Surfing 50 States www.surfing50states.com

“Yeah, I drove my Jeep Wrangler down all those stairs one night”, claimed ‘Billy from Philly’. We had just told him how we had slid down the Philadelphia Arts Centre stairs on surfboards wearing grey track suits emulating Rocky Balboa. He continued to tell us how he had been a pro BMX rider in the 80s, was friends with the Jackass crew, and had once slid three full 360s in the rain in his car on a freeway, and then drove out of it unscathed! 2 hours earlier we had rolled into Battleboro, VT at dusk and made the third call to another ‘friend of a friend’ who said he could hook us up with accommodation. A few calls back down the line and we had the address of the restaurant Allan was working that night, which was the reason he wasn’t answering his phone. We were surprised the huge African-American bloke sporting crisp dreadlocks down to his buttocks answered “I’m Allan” when we enquired there. Allan was the friend of our metal-head Vermont contact who we had also never met. The bar tender was from Boston and when he found out we were Aussies and didn’t drink, he mixed us up some amazing mocktails of his “own creation”. We dropped the “still not sure where were staying tonight” line, and Allan lamented about his tiny apartment, but said he “knew a guy…” 5 minutes later we were escorted to another bar in the small alpine village reminiscent of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, and we were meeting ‘Billy from Philly’ who was “stoked to have a couple of Aussies stay at my place”. Billy was celebrating some over indulgent story on a Tuesday night and his offer for a shout was met with our well rehearsed line of “Nah, we don’t drink - I know, were very weird for Aussies”. He then claimed he “hardly ever drank either”, and a few of his friends at the bar nearly choked on their drink. Billy laughed heartily. It was about then we knew he probably fibbed a little bit. “Don’t worry we’ll get an early start to the snow tomorrow boys”. Midday rolled around and Billy had still not emerged from his room after last night’s random booty call, just after swearing his undying love of his Morman girl who had recently moved back to Utah. We packed up the car and headed up to Mount Snow laughing at Billy’s unbelievable stories. The highlight being, “Yeah, I was married once, we had the honeymoon in Jamaica, but then I decided it wasn’t for me!” While trying to persuade the management at the resort to let us ‘surf’ the snow, we were denied outright until we mentioned we were filming for Fuel TV (very un-confirmed at the time). Within a few minutes we had waiver forms under our nose to sign away responsibility for any injuries from ‘surfing related activities’. Then we had a private change room to slip into our wetsuits, booties and gloves and we were out on the snow. We had most the staff and ski-patrol watching, filming and joining in as we pointed the surfboard (minus fins) down the beginners run for as long as balance would allow. Billy was hooting and laughing while sporting one of our extra wetties, and after a few speedy runs shouted, “this is the most fun I’ve had”, then he saw our surprised looks, he quickly added “…In a few weeks”.