Ravinos | Trailer 🤘
Travel back to Vail, Colorado in the early 1970s, where the Ravinos challenged mainstream culture and sparked a revolution in extreme skiing.
Identifiable by the iconic flaming skull insignia patches on their cutoff denim jackets, the Ravinos gained prominence by hosting parties on St. Patricks Day to showcase inverted aerials.
The crowds grew bigger and rowdier and eventually led to them being shutdown by the resort and authorities…
We checked back in 40 years later. This film (25 minutes) explores why the need for the Ravinos community arose again in Vail, Colorado and what has made it stronger than ever.
With a new vision of becoming ambassadors for the mountain, they have carefully regained access to the original location (a 20ft cliff gap called the ‘Wailer’) and continue to fight for acceptance and belonging.
Screening at @coloradosnowsportsmuseum in March 2025. Check out the Museum’s website for details and tickets.
Directed, edited @alexclapin
Produced @freddywinter
DOP @drewbalfour_
EP @dpthevp
Cam op @bellandkoola@danielcarberry
A while ago, I had an esophageal blockage while eating a prepared meal from a prep service I really do love. It was frightening, it required medical attention, and it has left me with a lingering fear around eating that I’m still working through. The hardest part has been admitting that the issue wasn’t really the meal. It was me, rushing, distracted, swallowing before I had truly chewed, treating food like something to get past rather than something to enjoy.
So I wrote the company a letter. Not to place blame, but to be honest about what happened and to ask for two things that would help me stay loyal to them. Pressing send on a letter to the company felt cathartic in a way I didn’t quite expect.
First, a wider variety of vegetarian meals, because I’m shifting in that direction now, both for comfort and for peace of mind.
Second, oven ready packaging, because microwaving makes it far too easy to eat in a hurry, and slowing down the preparation feels like a small but powerful way to slow down the eating too.
In the meantime, I feel genuinely blessed to have the chance to buy directly from small businesses at our local farmers markets. Honestly, this might be the best path forward for the summer, real ingredients, real people, real intention. Eventually I will need a meal service again for the seasons when the markets quiet down, but for now this feels like a gift. #
If you have a meal prep service you love, especially one with strong vegetarian variety, I would really love your recommendations. And if nothing quite fits, perhaps that’s the universe whispering there’s a gap worth building into something new.
Whatever comes next, I’m holding onto one promise to myself. I will eat slowly. I will eat intentionally. I will be present with my food, because the alternative cost me more than I’m willing to pay again.
#MindfulEating #PlantBased #HealingJourney #MealPrep IntentionalEating FarmersMarket ShopLocal
I ran into my friend Timmy O’Neill at the 5Point Film Festival last week and the first thing we did was hug it out for a solid 20 seconds, which sounds like a long time until you actually do it, and then it sounds like exactly the right amount of time. The number isn’t arbitrary, researchers like Dr. John Gottman and a 2003 University of North Carolina study on warm contact found that around the 20 second mark is when your body actually relaxes into the hug and starts releasing oxytocin while cortisol drops and the parasympathetic nervous system finally believes you’re safe enough to let go of whatever you were carrying.
I’m finding the same kind of slow-release joy in chewing my food, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write. The Jewish tradition has long encouraged slow, deliberate, mindful eating as a way to elevate the meal into something closer to prayer, with some contemporary rabbinical commentary suggesting you count chews as a practice for keeping the primal instincts in check, and in some Christian devotional contexts the magic number is 33, the age Jesus was when he died, one chew for each year of his life. I find these old practices fascinating because they almost always turn out to have some grounding in Greek and Roman science we lost when Rome fell, the laws and parables preserving the practical wisdom even after the explanation behind it went missing.
Modern science is finally catching up. Iowa State research showed subjects chewing 40 times per bite reported significantly less hunger and less desire to eat compared to those chewing 15 times, and a 2015 systematic review in Appetite confirmed that more chews per bite measurably increases gut hormone release, particularly the satiety hormones that tell your brain you’re done. The range that keeps showing up in the literature is 30 to 40 chews per bite, almost exactly where the religious traditions landed thousands of years ago without a single peer-reviewed study.
