8 years ago we went on a mission in Golden, Colorado … a mission to accomplish as many activities in 1 hour as we possibly could. Welcome to the Golden Power Hour. This video is unique because you can’t do this anymore … you can’t visit Golden Bowl anymore … you can’t buy Apple computers at the Colorado School of Mines Bookstore anymore and you certainly can’t visit the original Tequila’s anymore :( Hell, you can’t even shoot standard definition 4×3 video anymore and upload it to YouTube in 360p. Fortunately, since 1873 the Coors Brewery Tour has been a staple in the ever changing Golden community and they still offer you free 3 samples of Cold Coors Banquets every day. Cheers, Happy Holidays, Let’s grab a beer!
***NOTE*** – Next week this post will be post dated back to December 24th, 2013
Merry EPIC Christmas-Holiday-New Year and Happy End of Work Day on December 24th, 2013.
As many of you know I have been charging around the world with a couple awesome people skiing and “in a way” competing in something called Vail Resorts Epic Race. The Epic Race was conceived by Vail Resorts as a contest for the first 10 people who successfully skied every Vail Resort in the 2013/14 season which included 26 ski resorts spread across 4 different continents. 12 were located in the US and the remaining 14 were in Austria, Switzerland and France — The reward for the first 10 people who accomplished this goal would be a Vail Resorts Lifetime Epic Pass. Of course, when I first heard about this randomly awesome competition in early October I knew it would be a fun endeavor to attempt to win what would be known as “THE” ski pass of all ski passes! What I didn’t know is that when it came down to the final day of the FINAL resort to open in Brides-Les-Bains France… was that there would be 131 people from across the world contending for this most EPIC of Epic Vail Passes. Vail Resorts didn’t even expect this kind of final day outcome… and even though Vail has stated that we would all know the final results from this most epic of epic races by end of work day today, I’m happy to announce that they have decided to take some “EXTRA” time to review all the content and all the angles from this 29 day race!
To summarize what Ashley Cooley, Devin L Rhinehart and I have all accomplished in the last month is pretty difficult to comprehend. I think it can best be described as a test in school, like your final final of the semester. Only if you didn’t pass this final, there was ZERO chance of you passing… or “winning” in this case – which all made sense to us. So I basically used that approach to find some motivation to get our team into and through the final day. All three of us from “Team Fun” were in the top 10 percentile through school as we grew up… so we simply needed to apply these rules of life to the final day and if we succeeded and tried our best … we should probably be ok on the final leader board. Sounds simple enough, however there were some additional requirements to get you to the top. 1 – time, 2 – paying attention to detail… and 3 – being sure all your previous content for the race was up to snuff. Of course there is always LUCK involved too, but we had plenty of that on our side with Ashley being the lucky one. Devin was our Time freak, and I was pretty much Mr Detail. Put us all together and we find ourselves at number 20, 21 and 25 on the final “unofficial” Vail Resorts Epic Race leader board. However, when you throw a little detail into it you will notice that 9 people in front of us automatically get tossed from improper uploading on the final day — Two of those don’t even have video links. Add another level of detail and 4 more get dropped for not following resort rules – aka “you can’t hike outside of resort hours”. That brings Rhinehart up to number 7, me at 8 and Cooley as the top girl finisher just out of the top 10 at 12.
Of course, these are unofficial results — even by my count. I have no idea what Vail Resorts will ultimately choose to do or how nitpicky they are going to get in judging this most EPIC of epic races! When you start digging into 26 mountains of content it becomes pretty overwhelming pretty fast! How do I know? Because I’ve done it. One of the cool things about this race is that everyones piece of content from accomplishing all 26 ski resorts is public which is why I am happy to see them taking the extra time to get the correct 10 finishers on top of the board. After jumping into the 52 photos and 26 fifteen second minimum videos from each contestant, I know who gets tossed and who sticks around. And almost every other racer knows too… Except for the one element that is publicly unknown in this race, which is who actually emailed Vail Resorts a photo of their completed European ski stamp passport by 11:59:59pm on December 20th, 2013. Assuming everyone in front of us accomplished this 1 simple task … I see myself finishing in 7th place – Rhinehart moves to number 6 and Cooley… well there is a super slim small chance that she could pop into the top 10, but even though I know there are technicalities with some uploaded content between us, I do not expect Vail to jump to that level of detail to pop her into the top 10 — If they do choose to go that route, then I would probably be dropped for having goggles or sunglasses on in one of my photos or videos. Sunglasses were never actually addressed, but goggles were recommended to be off your face as you must be visible in all photos and videos and you must include #epicrace in your titles and your Facebook posts and you must choose 1 video and 2 photo locations from a list of required elements at each area and have all your content upload by midnight of the time zone of the mountain you were visiting and you must have lift scan data from the given mountain on the given day and you can only ski 1 US mountain or 2 European mountains per day and you must accomplish this all during resort operating hours and you needed to shoot horizontal video opposed to vertical iPhone video and you need to talk loud through plastic on GoPros and and you can’t promote other brands or use copyrighted material on and on and on… can you see how run on and on this contest could get let alone judging it all!? Either way, at some point there needs to be a line drawn in the final judging criteria in order to release the official leader board and award the top racers their Vail Resorts lifetime season pass!
