andrew, Grace and I headed up the mountain for a bit of a shred. There was a lot more snow at perisher than i expected which got me stoked to go riding.
There where heaps of little hits around front valley and off to the sides. It was quick laps on the V8 back to the top. They have some little boxes up there which where fun to session.
For only one lift being open it was a very fun day.



SM

Home

After 30+ hours of travel I'm finally at home in Jindabyne!
So i'm not allowed back at school for another week because of Swine Flu and what not, which i guess is kind of good because i can catch up on some of my school work.

It's pretty cold here at the moment and it's been raining alot too. Hopefully this rain turns into some snow so we can get up the mountain soon enough. The resort officially opens this weekend but aparently they are only going to have a rope-tow up on front valley.

Anyways i'll put up another post when i get to go riding or when Perisher gets some jumps up.

SM

Coming Home Early.

Seeing as it's been raining for pretty much 3 days straight and it's getting even hotter we have made our decision to head home early as it is becoming near impossible to get good training sessions out of the pipe and there is no park.
On top of all this the pipe cutter is broken.
So we are leaving tomorrow morning to Reno at 7 in the morning then get some stuff done in Reno then fly from Reno to San Fran, the to Sydney i believe then I'm not sure if i go from Sydney to Canberra but I'm hoping i do.

My time in Mammoth has been super fun seeing as most of the time it's sunny in the morning then the clouds come over in the afternoon and let out a bit of rain. which isn't bad because we are usually off the hill by about eleven or twelve o'clock.
In the afternoon we usually go to the gym and have some fun on the tennis courts and do a bit of a workout.


Here are some photo's of where we where staying.


Jason, Myself, Charlie and Pat hanging out at the bottom of the pipe.



These two are our place. The second is where the pool is and where we can kick a footy and what not.


This Bird would come to our window ever afternoon.

So yea spring in Mammoth has been super fun now it's back home for our winter! I'm really looking forward to this season hopefully it will be just as much fun as the last.

Jason has done his shoulder again!!

Yesterday on about the 4th run of the day Jass was doing some front sevens working upto nine's. when he fell into the bottom and dragged is hand behind him popping out his shoulder. I was the first to his rescue and went off to called ski patrol once Benny came down. He was sledded down to the bottom of the mountain where Coach was waiting with the car and we whizzed him off to hospital. After a little over an hour his shoulder was put back into place at the hospital.



Jason counts this as the seventh time his shoulder has come out and the second time since his last surgery. This could mean he needs another surgery and could be out for the Australian season which isn't a good thing for my COMRADE and team mate Jason.

SM

Parks Closed?

So here in Mammoth it's been raining a fair bit lately which contrary to what you might think is kind of a good thing... It means that the wall of the pipe that is usually super icy is getting pretty soft now, which is good for trying new stuff.
But because of all the rain the parks are closed!



The parks being closed isn't such a bad thing because it goves us more time to focus on the pipe and there are still 2 small jumps just below the pipe.

On the way home from the pipe yesterday i hit a rock and got a major core shot pretty much the length of my board which was a bit of a bummer but Benny A hooked it up with one of his old friends from here and got it fixed up quick smart. which i was pretty stoked about!



Anyways, sorry i haven't been updating much lately we don't have internet at our house.

SM

Mountain bikes...

So today we had a day off, it stared out pretty slow, waking up late and going for a swim in the pool. The plan was always to go mountain biking but we where a bit skeptical because the weather looked like it was coming over. Luckily the weather held out and we went up at about 12. We packed all the bikes into the back of the van and headed for the top of the hill. We did about four runs down to the bottom complete with a few spills and some close calls with people coming in the other direction up the hill.
After the mountain biking, we got some lunch at Pita Pit which was pretty amazing. Then hit up the gym for some tennis for about two hours.
Once we got home we where pretty flogged but i had to goto the supermarket to grab some supplies for breakfast.

Here are a few photo's from the biking.




Can you see that guy in the blue shirt all the way down that little trail? haha thats me...