Winning the Best Contest of 2012

First a slight introduction.

My name is Colin and I live outside Denver, CO. I am not the best rider, but not the worst. I am the kind of rider that keeps trying new things and keeps trying to become better at what I love, and that is BIKES! If you have never seen one of my videos or met me, then you know or will soon find out that I enjoy munching on a dirt sandwich every couple of months.

I am not a wordsmith, so bear with me and enjoy the enclosed media content! :-)

This is a story of how I spent the summer of 2011 and 2012, on the road to winning TWO Whistler vacations...did I mention that they were both free?!?!

In order to describe the summer of 2012 I must first back track to 2011.

YAY! My first double! This was a turning point for my bicycle abilities and I was damn proud of it.


May of 2011. I broke 3 ribs and punctured my lung, kidney and spleen.


I did this just after hitting this dirt jump, and yes I over shot it.


Then 2 months later I get back on the bike, and on the first day back I broke my jaw (wearing a full face too).



This is my first summer trying "big" jumps and I started pushing my myself and I tested the limits. Which was NOT turning out to be a positive for my bones.

I did enter in some lottery style drawings for various contest from T-shirts to lavish vacations to far away places I could never afford. However, one day with my jaw being wired shut I got a phone call. This day was a particularly bad day, I had left work early because the muscles connecting my jaw to my head had seized and was causing incredible pain. I answered the phone and a Canadian accent was on the other line. I am terrible at understanding accents, and I could not speak very well because of my broken jaw. But I got the jist of the conversation before agreeing to log onto the information super highway for a "chat session."

I had just won a trip to Whistler!

Whistler Tourism and Fox Shox hooked it up. I got 9 free lift tickets, gift cards to resturaunts, a Fox 40, and 5 nights in a hotel. I was freaking out so hard that I had to take a nap because I expended to much energy jumping up and down screaming.

All I had to do was get there. So me and 2 buddies did the 26 hour trek to Whistler from Denver. I arrived in Whistler just 2 weeks after my doc cutting the wires in my mouth. I couldn't even open my jaw to eat, everything had to be smashed into thin pieces to fit between my teeth, and then I had no strength to chew. But dammit, I could hold onto my bars and ride my bike like a bat out of hell!! Here are some videos of the 2011 trip. Take notice of the clothing company I wear through most of these videos. It ties in nicely with 2012.







So that was 2011 and how I got to Whistler for my very first time. It was an amazing trip! One for the ages!

Here comes 2012. The year plays out damn near the same as 2011.

January I broke my hand (again). Awesome!


Then, as you have seen on "Fails for your Friday", I decided to change my taste buds from dirt sandwiches to boulders!





Yeah, that shit hurt. But, the injuries dont stop here...

Once again, Valmont Bike Park takes me out with a scapula broken into 4 pieces on July 18. AH-MAY-ZING


Let's get to the more positive side of bikes shall we?!

My buddy Auston and I decided to flood the contest scene for 2012. And we did so in style my brotha.

Ride Giant Ride Whistler started off really good, here are our entries. With an "honorable" mention for the Goomba edit. Yeah, its funny.

Auston's Goomba will be a shining moment for our summer!!



This is our edit of me riding.



Here is a list of other contests I entered, each contest had two entries. One from me and one from Auston.

Sun Valley, Idaho trip
Whistler Tourism
Fox Racing Shox to Whistler
North Face, Send it to Win It to Whistler
Gravity Components to Whistler at Bear Back Lodge

But the most elaborate contest was from Sombrio. The basics were to create a video of "Why I Ride" in 15 seconds. Thats all we were told to do, and no details of the trip were given out until after you submit a video. So what the hell!? Why not?! We already did 12 videos, whats two more?

I cannot figure out how to link a Vimeo video in this blog, arg. Someone showed me how it do it! Here is the link to Auston's winning video in Sombrio's contest. It's only 15 seconds and it goes by quickly, so PAY ATTENTION because its loaded with jokes.

Auston Wilson "Why I ride" Contest Entry from Auston Wilson on Vimeo.

Here is the list of amazing things we got to do, then on to the media of this trip!

1- Flights!!!!!! That 26 hour drive sucked last year
2- Rental bikes
3- Hotel
4- Food
5- Beer
6- Crankworx
7- VIP access to all the company parties
8 - Clothes and gear from Sombrio
9- Shuttles with Mason Mashon in Pemberton
10- HELI day with Stephen Matthews of Big Mtn Adventures and Jordi Lunn
11- Whistler passes
12- Top of the World Trail
13- Mike Goldstein followed us around with his camera ( you have seen his edits, they are amazing! )
14- 5 days with the coolest Canadians I have ever met

So after 5 weeks of letting my scapula heal we headed to Whistler. The greatest and yet most painful 5 days of riding I have ever been through.

There are thousands of videos of Whistler Bike Park, so lets focus on the Heli Day at Tenquille Mtn. High alpine with no trail is not a scenario you get in Colorado. There was not a trail at the top! Just blazing through grass and rock gardens and glaciers. It was absolutely insanity. Then we had what seemed like 12 hours of pure singletrack downhill, no fire roads, no parked out expressways, just pure singletrack. This was by far, the best day of the trip. Not saying any of the days were not "good" because they were all over and above what we expected. But the Heli drop led straight into the slopestlye contest and it was the best way to spend a day biking.

So, needless to say, we won the coolest trip anybody could ask for. Now on to pictures and a video.


Banananananana Bread French Toast!!


Locals always make the trip memorable. "Organic farming is like lipstick on a woman, its all BULLSHIT!" - Old Man Farmer Dude


Free gear! Sombrio makes the most comfortable clothes and their shoes are super sticky!


The man, the myth, the legend, the one who made this all possible...Jordi @ Sombrio


Steiner, Glynn O'Brien, Mason Mashon, Chad Hendron, Colin, Auston, and Joe.


Stephen Matthews of www.ridebig.com, Jordie Lunn, Colin and Auston


Steiner and Colin on Top of the World


























Here is a video of the Heli Drop






And of course, this wouldn't be a story by me without a Fail video from this year



The moral of the story is to enter as many contests that you can. With good karma and alot of media content to edit you have the chance to win a trip of a lifetime. Pay attention next year because Sombrio is doing this contest again and maybe just maybe you could win the trip everybody in the WORLD wants.

All of this was made possible by:

Sombrio Cartel: http://bike.sombriocartel.com/


Big Mtn Adventures: http://www.ridebig.com

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