The hug, the chew. Both are slow on purpose, both unlock something the body has been waiting to release, and both feel embarrassingly simple until you actually try them.
#hugs
I read something this morning from Chris Williamson’s newsletter that landed harder than I expected, a chart showing father childcare time by generation, and the Silent Generation line, my dad’s line, sits at the bottom like a flatline somebody forgot to plug in, while Millennial dads are clocking nearly quadruple what their grandfathers logged.
What stopped me cold was where the dip lives on his line, because it bottoms out right around age 40, exactly when my dad had me, and exactly when I was 8, 9, 10 and starting to notice whether my father was showing up. His version of showing up was taking us to pizza now and then, and I loved him for it, and I also wanted more from him than I knew how to ask for.
His 60s were a slow procession, colon cancer into diabetes into prostate cancer, and ten years of Alzheimer’s. I used to wonder why he wouldn’t just change something, and now that I’m the age he was when I was watching, with a career bearing down and the fitness needle pointing in a direction I am not loving, I get it, because the day fills up and the body negotiates downward in increments small enough to ignore until they aren’t.
My dad used to tell the story that the day I was born I closed my eyes and stuck my tongue out at him, and the last time I tried to get serious about my health I did the same thing.
I’ve seen my decline from 40
50. Enough! This time my eyes have been opened.
We buried him three years ago on July 19th, the day before my birthday. You may remember I used to throw Freddyfest, a week long celebration of, well, me. Time to bring it back, with intention, not for me, but for the young men and women in my life I get to show up for.
Fargo’s was where my parents took me to feel celebrated. I’m looking for the Outdoor version for the kids in my orbit now. A tip of the hat to dad instead of a tongue.
So this is a call to the parents in my orbit, my best friend and his wife, Katie’s bestie and husband, my sister and my brother in law Chris, the rest of you who know who you are.
What does showing up look like?
Today is Mother’s Day, and before anything else I want to hold space for the women this day quietly costs something. The ones who tried and the body said no, the ones who tried and the universe said not yet or not ever, the ones who are mothering through postpartum and finding out that the hardest version of love is the one where you can’t quite feel anything at all, the ones raising kids whose needs require a kind of vigilance and grief that doesn’t get a parade. It doesn’t escape me that Mother’s Day sits inside mental health awareness month for a reason, that the same calendar page holds both the celebration and the cost, and that for a lot of women I know and love this is the heaviest Sunday of the year.
Something has shifted in me in the past few days and I’m still figuring out what to do with it, this strange new permeability where other people’s situations land in me with a weight and a clarity I don’t remember being capable of a month ago, like somebody turned up the gain on a channel I didn’t know I had.
One friend up in Summit County is grinding through mud season, that in between stretch in May when the snow is gone and the trails aren’t open and the rhythm of the place hollows out into something quieter and meaner, and from what I can piece together he’s leaning on substances harder than he should be, which lands heavier given the timing and the irony is not lost on either of us. Another friend is watching his father’s health decline in real time and starting to do the math nobody wants to do, the math where you realize you’re about to become the head of an extended family whether you feel ready or not, whether the person who used to hold that role is still around to hand it off cleanly or you have to invent your own version from scratch. A third is somewhere in that strange weather system between getting engaged and getting married, where the romance of the proposal has cooled into the actual architecture of a life shared, and the only way through is a level of vulnerability most of us spend our twenties and thirties carefully engineering ways to avoid.
Read More 👇
#mothersdaygift #mentalhealth
I’ve been thinking about cars all week, specifically fuel starvation, and what we put in the tank
A GT4 RS is a stupid precise machine, 4.0 liters and naturally aspirated and a nine thousand RPM redline, the kind of engine that exists to convert fuel into forward motion and basically nothing else, every component on it earning its keep or getting cut. But all that engineering, all that fury, all those millions of dollars of R&D and decades of motorsport pedigree, is hostage to one boring unglamorous variable that nobody puts on the spec sheet: delivery.
Pinch the line, clog the filter, let a little debris ride the rail to the injector and the whole exquisite apparatus sputters and lean misfires and dies on the curb while the pump is still running and the spark is still firing and the driver is still mashing the pedal wondering what the hell went wrong.