If we are on that list — Fantastic! If for some reason we don’t quite make the official top 10, then we will still enjoy the experiences that have been had and the Vail Resorts Epic season pass for next year that will be awarded to anyone who completes all 26 Vail mountains in the 2013/2014 season. In keeping with the original spirit of “Team Fun”, I will end this post with the 1 simple rule we had while blowing over 2700 miles in the car and almost 14,000 miles in the air to accomplish this 1 impressive task of skiing 26 ski resorts in 29 days in 4 different countries — “Skiing is fun… and that’s about all!”
It was amazing meeting so many *awesome people* on this incredible adventure! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
*Awesome People*
Nick and Scott Annis
Joe Jensen, Weather Man Steve Sacco and John Victor
Michael Lahey + Epic Race Mom Sharon Mcmonagle
Devin Rhinehart, Ashley Cooley + Greg Hydle … “Team Fun”
Bill and little man Charlie Fiveash
London man Steve Curtis
Japan master Zoe Huebner
The Beard of Ando!
Golden locals Michael + Nila Ferrone
Newlyweds Jessica + Dave Schnoll
Sister + Brother team Jannah and Jeff Din!
The Wilson Duo
The Beard of Sean Regan!
The Jackson Hole Greece of Nick Greece
My manager… Kim Jackson!
Windy Wendy Smith
Ultimate video bomber Parker Jackson
The always proper Carolyn Pope!
Crazy Face Troy Martinez
The child in Annie + David Childs
The always Rad Rad Roubeni!
The hair of Tom Slazinski
Epic start with Matt Dority
Webmaster Will Tran
Crazy Man Kai Whittier (never actually met but heard ridiculous stories)
The Curls of Kim Klopp!
Tera + Garrick Keatts
The Silent JK Johnny Kuo
Sock Firestarter Zac Irwin!
The Humor of Jason Walence
Master Ski Sabbatical Jay Irwin
The entire Liu Family!
Will you marry me Matthew Walence
Ryan Garnett, “Pets Heads Falling Off” Colin Dean, and Backflip Trevor Posey!
Green Icelantic Machine Hollis Carter
Our Shit Got Jacked Alexandra Malkin + Aaron Marks :(
Completed the Epic Race Right Jessica Jackson Hill!
The Finished in Fine Fashion Lawrence Bayer
The Dreads of Jonathon Blair Ermer
Yellow Man Giovanni De Francisco!
The Ned Man Kip and Legitimately Last Place Final Day Finisher Kip Lagorin
One Take Timmy Jarred Simpson
The One and Only Man of Epicness Himself … Adam Warot!
Yesterday we did our final mountain of the race before the final scavenger hunt day today for Brides Les Baines, Les Allues and Meribel. It was a pas a pretty uneventuful day since I think everyone was wanting to prep and feel good for today. It was snowing, which was the first time we’ve had snow since arriving in Europe! But the visibility was pretty bad, so we all took it really easy, nobody wanted to get hurt before the final day!
We ran into a bunch of epic racers and took some pics in front of the final stop at Meribel, Mont Vallon, where the lift was still closed. And the rest of the day we just spent cruising all around Meribel, getting familiar with the mountain.
Once we were done with the mountain, we packed up our room and headed down to our new room in Brides Les Baines. We saw a few fellow epic racers in town, chatted with all of them for a bit, and then grabbed dinner at one of only two restaurants in town that were open. We saw some more epic racers at dinner, and everyone wanted to talk about what would happen today. Rhinehart finished his final edit of the trip at dinner, and then we all went back to the room and called it a night early.
