Words: Keenan Cawley

Photos: Teemu Heljo

If I had to guess, it's 8:30 in the morning. However, I'm somewhere above the Baltic Sea, so my guess is a complete approximation given the flux of time zones and bearings, not to mention the timeless nature of a hangover. I can feel my pulse throughout the entirety of my body, as if my heartbeat were two wooden blocks irrationally clapping some clenching timbre. Shit, I can even hear my pulse over the airplane engines. I am a psychoacoustic wreck, clad more as a bingeing ‘70s roadie than a contemporary snowboard bum, although, with the cane and hand-cast, I suppose it could go either way. I am traveling solo and when I come to I notice that everyone on the plane is staring me. My initial thought is that I was sleep-talking, so I try to shake it off. As I’m collecting myself, I notice that Rebekah, my middle-aged Swedish seat-mate, looks as if her soul was left at departure and replaced with a bloated, pallid replica. She is moaning, writhing in one instant, then cold and lifeless the next. She is dying and, given the palpable glares I'm receiving from the entire flight, everyone thinks I'm the cause. I ask myself what a question that would become the basis for this entire trip: How the fuck is this happening?

The question was first presented three-and-a-half weeks prior to our departure for Finland. We were out in Cleveland, Ohio—Ian Daly, Jasper Tripp and I—when we received an invite to film with Toni Kerkelä in Finland for a new Rome project. We were tripping (obviously), and when I hollered at Riley to share the juice, he got me thinking about trip preparations when he said his passport was in question. Daly realized that his had expired, prompting me to check mine, which had, of course, also expired. In our scramble to secure new passports (we had ten days 'til departure), it became evident that not only would the Strange Brew van have to trek back to Tahoe to drop off the homies, but since I’d lost both my ID and my birth certificate, the van would also have to make an in impromptu drive to Vermont so I could figure my shit out. You should know that this is the true Strange Brew fashion; that van was an escape for the homies and always took care of us, whether it served as place to sleep or a vessel to access your soul’s honest desires. Leaving the van for Finland was like a coming-of-age story for us: graduating from the gutter.

Climbing out of that gutter and getting overseas was no simple feat. Let me just say this: The Federal Bureau of Consular Affairs offices in Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts fucking rule, as they got us all proper travel documentation for minimal fees in the blink of an eye. I flew separately from the boys, dissected Lonesome Dove for metaphorical reference, and awoke in Helsinki a couple hours before everyone else. I wish there were a good story about those first Scandinavian moments but I just smoked cigs and took in the cityscape, flipping through old magazines in my head, imagining all of the rails I’d seen from this place and wondering “how the fuck this happened.” Shortly after, the rest of the boys landed. We piled in our new van and headed north under the falling Finnish sky. Three hours later we made it to Jyväskylä where Mr. Kerkelä greeted us at the door with Karhus in hand. The jet lag caught up with us awfully quick and aside from those beers, we pretty much just moved in to our apartment and fell fast asleep. 

We woke up to a mellow session on the 30-ish-meter rail at the top of our apartment complex, trying to put together little lines and see who could go the furthest. After that, Toni took us on the tour de spots. As snowboarders, we all possess a predisposition for spot-location mapping, but it never ceases to amaze me when someone else shows you the spot-map of their area. After a couple hours of looking over both shoulders and cranking our necks at the spot overload, it was clear that J-town was Toni’s town. The progression of spots, from first-timer to ender-ender, made so much sense as to the rider he has become. It was one of those cities where it seemed there was always one more spot, or another way to hit an old one, providing an endless platform for those motivated to get it, which Toni has been for the better part of the past decade. Adopting his M.O., we went out and tried to get after as much of it as possible. And that was the sickest part of the trip, for us Strangers at least, because we’ve never really been able to do that. When you’re on the move with ten kids, there’s a lot of figuring out to do, and that directly effects how, and how much, you’re going to be boarding. But here, it was simple: all we had to do was board. There were only five of us, so everywhere we went chances were high that we could all get a go at something in a relatively brief manner and be on to the next zone. Obviously there were a few interruptions (i.e. going to get donuts, chatting with the tweakers who came to every single night spot, making fun of ourselves, getting weed, getting tattoos, taking photos, drinking Smurf, going to the hospital, having mental breakdowns, etc.) but all that in-between time plays a strong role in defining who you are, directly influencing your style on board and what you want to do with your board. That is a dynamic that differentiates all of our riding and it actually worked to our advantage. From mid-morning to sundown, and even into the late corners of the night, it enabled us to bounce around, exploring Toni’s catalogue. This further solidified both his and Riley’s riding and they were both quick to get shots at every spot, regardless of circumstance. Even the idea of feasibility didn’t affect them and Toni broke grounds on new territory. I had never seen an NBD go down before, so getting to watch two was a double-‘how the fuck’ moment.

As for the Strangers, Jasper, the youngest of the group, got his feet wet on some bigger terrain and certainly did it in his own style. Daly, who's normally at the helm of our vehicle and always the team player, got to taste the fruits of a trip that he didn't have to do all the work for, and subsequently, got as many shots in those two weeks as he had in the past two years. I believe that was eye-opening for both of those fellas, as it also was for myself, despite getting put on reserve.

       When I could no longer ride, I began taking notes on how we function: as a group, as individuals, as foreigners and as locals assisting foreigners. And in a grander spectrum: as snowboarders, as people who long to be physically and mentally stimulated and tested and as people who want to see this world in light as in darkness. With its thematic position here, it’s that questioning, that “how the fuck is this happening,” that puts air in your lungs and opens you up. 

Now, for a bit of closure, because I’m sure you’re ready to ring this jargon from your noggin, I should tell you about what happened to Rebekah. After realizing that she was a diabetic (and I was just an American bum), the stewardesses tried feeding her some juice, which she could not hold down. She was drifting in and out, clenching my hand as if she were holding on to a cliff’s edge, when they asked me to move so they could stretch her out. Complying, I grabbed my belongings, hastily throwing my jacket over my shoulder, when my hand slipped into the chest pocket, revealing a sucker from none other than the Central Hospital of Jyväskylä. I looked at my broken hand holding the lollipop. Yeah fucking right!

The flight attendant opened Rebekah’s jaw, I plopped the sucker under her tongue, and by the time we landed, she was completely coherent. I was excited to land and tell the boys what had happened but upon our meeting, they interrupted with a story of their own. While my booze-brain had put me to sleep next to a dying woman, their appearance had grabbed the interest of the all-female Swedish flight staff who could not get enough of their cute, American accents and laissez-faire attitudes. They were ushered to the back of the plane to share drinks, stories, and phone numbers with one another. I couldn’t help but wonder – forget wondering – I know that in the midst of their bizarre, foreign-flight affair, they were thinking the same thing I was… How the fuck is this happening?