Imagine MT. Everest, the beauty of it all, Mother Nature at her best, 8000+ miles above sea level, and you can take a photo with your iphone and post to facebook and instagram instantly! Yes it’s true; today’s technology is heading to the highest peaks and coldest places on earth.

In the 70s and 80s, Mt. Everest expeditions ran from 2 porters from base camp to the village, but now it’s easy with a 3G network costing from 4 cents per minute. For lab top users, the Ncell’s USB Wi-Fi antenna is the same size as a memory stick costing $30 in the village. Add this to your gear list before climbing to base camp!

The Hercules ENESSERE Wind Generator offers significant advantages as it can be placed anywhere. The ENESSERE was designed to integrate seamlessly with its surroundings and contribute to enhancing the architectural context in which it is installed. It’s ideal location is in private villas, gardens and public parks.

The beauty and design can reconcile the need for a technological and economic development with its surroundings, respecting fully the nature and the places where we live. The distinctive design of Hercules ENESSERE Wind Generator offers significant advantages as it can be placed in any landscape, even of high prestige beauty.

As part of the first ever Frieze New York Mulberry has sponsored Frieze Projects, which sees eight artists commissioned to create installations and artworks around the fair’s home on Randall’s Island in New York City.

When you get off the pier from NYC the viewer immediately is engulfed in custom art projects.  Artists integrate their art in a natural setting as well as create incredible exhibits that are linked back to the history of the city.  A must see next time around.  For more info check out Mulberry.

Robots in Architecture is on the road again. In Berlin, there was a 2-day robot masterclass that introduced participants to the KUKA|prc plugin for Grasshopper. From what started out with automatic toolpath generation for robotic writing quickly moved on to multi-axis spraypainting on the host university’s white walls.

Using an Arduino board, the KUKA robot interfaced with the spraygun, allowing designs that consist of multiple strokes.  Truly amazing when art and technology meet.

Somewhere in the secluded backwoods of British Columbia, hidden from view and out of ear shot of the civilized world, an egg shaped tree house in perched overlooking Whistler mountain. The beautifully handcrafted wood structure sits in perfect harmony with the tall pine forest that surrounds it.  But who would build something like this and why? Turns out the former part of that question is a lot easier to answer than the latter.

The young man behind the treehouse is Joel Allen, who, after unsuccessfully attempting to retire at age 26, decided to try his hand at carpentry. While working and exploring the woods around Whistler, Joel got to thinking about a permanent outdoor sleeping solution, which set him on a path to build a tree house.

After playing around with a couple of ideas a friend suggested an egg shape. This struck Joel as divine genius. Unable to afford any land he decided to build on land owned by the Canadian government – a risky, but not all together unheard of practice in British Columbia.  After finding a suitable spot, a long process of covert construction took place that required ferrying tools and supplies out into the woods. Once completed the house was giving the name HemLoft and Joel took up residence.  To this day the location has been kept a secret.

Even now after its completion, Joel is still unable to fully explain why he decided to build the house. “I found myself grasping for some sort of rationalization that would make me seem less crazy, ” he says, “I guess… I just wanted to build something cool.”  After the exclusive write up in Dwell and all the buzz he has gotten from the design blogosphere it looks like Joel’s career prospects have improved significantly.  However, we hope his recent notoriety doesn’t garner the scornful ire of the wrathful Royal Canadian Mounties.

The designers Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram are developing a chair within a public testing environment in collaboration with Audi’s Lightweight Design Centre using methods borrowed from the future of automotive manufacturing.

The R18 ULTRA CHAIR consists of three main components: a carbon composite seat, a carbon-rubber composite back rest and aluminum alloy legs which can be compacted and transported in a lightweight flat-pack box.  The purpose of this live laboratory is to gather user data in order to optimise the final product and shed every gram of excess weight. Every testing session will be documented as a personalised video and sent back to each visitor by email link to watch and share with friends. After the PUBLIC BETA phase, all crowd-sourced data will be fed into the chair’s design parameters and its production adapted as necessary.

The genesis of the R18 ULTRA CHAIR incorporates crowd-sourced data acquired through thousands of testing sessions using advanced industrial sensors whose data is processed by custom algorithms to adjust the final geometry and construction of the end product accordingly.