Now we are at the calm before the storm in our rooms. As much as we’ve tried to prepare and strategize, we also all just have no idea what is going to happen today. Some predictions are that we will have to do a lot of running through towns and between lifts. I’m nervous because the guys are WAY faster than I am at both skating on skis, and running. I’m gonna be the weakest link physically for sure! I feel fine about keeping up with them on skis, but the stuff in town is gonna be really tough for me!
I also hope that however this final day happens, it doesn’t leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. We’ve had so much fun so far, that would suck for it to end poorly for us/everyone else and leave with that being our primary memory!
We have met so many super cool people, people that totally deserve to win, people who have sacrificed a lot to be here. People who brought their kids to literally give them an experience of a lifetime (hopefully the kids appreciate it, I think they will!) I definitely think we will leave here with some friends we will stay in touch with.
We’re excited and nervous and ready to rock this morning. It all begins at 9 am local time, and who knows what will happen after that!
I’ve recently had this idea to change the word “work” to “fuck”. It’s a play on words to call out the people in this world that are always just too busy to do anything worthwhile or fun… the people that always have excuses to not go skiing, or to not grab a drink or to NOT hang out. No no no no no. They are wrapped into their own world of being too busy… “working” all the time.
In your reply to these non-existent people in our lives… swap “work” to “fuck” and see how long it takes them to understand what you are doing.
“Ohhh, I’m sorry you fuck from 9 to 5.”
“You have to fuck on the weekends!?”
“You fuck all the time.”
“Well, when your done fucking – maybe we can hang out.”
The way I envision the advertisement for our public service campaign about getting people out of the office in their mind — would be a mix between Budlight – Swear Jar and the above beautiful ad I found today from The Perlorian Brothers [Vimeo], [Facebook – 2321].
The Social Farter is a genius PSA by the Canadian Ministry of Health’s Quit the Denial campaign.
2) The shorts come out, and you all get to experience the 12th wonder of the world that is Ted’s ridiculously, ridiculously, enormously massive incredible hulk legs. I’ve attached a picture from our trail run at Mt. Falcon last year for reference. Enjoy!
Saturday we’ll be hitting a trail I don’t believe we have done yet. North Table Mountain. It has a nice 8.5 mile loop around the rim up top with plenty of options to cut off for shorter distances. I believe it is relatively flat once you climb to the top so it should make for a nice, enjoyable spring day on the trails. Hope to see you there!!!
DATE: Saturday, April 6.
TIME: 9 AM SHARP!!!!!!!!!!!ish.
WHERE: North Table Mesa. Just North of Golden off Hwy 93. Directions can be found HERE
Kickstarter continues to be the worlds largest funding platform for creative projects. I recently reviewed Kickstarter’s 2012 year in review. The stats are unbelievable and continue to grow as their demographic base increases. Last year Kickstarter collected a total of $274,391,721 million in pledges which is 85.6% of of all pledges given. This does not mean that 85.6% of all projects reach their goal, actually only 44% of all 41,765 projects launched reached their goal. And of those 18,109 kickstarter projects, there were a select few that completely blew out their goal.
Hydle’s 1 favorite kickstarter highlight from last year – The Griz Coat by Buffoonery Factory.
Our successful Blackbox Case project from 2011 pales in comparison to some of the numbers being generated today. I feel like it is time for another Hydle project in the Kickstarter arena again.
[YouTubeUlar] <— 264,382
Beautiful knock off of so many things Apple, this commercial gets a rating from 1 to awesomeness, awesomeness. Good find Bodhi Gerfen
Genius.
[Facebook] <— 95 likes
Beautiful work by Hadi Partovi from code.org for creating a pretty remarkable video about ideas, coding, and awesomeness from the leaders of today.
Steve Jobs – Apple
Bill Gates – Microsoft
Jack Dorsey – Twitter
Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
Vanessa Hurst – Girl Develop It
Ruchi Sangvi – Dropbox
Drew Houston – Dropbox
Elena Silenok – Clothia.com
Gabe Newell – Valve
Chris Bosh – Miami Heat
Makinde – Facebook
Tony Hsieh – Zappos
Bronwen Grimes – Valve
will.i.am – The Black Eyed Peas
We shot a Harlem Shake at Bent Gate’s Silverton Sick Days this past Wednesday. It’s worth a socially creative review as this could be the fastest growing viral campaign ever.
“The Harlem Shake” Timeline of Events
1981 — The dance was originally coined in 1981 as a drunk dance by a Harlem resident and creator “Al B”
“it’s a drunken shake anyway, it’s an alcoholic shake, but it’s fantastic, everybody appreciates it.”
