Shredding: DIY stickers

This is my new Burton Blunt 162 wide and I am stoked on the entire board and the graphics are sick. But I do appreciate a good sticker job on a snowboard and in the spirit of DIY I've decided to pass on the traditional huge die cut company stickers for the most part and come up with some of my own. I'm still going for the die cut look though, but with a less than capitalist message.

For the stickers I bought a roll of white vinyl sticker sheet. If you go to the store and ask someone, this would be the same stuff that shelves are lined with. Then all I did was cut out the letters to a positive lesson with my handy dandy x-acto knife and KABLAM! Positive board '09. I thought it would be fitting to make a sticker that warns kids of the dangers of drugs to offset the fact that I'm a school teacher riding a snowboard titled 'Blunt'.
I'm continuing the spirit of my last board where I spray painted the top sheet white and used colorful Sharpies to write positive messages all over the top sheet. But this way, I won't ruin the sick graphics. Also if you read my last blog post about my goal for this shred season, my board will carry on that goal even when I fall into the 'I'm cool, but I'm really just self conscious' trap. I'll update you on future stickers for the board, but in the meantime try your own mega limited edition die cut stickers!

Musical Bands: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Now that my fundage has greatly increased, I've been able to spend my money on the really important things in life such as snowboard videos. And as you may have read before, from snowboard videos is where I find much of the music that I enjoy listening to. I found Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's little gem of an album, Up From Below, in this year's Transworld video, Get Real.

The track '40 Day Dream' sets the backdrop for Chris Grenier's part and from the first time I watched Get Real, the music from Grenier's part stood out as something I should look into further. At my first listen though, I had my doubts about the rest of the album. Only two tracks really stood out as usual. The other besides '40 Day Dream' was 'Home' and while they're still my favourites from the album, the rest deserved much needed second and third listens. The best way I can think to describe this album is a pleasant marriage of a full country band and psycadellery. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might sound like the hairy baby wandering through the desert the mother and father and father and mother of whom are Neko Case, Neil Daimond, Radio Head, and Zooey Deschenal all living at a Spanish mission in Texas at the turn of the century with a full horn section. However Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might be classified, they are good!

Letter Writing!!!

Today is Monday and I am sick. Really sick. Probably dying of Swine Flu if you ask my roommate Melanie Dee Jones. And what might I do on a sick day? Read? Maybe. Watch a movie? Probably later. Plan ahead for my classes? You gotta be joking me. Nope. Today I'm writing letters (and then blogging about letter writing)

Why letters? Everybody knows that Devin Colby Jones prefers hand written sentiments to e-mails or texts any day. I am finding that I have a passion for handwriting and letter writing gives me the opportunity to practice my otherwise illegible penmanship. The English language is a beautiful thing when written in cursive! And writing in cursive is a dying art the death of which would classify cursive now as a form of caligraphy.


Also, letters are special because each one has taken a journey! Sure an e-mail or text might go to outer-space and back, but outer-space is so cold. An email hasn't been exchanged from human hand to human hand, sent through sorting machines, ridden on an airplane, train, boat, bike, or mail truck. E-mails are just as easily discarded, but a letter is usually kept, and becomes your very own personal history. My grandparents saved all of their love letters during the second world war, and my family often revisits the letters to remember Howard and Dorthy's true romance. A million emails are bunk compared to a couple letters back and forth from England and France to Montana in 1943!


Here is a letter I just recieved from my friend Brian in Colorado! I don't think it's legible via computer, but he uses a 4 color pen, it's mega funny, and he sent me a gift also with it. He randomly saw some Cinnabon Chapstick in the store and bought me a stick! My camp name is Cinnabon and Brian and I worked together at Sambica a bunch of summers ago. I got the camp name because one time I said I thought women should wear perfume that smells like something that I want: Cinnamon Rolls. Sometimes people still buy or point out cinnamon roll flavoured or scented things! This letter was awesome, one of the best I've ever received!
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Ellensburg, where the livin' is green! GARDENING!

In the spring of 2009, Mother and Father Jones decided, "We should grow a garden this summer. Devin Colby, invent us a garden." Traditionally, we try to grow some sort of garden, at least an herb garden, but this year, we've finally got it right!

