OCEAN

In between storms the other day, we had about 5 minutes of these amazing colours on the clouds.

With the days starting to get shorter, and while it’s still hot out here is a fun project to get you going and your ski’s ready for the first day this winter. Anyone who has waxed their own ski’s before know what’s going on here, but might not have added these couple steps. With the point of waxing to get the wax deep in the pores of the ski base, hot boxing gets you that much further. A Hot Box is an expensive piece of equipment that is a staple of any high end wax house. Its purpose is after you finish ironing on your wax, you put the ski’s in the hotbox which heats the entire ski, opening up the pores even more so more wax penetrates.

Enough technical stuff, heres how to do it at your house without the expensive equipment; you just need a sunny day:

1. Unless you’ve been lucky enough to head to a summer camp, or the souther hemisphere this summer your ski’s have probably been sitting around since your final day out last winter. If you got it, the best thing to do first is to get a few passes with a Nylon Brush. This will clear out the grooves of any debris or old wax that is still in there. Next if you have a Bronze Brush that will clean them up even more.
2. Now take a paper towel and wipe off any of the stuff that you just cleaned out of the bases.
3. What we like to do before we take the iron to the base is to grab the bar of wax and crayon it onto the base. You won’t get a lot on, but you will be able to see when you get the whole surface covered.
4. Here’s the pretty standard steps for waxing after this: 4.1: Heat the iron up. 4.2: Drip the wax onto the base. 4.3: Iron the wax into the base.

5. Now heres the fun part. Instead of letting the wax cool and going straight to scraping the excess wax off take your skis outside and lay them down in the sun. The heat from the sun, and the atmospheric pressure is enough to emulate the same thing that happens inside a hotbox. It will take a little longer, but leave them out for an hour or so and they will be all set. You’ll even be able to see it happening, a little like watching paint dry, but after 15 or 20 minutes the wax will become liquid once again on the base and will begin seeping deeper into the base of the ski.
6. After an hour your ski’s should be good. However I noticed that a lighter base will take a bit longer as they reflect light rather than absorb it. Now if we were going skiing in the next day or so we would let the wax cool off and now scrape. But since instead of a couple days, we have a couple months to wait; we’ll just leave the excess wax on the base of the ski and scrape the wax off before we go out for the first time this season.

Hope everyone likes this, and has the time to try it out.

After a couple busy months I finally had the opportunity to get away for the weekend. Here’s a couple of photo’s from one of the days fly fishing. Thanks to my brother for getting in front of the lens.

This promotion lasts through November 29, 2010 at midnight, so get on it before its gone. This will be the steepest discount we have all season.

Head over to our web-store to take advantage of this exceptional discount and pick up some All Natural Ski Wax to keep your ski’s or board ready at all times this season. With this the wax is even less than you would find it at your local shop.

Camping for the first time was quite an experience. To say the least. Overall it was an amazing time, but there were for sure some rough spots along the way. That could be the allure of it all though, depends who you ask. Being a proficient kayaker/canoer’ definitely helped a great deal, as the river was way low making it seem like we were like Sean Connery from the movie ‘Hunt for Red October’ as he had to navigate through that ocean ridge. Needless to say we ran aground, a lot, which was tough for the couple that weren’t so experienced. A definite down spot for me was when shifting my weight my kayak half flipped, allowing a tremendous amount of water flood in soaking everything. Including my camera, which was quickly disassembled and left to dry for the next 5 days in a bag of rice. Thankfully, its all good and back in working order, the autofocus may be a little slower though. It is a point&shoot, had my other camera got wet, I would have called for immediate air evacuation. I now wont ever take my gear anywhere like that without proper protection and insurance, I guess it only takes once to realize what could actually happen. Here are a few of the photo’s from the first day before my cam went under.

We though we picked the easiest side to go down, until we came to the end and it was completely blocked off. Had to paddle back up to this little crossing near the start.

Limbo was a necessary skill set.

A week ago, July 20th, meant that we have been in business for 1 year.  So far I have had an amazing time ever since the beginning, and I cannot see it stopping anytime.  I would like to thank those people who have made it possible for us to continue on into another year.  It is awesome to see that people are willing to put their trust in us, and our product.  It is a conscience decision that some have made to be more aware of the products they buy and the habits that they have, and we are happy that we can offer a product that they can use.  The call to action of this post will be that for those who have already gotten on board with the Ocean lifestyle is to spread the word so that our following can grow into a much greater movement than it already is.  For everything, Thank you and lets shred this winter!

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These past two weeks I’ve finally been able to get Up North to go fly fishing.  Pictures are scarce at the moment because the only camera we had was one of those Kodak instant cam’s where you have to wind the film.  I hadn’t used one of those in so long, but I think they would be fun for an art project or something, not really sure yet.  Anyways the highlights have been the 14″ brown trout, that is the biggest fish that I have caught in MI, and when I thought I ran out of tipped and didn’t have any leaders left.  I decided to look once more and like magic I had a bran new spool!I was so happy at that moment, resulting in this post.

I wish I would have thought of this, too cool!

http://boxedwaterisbetter.com/

Yvon Chouinard is someone that I really look up to in both his lifestyle, and his business sense.  Starting Patagonia as a hobby, growing it to the most environmentally conscious company around.  I would also like to note that it is 100% privately owned by him, meaning that there is no board, or overseers who are looking more at padding their pockets than the ethics of what they are doing.  One of my all time favorite books, Let My People Go Surfing, written by Yvon himself describes exactly what he stands for and hopes for the future, and is what I would say is one of the main forces behind Ocean, and our values and foresight’s into the future.  I just saw this commercial less than an hour ago, and as soon as it started I knew who it was about, so check it out and maybe do a little research to understand the magnitude of what he has done.



…WesJones

I just came across this and I can not say that I would have doubted that this was happening if someone told me.  It makes no sense to me whatsoever that people not only let this happen, but think that it is a good idea although they do all that they can to shield it from others eyes.  I can only say that I am elated by the action of the people behind the film ‘The Cove’ who took it upon themselves to not only seek out the truth for themselves, but for the rest of the world to see, so that there can be an end to the madness that is being put on the dolphins in Japan.  It is people like them that I truly look up to, as I usually let things come to me, and always hope that I can be on the brink of something new and exciting.  But it takes doers, and people that care to make a difference, and I think with a few people like that who can inspire others to take part in something that they believe in many things could be solved in a relatively short amount of time.  All it takes is a truth to be uncovered, and those who will do all that they can to make sure that it is.


Please watch this trailer to understand what I’m getting at.



…WesJones