2013 — On January 23rd, 2013 – 2 weeks after Baaur’s “The Harlem Shake” dropped on iTunes, still unrelated FilthyFrank uploads this “How To Dubstep”video with his character PINK GUY. At this time, his facebook page which claims he “once tripped and had anal sex with himself” has less than 4,500 likes.
On January 30th he uploads his Compilation #6 – Smell My Fingers video with the Harlem Shake short introduction. This video still only has 322,347 views, but his viewers were asking for more shake. So on February 2nd – he gives them the original Harlem Shake which now has over 10,900,000 views.
“yall naughty fellas wanted the full separate version of HARLEM SHAKE SO HERE IT IS.
SHARE IT WITH YO FRANS XOXO
♥”
Over the next 2 days, 257 of Filthy Frank’s fans share the video, 908 like it and 84 people comment on his original post. A Filthy Remix even pops up and somewhere in the mix people start uploading their own versions. A few of the early videos gained even more views than Filthy Frank’s original, so he re-posted the original to his now growing facebook fan-base on February 6th…
“some swagfag guys made a harlem shake video right after ours and it’s obviously copied. and it’s getting crazy views. but we stand strong, because we have the power of each individual filthy character. don’t forget where you came from, and stay filthy.”
This repost gained another 105 shares, 1,239 likes and 116 comments to propel the Harlem Shake to the masses of the interManets. The competition was on and the creatives started uploading. ImAfricanJesus began a playlist of his Harlem Shake consumptions. CollegeHumor was #9 on the list. By February 9th ImAfricanJesus quit adding Harlem Shakes to his consumption playlist stopping at 47 videos.
On February 8th, the new york times posted an article relating winter storm Nemo + the Harlem Shake as a way to pass your time while being stuck indoors. Filthy Frank posts the article and it gains 38 shares, 858 likes and 150 comments from his fan base. The Chive, Break, Buzzfeed, and Maker Studios out of LA created job campaigns out of their versions of the Harlem Shake which proved the shake could definitely be used for marketing traction. Musical talent Matt and Kim even jumped into the mix.
A good friend of mine, Jason McWilliams, preached the Harlem Shake to Copper Mountain Ski Area on Saturday, February 9th. By February 11th, around 12,000 “Harlem Shake” videos had been posted with a collective 44 million views. One of my favorite and most creative versions was posted by the UGA Men’s Swim and Dive team on February 11th.
On February 12th, Copper Mountain dropped their Harlem Shake creation, which is when I first took notice of the completely random sensation. We recorded our random version on February 13th in Silverton, CO and nearly had the mountain convinced to shoot and upload what I still believe would be the most epic Harlem Shake ever. Conceptually you couldn’t beat a helicopter hovering behind a bunch of Bent Gate Silverton Sick Days skiers and riders dancing their asses off by the rental bus at Silverton. I blame myself, and partially Devin Rhinehart for not TSOIGDH’ng and following through with this one.
The Today Show ripped their own version on February 14th, officially killing the interManets viral meme formerly known as the “Harlem Shake”. To put an exclamation point on it, McWilliams walled me this one just to be sure. Filthy Frank now has over 47,000 likes and 125,000 YouTube Subscribers and overall he seems pretty modest about creating the sensation and actually makes fun of his post Harlem Shake audience.
This completes your Hydle write up and review of what catalysts enabled a creative meme to go Viral. I’m actually pretty surprised the Adelia Shake didn’t take off.
[YouTubeUlar] <— 321
Facebook added a new pillar to hold itself up today.
Facebook Pillars:
News Feed
Timeline
Graph Search
It will be interesting to see how strong the tripod 3 pillar effect will be at sustaining future growth of this world changing company whose mission is to “make the world more open and connected”.
[YouTubeUlar] <— 10,942,785
Forgot to post this last weekend when I was browsing trending videos on the Apple TV.
What does 2 years planning, 12 machines, 11 athletes, 4 RED digital cinema cameras, 45 GoPros and 3,422 man hours look like?
11 athletes:
Sean MacCormac – Red Bull Air Force
Joey Brezinski – Skate
Rickie Fowler – Golf
Danny MacAskill – Biking
Ryan Sheckler – Skate
Drew Bezanson – BMX
Bryce Menzies – Trophy Truck
Rhys Millen – Drift
Robbie Maddison – FMX
Lolo Jones – Track and Field
Pat Moore – Snowboarding
Notes:
Director of Photography – David G. Wilson
Project Manager – Ian Votteri
Director of Red Bull Media House – Nicholas Schrunk
Director of SYYN Labs – Adam Sadowsky