A restriction you could fit on a fingertip is the difference between a car that breaks the sound barrier of your nervous system and a very expensive sculpture under a sodium light.
That was me last Monday. Esophagus locked, aspiration failing…
Not dramatic from the outside, no sirens or smoke or story to tell at parties, just a soft tube somewhere in my chest quietly deciding what got through and what didn’t, and a body that suddenly remembered it was a body.
I’ve been running rich for years, revving the projects and the people and the next thing and the next thing, certain the power in the block was the part that mattered and forgetting that an engine without delivery is a paperweight with a pedigree.
You can diagnose a starvation a hundred ways. Tap the gauge, swap the filter, tell yourself it’s the weather or a bad tank or you’ll figure it out next week.
OR
you change what you’re pouring in. A high compression engine doesn’t want 87, it wants the cleaner burn and the higher octane and the fuel matched to the build, and going vegetarian is that call.
I’m killing the engine. Setting the brake. Lifting the hood.
It’s heavier than it looks, if you have advice here, I’d love it 👇
#porsche #vegetarian #fastandfurious
I loved the film Devils Wear Prada 2. What, chick flick you say? �Fine, take my man card away. Like Andy, I got a second chance at things.
While there is absolute fear ripping through me on eating food, I have to admit the past few days have been filled pockets of ultimate joy. It like for some reason the contrast slider and the sharpening sliders on the photos of life have been slide up perhaps a bit too far.
Joy to be alive, joy to be out with my wife, joy to randomly impulse buy her new AirPods, joy to be dancing like “girlfriends” in the seat of our theater chairs, and, much to my wife’s chagrin, joy to talk to the strangers that we run into along the way.
Ive started the conversation with what did you eat today, what did it taste like, did you feel rushed when you ate? It’s amazing how many times people didn’t know what they ate, not alone what it tasted like. I inquire more into their lives and what their story is and why they feel so inclined to not take time to stop and eat. It leads to what they are doing as a side hustle, how many kids they take care of, or other stresses in their lives. This obviously is a false pretense to ultimately share my story and perhaps in a small way impact someone’s life for that moment, a day, a week, hopefully longer.
I say stranger in quote because it’s people I work with or work for me. It’s been enlightening how little I know about their lives and what makes them tick. Even one of my closest friends, I found out a lot of things I had either forgotten or never took the time to ask.
My house cleaner has been reliable and flexible when our schedule needed. She is a lovely immigrate lady from Mexico (Yes she is a US Citizen - and yes FUCK ICE). She does a hell of a job cleaning and has been from what I previously thought was a fair deal. She even let us pause our service when money was tight the past few years.
As someone that has been in my house regularly over the past 7ish years.
… Continued in comments below 👇
How important is trust?
Whether it’s with climbing, rafting, skiing snowboarding, et al. We all need inclusion safety at minimum, but ideally challenger safety.
Trust is critical on an expedition over multiple days. When the consequences are apparent, we are all trained to be on the mindset that something goes wrong we all need to be on our A game.
I learned this on Deso
My friend, first time in an IK headed towards a frowny hole to “hit it” super dangerous. I tried to rescue and also swam…. I self rescued down river, but my friend did not. Cold air temperatures and spring runoff, hypothermia kicked.
A new acquaintance was wilderness CPR trained jumped into action. He stripped down jumped to the sleeping bag saving my friend’s life.
Being from Colorado Springs, I had never met an openly gay man. That place was awful towards LGBTQ. I hope it’s more open today. I am an ally 🏳️🌈
My friend was incredibly good looking., still is.
I was scared, saw my friend in need and and didn’t know then how to contribute. A humor defense to trauma kicked in.
Assuming misogyny was acceptable… I asked if he enjoyed hoping in the sack with my friend. Words I can’t take back, and still regret to this day.
I know now misogyny is never ever cool
It wasn’t meant to be harmful, but instantly our crew dynamics shifted.
I lost inclusion safety for the remainder of the trip down deso grey.
The only person that talked with me was my friend. I felt obligated to camp on my own and even wondered at times if could use the groover.