The water bed was a core value of the Jones family in the 1980's and early 90's so we had a couple water bed frames sitting around. We decided to use the frames to create elevated growing beds for our garden. On the ground, lining the beds, we laid down special weed blocking cloths, then filled the beds with soil. And the area we chose to place the beds receive ample water from our automatic sprinkler system!
In our garden we grow spinach, zucchini, squash, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, tomatios, bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, eggplant, Japanese egg plant, a bunch of herbs, Swiss chard, and two types of lettuce. We grow some other veggies that I cannot remember the names of.

Last Sunday, I invited Cam and Sara to dinner, where we harvested the veggies for dinner and cooked together! It's a teriffic feeling knowing that we grew and picked the vegetables that we're eating.
My favourite vegetable right now is kale. Kale is very nutritious with a large concentration of vitimin K and vitimin C. "Loves me some vitimin K and vitimin C!"

I really wish I could share some tips or tricks for gardening, but our garden is very low maitinence. All I do is eat the vegetables. The weed cloth keeps the weeds from growing in our garden, and the garden area is automatically watered every Day!

Football Plays! Zone Option!

Dear Blog reader,

This is my attempt to write intelligently, creatively, non-pretentiously, and inclusively about football strategy.

Love,
DCJ
Common sports journalism cliches explore different ways to introduce each new season of football. "The air is crisp and the leaves are changing, must be football season," any writer or broadcaster might proclaim. At Ellensburg High School though, we began practicing in June, lifted weights and conditioned each week day of the summer, and took a week of team camp squeezed in the last week of July. It is now officially football season but the players have been hard at work all summer and are now an elite band of brother warriors ready to challenge the biggest and best in the CWAC.

My roles and responsibilities as a coach for the Bulldogs are many, but my favourite role as a coach is that of an offensive coordinator for the C-team and Junior Varsity. I'm blessed with a head coach, Randy Affholter, who encourages me to be creative in compiling an offense that best suits our athletes. I say compiling because we truly have an offensive playbook as thick as a text book.

My favourite play, that we've been running with our C-Team group is called the Zone Option. To first understand Zone Option, or Zone Read, as we call it in the huddle, one must first grasp the Zone play. Zone, is a running play where the running back's initial aim is to run towards and through a certain area designated by a number in the play-call. The lineman though, block in such a way where importance isn't placed on creating a specific hole, but rather moving defensive lineman and linebackers away from the line of scrimmage, creating seams. A seam is open space like a hole or gap, but can be described better as a lateral hole. (I wonder how many lady readers I just lost) The running back begins running with the football towards the designated area, finds the first seam and runs through the space. There is much debate in Offensive blocking schemes between zone blocking and man blocking (attempting to create specific point of attack holes in the defense) which might be another blog entirely. Zone can be run out of any formation, in almost any situation and is often the core running play of any west coast offense.

At some point in the history of the zone play, defensive ends from the side opposite the zone is being run (usually the last man on the line of scrimmage for the defense) started to make tackles by chasing the runningback straight down the line of scrimmage and vacating their normal responsibilities; greedy defensive ends. Offensive coordinators answered back with bootlegs, counters, and most recently the zone option.

Usually run from shotgun, zone option, begins looking like Zone, and for all intensive pourposes, is Zone, but the Quarterback now has the option to give the ball to the runningback or to take it himself, depending on how he reads the Defensive end. The lineman who are on the designated zone side run Zone like normal, while the lineman on the back side, or away from the disignated zone area leave their Defensive end completely unblocked. Once the ball is snapped, the quarterback holds the ball out for the runningback and watches the unblocked defensive end. If the DE runs up field or stays in the same spot, the quarterback will release the football to the running back who then runs zone. If the DE goes towards the runningback and into the zone play, the quarterback will pull the football out and run in the space now being covered by a block or two and vacated by the unblocked DE. This play is awesome because it forces defensive lineman to be very disciplined, which High School defensive lineman struggle with!
Examples: Imagine much smaller and slower humans running these plays, and you'll have the EHS C-team!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwpXXWJA2m4

Music: MGMT!

Since the fall 08 snowboard video release season, seldom have we seen a snowboard flick or teaser without an MGMT lick. And since much of my musical tastes and selections are inspired by rad parts in shred vids (skate, snow, surf, bike) naturally, I had to pick up the MGMT (pronounced management) album Ocular Spectacular. Why this psychedelic electric rock band has become the unoffical sound of snowboarding is revealed when watching the shred put to an MGMT song. Exhibit A: (you may need to turn the sound up on the player)


Aside from the sickness that happens when combining MGMT and shredding, their album, Ocular Spectacular, is quite the experience. Track by track, MGMT presents an unlikely marriage of variety and balance. Each track is very unique from the others, yet they're all held together through some common thread. Every song sings, 'I'm me', while also singing 'I'm a MGMT song'. And while many bands are hard to categorize, because of MGMT's balance between distinguishable sounds they're very easily classified and described as Pschycadelic Electronic Pop Rock. Far beyond cliche indy, and miles short of techno. More shredding Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D: (my favourite because of all the tree bonks!)