In 2006 swiss pilot Yves Rossy became the first and only man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing and still is today. Years after the first crossing of the English Channel by air, the man now known as JETMAN followed the path of Louis Blériot, achieving an amazing flight that was broadcast live to 165 countries and widely covered by the worldwide press.

“The ultimate dream of flight – soaring through the air, with total freedom in all three dimensions, not within a heavy and complicated machine but with only one’s body and sensations – a dream everybody had at least once in their life. JETMAN made it real.”

  This years Sea Otter was nothing short of awesome.   The setting is at Laguna Seca just outside of Monterrey, CA with a massive amount of open space that hosts every cycling race under the sun.  It is a perfect four day festival that integrates races, teams, companies showing their latest and greatest and consumers from around the US that just simply love biking.  In addition to the overwhelming biking schedule there was a Laguna Seca Invitational downhill skateboard race in which we had the pleasure to witness and see old friends.

This photo sums up some of the side show fun:

Below are some of our highlights throughout the event.
Specialized Collaboration

We were stoked to unveil the Element Case collaboration with Specialized at their athlete signing party on Saturday.  All the sponsored Specialized riders are now rocking this limited edition case.

Santa Cruz Syndicate Collaboration

We made special custom cases for the Syndicate team and had them on display for fans to check out as well as presented them to the riders.

Here is a shot of Greg Mannaar and his new team case.

We had a booth next to our friends at Ride SFO and had a chance to see old friends and the opportunity to meet a lot of new ones during the four days.

Laguna Seca 2012 Invitational

The last downhill skateboard race held at Laguna Seca was back in 1981. Fast forward to April 19th, 2012 on a sunny afternoon at the Sea Otter Classic cycling festival and we bear witness to the modern day downhill racers charging the same section of racetrack. A strong field of skaters raced on the classic course with some of the best riders in the world representing from as far away as Canada, Sweden and Brazil. Three former IGSA World Cup Series Champions headed the list of entries including Erik Lundberg (2007), Tom Edstrand (2005) and Chris Chaput (2001). Additional top contenders included 2010 Maryhill Festival of Speed Winner Zak Maytum, 2011 U.S. National Champion A.J. Haiby, 2011 Jr II World Champion Max Wippermann and Jr I World Champion Quinn Dubois. A slew of IGSA World Cup Series contenders including Andrew Chapman, Kyle Martin, Billy Meiners, Tim Del Rosario-Rojas, Josh Torres, Graham Buksa, Braden Tibbles, and Mike Jakubiec and downhill legends Jeff Budro and Biker Sherlock were all pushing hard for their share of the $5,000 purse. After the heats whittled down and the racing leathers were drenched in sweat, it was Kyle Wester who won a tight Final heat over Andrew Mercado.  Graham Buksa was third and Eric Lundberg came in fourth.

2012 Sea Otter Downhill Results

Race Date: Sunday April 22, 2012
CLASS DH100 Pro Men
1 Jared Graves 02:02.51 119545 YETI CYCLES/FOX SHOX
2 Michael Hannah 02:03.05 AUS19831 HUTCHINSON UNITED RI
3 Aaron Gwin 02:03.81 274107 TREK WORLD RACING
4 BRIAN LOPES 02:04.50 21573 IBIS/KENDA/OAKLEY/X-
5 Neko Mulally 02:04.66 247831 TREK WORLD RACING
6 Mitch Ropelato 02:05.78 240150 SPECIALIZED GRAVITY
7 Justin Leov 02:06.98 NZL19841 TREK WORLD RACING
8 Cedric GRACIA 02:07.78 FRA19780 BRIGADE/SANTA CRUZ/F
9 Curtis Keene 02:07.95 112383 SPECIALIZED USA GRAV
10 GREG MINNAAR 02:08.01 RSA19811 SANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE

  Big-wave charger Chuck Patterson retraces his Nordic roots while riding skis at 20-foot Jaws on Maui.  There is something special about this,  I have never seen someone charge Jaws on skis. This goes to show you anything is possible, just another day for Chuck.

Amazing..

  To celebrate our Skate Legends launch today I wanted to share a snip of one of classic PP skate videos.  My friends and I watched this so many times.  This crew definitely helped shape  not only our style of skating but how we viewed the West Coast skate culture.

Hats off the the Bones Brigade.