It's the funny part about the internet.   When you're talking about news and happenings on the internet, everything is stale if it's about five seconds old.  Personally it's what I like about the internet... massive amounts of information streaming straight to your brain at all times.   When one partakes in traditional media such as magazines, TV, books, whatever, there's lots that you have access to.  However the internet blows me away all the time with just how much shit you have going into your head each and every day.   The prospect of a blog is sometimes difficult, because how the hell can one person come up with that much intersting stuff for people to read?   Generally I just come up with an idea of what one small topic I want to write about, open up my admin interface, and just start typing.   My natural instinct to rant incessantly takes over at that moment, and fuled by my typing speed, (NoPoles is way faster) my brain pours out into text that's read by all of you.  I'm really excited to see the member blogs come into effect, which should be relatively soon.   It will be great to be able to take a trip into the minds of members, and see what everyone has to say.   I like the concept of being able to keep this weird online journal that the world is welcome to read.   Ok, enough about the satellite rant, onto my main topic at hand.   The Rando-Jam!

So I don't know how many of you read the article about it, but basically the idea was that we wanted to give some prizes to you guys.   Obermeyer and Scott are both running contests with us, and instead of just doing a web-based one we wanted to do it live on the hill.   There's a few reasons why we decided to do this.    First, NS is a free site, and you guys are addicted to it.   You are the reason that we can make this thing into a living, and some members go so far as to donate their own money to help us keep the site as good as we possibly can.   In light of us being givin this gift of a wonderful life and job, we wanted to start giving back.   Henceforth the concept of the rando-jam.  We plan on doing this more, and growing the "non-event" from here on in...  The other part of it is we want to give NS more of an offline presence.   One of the big problems (also the best part) of the internet, is it's wonderful faceless, nameless ability to allow personal opinions.   When you're on NS, and sharing your opinion with higher ups in the industry, skier_boy_720 has just as much a voice as JPAuclair.... 'cause really, it all looks the same.   You're judged (or should be) simply on the content of what you have to say, not necessarily who you are.   So with the offline thing, we want to bring more of a real-world aspect to the site.   Everyone on here is a skier, and you may end up riding with them one day.   People always talk about the "old days" of NS where the community was tighter and friendlier.   Something like this seeks to address that problem.   You see, I've always ridden in Blue's park and wondered to myself... just who are the people here who visit NS?  So we posted the article announcing the rando-jam by 7:00pm on saturday night, and sunday morning there were 11 members who knew about it and partook.   Onto the story...So the picture above is me skiing that day.   That backpack I am wearing was full of Obermeyer prize bags and Scott Motive goggles.   I couldn't fit all the day's prizes in there, so I had a re-load stashed at the bottom of the hill.   My whole goal was to meet a few of the members, and just have some general fun.    I went about my business with a regular park day, working on my jumping and throwing caution for the prizes into the wind.   The rules were that to enter people had to walk up and say "I love newschoolers.com" and they would be entered.   Sure enough, a few runs into it I got my first person coming up and saying "Give me a prize."  after some convincing, Lil' Mike (who isn't little anymore) said "I love newschoolers.com" and it was on.   Quickly we had a few more guys come up and realise that this was happening, and now I needed to come up with some tasks.   First, I claimed that I would give a prize for the first person to Pee NS into the snow and show it to me.  One of the lucky riders had to pee, and him and his buddy promptly straightlined it into the woods.   One of them had enough to finish the full NS, and the other simply an N....  
Ewwwwhttp://www......
You can see our lucky winner here on the left with his brand-new obermeyer prize pack.   Next I announced that there was going to be a race in about 20 minutes, and anyone who was interested should come find me.   As well, I was offering a prize for the most number of daffies in one run.  Cole scored the goggles with 52 daffies in ONE run.... I have no idea how he pulled it off, but there was enough witnesses that I determined it was legit.   Before the race started, I had to figure out some quick ways to give away prizes, as I was running out of ideas.  
So, being the creative guy I am, I made these guys play paper, rock, scissors winner recieving a prize.   I pulled the PRS game a few times, as hell on 3 best two out of 3 is a fun way to win shit.  The race was great too....   I had tied a yellow bandanna to a tree at the top of a chairlift two runs away, and told about six guys that first one to bring it back got Scott goggles.... after waiting for a few seconds park staff Dan Kellar exclaimed "He means go guys"  So they bolted as fast as they could.  What else did we do...  Alex James helped me with one by throwing a pair of goggles off the chair as far as he could into the woods and telling the two members behind us on the chair "first one there gets them"  I think one of the guys got a tree to the chest in the pandimonium, and his little brother climbed over him to grab the goggles.  All in all it was a fun day.   Every member who came up to me and said "I love newshcoolers.com" eventually won a prize.   We even played a round of "chairlift trivia" to give out the last one.   The best part was seeing the members who make up the NS community, and just having a great day riding in the park.  Nobody ever comes up to me and says "Hey man, I'm on NS, I message you all the time, hows it going?  I had to give away prizes before people would give up who they are.   I know it's a pretty nerdy thing to be on the hill and like "Hey man are you on NS?   What's  your membername?"  If you don't do it to each other, make sure that if you ever see me just come up and say "Hi Doug!  Nice to meet you!"  I always like meeting new people, and having someone to ski with.  If you need a bribe, usually I have stickers of some sort on my person, so come grab a few! The rando-jam was sweet.   We plan to do more, so watch out, we might do it near you one day...