So pick up this album, put it in your shred/bike/life mix and move your body!

Another Art!

I had today off so I did some art after 'Mancake Monday: A Monday Breakfast and Mens' Holy Bible Study'.

Mountain: Schweitzer!

Idaho. What can be said about Idaho? Idaho, claims potatoes, yet Washington produces more. Idaho has zero professional sports teams. 96.99% of the earthlings are white with more Mormons than Catholics. Home to Sacajawea and Ernest Hemmingway. Best of all, Schweitzer!

I've been to Schweitzer on three separate trips and each trip has been super duper! I love the sheer size of Schweitzer and her 2,900 rideable acres. Long runs and an endless supply of 'spots' makes Schweitzer an all day every day exploration. In Idaho, a state of roughly only 1.2 million humans, fresh lines can be found from open to close on powder days. Also she has a great backside! God knows how much I love a soft backside with smooth lines to explore! Well that was inappropriate!

I'm stoked about Schweitzer. In Idaho I also want to visit Silver Mountain and Sun Valley.

Music: Born Ruffians!

Living in my favourite town Ellensburg, I asked my friend Jake via Facebook, the wildly popular interweb social network, "what music should I be letting into my ear parts these days?"

Jake answered, "Born Ruffians!" among other bands.

So I bought a Born Ruffians album called Red Yellow & Blue. After a listen or two, I decided to buy the other Born Ruffians album called Born Ruffians. And since buying these albums, I moved to California spent all my money, moved back in with my parents and started a blog! Thanks to Born Ruffians, I am now again the guy who Mark Driscoll warns women not to date.

I greatly apologize that I am not educated well enough to properly categorize Born Ruffians in the infinite sub genres of Rock 'n Roll. But I will say that they are swell! If I have one adjective to describe the music of Born Ruffians, I choose 'youthful'. On three distinct occasions I've had the intention to put on some tunes and take a nap and made the mistake of playing a 'Ruffians track and going for a 4 mile run instead. I've also contracted my motorcycle friend Kyle to invent a motorcycle for me based only on first track of Born Ruffians.

Born Ruffians also get 2 scholarly intellectual points for having a track named Kurt Vonnegut!

Here is my favourite song! Javier likes to sing it "all white people go out at night"! Which is funny.
I need a life

Bicycles!

Last summer, I made probably the best investment I've ever made. Buying my bike introduced me to the whole new wonderful world of outside. Anyone who has listened to a cycling enthusiast has heard the 'list'. Nothing makes me more excited about bikes than the list of awesome reasons to ride bicycles. Here is my bycicle list. Devin's Bicycle List (abridged):
1. Exercise- I reached my adult lowest weight the previous fall when I weighed about 281 lbs. I've since gained about 10-15 pounds this winter, but I still weigh less than usual this time of year (late winter).

2. Economic- In the months of August through November I almost never drove my car (toyota 4runner). Whenever I am driving regularly, I can possibly need to fill up my tank every week. In those three months, I was able to manage filling up once each month, even with driving to Yakima or Vantage to trade film (football) every weekend.

3. Vigilante- I think a little rebellion is good for a person and a bike provides the perfect vessel! When it's safe of course, I run stop signs and lights and pass cars in traffic (passing cars in traffic isn't illegal, but it feels illegalesque). Disclaimer: Bicycle at your own riding level.

And that's it! Riding my bike makes me sexy, saves me money and allows me some rebellion. What is on your bike list?

Here are my favorite bike links:
www.specialized.com <--great bikes, you can buy them at the Recycle Shop here in Ellensburg...
urbanvelo.org <-- my favorite bicycle website. Great bike blog, and free downloads of their bi-monlthly bike culture magazine. I read it cover to cover every new issue.

Do you like bicycles?

Welcome to my Blog!

My given name is Devin Colby Jones, and I like a plethora of things. I must use the simplest terms such as 'things' and 'stuff' to describe what i'm going to share in this blog because the only unifying aspect of the things I plan to share, is that I like what I'm going to write about. So stay tuned to see what kind of stuff I like!