Not reforming safety, however, could have had further consequences. It’s important to have grace and forgive fast.
I was alone, scared, and resentful of my captain, someone I looked up to and had rafted with for years as his bowman.
I still am in awe of him.
His wife and him did headwaters of the Green to Mead, including rowing Lake Powell, essentially retracing the John Wesley Powell Trip.
Trust was broken.
We parted ways… Over 1000+ river miles together, including cataract canyon at high water, countless investments in gear, hundreds of safety talks, all gone.
I never rafted again.
#trust #crewdynamics
I’m obsessed with stats, it’s one of two reasons why I enjoy baseball.
I got turned onto wearables this past year with the purchase of an iWatch. It was fun! I was chasing step goals, swimming, and so on. I even used the dive tool, albeit to see what the temperature was in a hot tub 😎
But when the alerts started coming in for sleep oxygen levels, high blood pressure, and low vo2 max I knew this device eventually save my life.
Some things slowed, but measurement of weight the numbers kept going up and up and up, peaking at just under 280.
Urgently I needed to get this trend under control, so I talked to my doctor about ZepBound. Targeted for weight loss but also wonderful for sleep apnea and blood pressure.
It seemed perfect!
I generally heard about discomfort, perhaps some sort of belching. But its lesser known side effects include may cause esophageal issues, including spasms 😳
I also had an in diagnosed hiatal hernia. I’d seen it when sitting up, but that’s all.
These factors are not a metric measure on my watch.
But that’s just it, there’s often no reason or feeling when the esophagus gets messed up… even the case with esophageal cancer patients. (No I don’t have a diagnosis)
The only real sign more heartburn ✅, lingering cough✅, and rapid weight loss. Well, today I stood on the scale and it read 260. 260 is number I hoped to reach in months, not 2 weeks.
So now I have dilemma, do I celebrate the loss or get freaked about the rapid change and not do my Zepbound injection tonight.
Im freaking out.
Wish comes to the other joy of baseball, distraction from real life.
Today I was able to sit today where the kids holler at the right fielder to get a ball with the added bonus is a top foul ball location. Kids flock there!
Today there must have been a little league event or something because this spot was mobbed. So much come and going between innings.
Talk about distracting.. old me would have been totally annoying. Today I couldn’t have been happier.
Leave it to kids to help you find joy.
#baseball #weightlossjourney #zepbound #esophagealcancer #healthtracking
My heartburn this week has been on a level I never had in my entire life.
We ate out last night at a Noodles and Company. Despite evering thing on the menu is soft nothing sounded good…
So ya 5 year old mind kicked in, I went with the old standby butter noodles. It was a meal that my mom would make because it was fast and easy.
I have to contemplate eating slow, painfully slow. My mind doesn’t know what to do with itself so I found myself scrolling on my phone. That little bit of distraction led me to almost started to choke again 😩.
I looked around and saw someone much like myself perhaps 15 years ago. He was obviously single and out because cooking at home wasn’t easy. It was obvious he was swiping left and right in a dating ap. As fast as he was swiping he was shoveling bites of food into his mouth. He picked up his phone typed for a few moments and rushed out the door. Shoving was was left of pasta and salad on the way out the door. I was hopeful he was off to a match on the ap. 👩❤️👨
I wondered if he had a home dynamic like me growing up. Dinner precisely at 5:45 when weather finished and finished in time Wheel of Fortune at 6:00. Dad would go first, then mom, then my sister, then me. By the time I got served, my dad would be done with first service and onto second. If I live up to the image my dad was setting for m, I would have to eat fast💨 to get more. Dad would take thirds and the rest in the bowl if they were available.
People always commented about how fast I eat and I always blamed him. But in a modern day society where we have fast food, fast casual, even fast fitness food, we are all set up for this dynamic. Layer in the phone with all of the fomo built in, it’s a recipe for fast eating.
For those that know me I’m either bouncing off the walls with work and or the latest documentary project. Lately I’ve even added some research into AI and ML Ops, a space where 2 months a go is ancient history.
I’m literally a hummingbird, but for one thing.
Yesterday I heard this little green hummingbird buzz about. Here and there zip zip zip.
Except to eat.
#Eatslow
