A few months ago, this dude named TJ called me up and asked if I wanted to be an announcer at the Winter Dew Tour. At first, I thought hell no I'm signed up to compete and I'm going to dazzle the judges and the crowd with my progressive tricks and epic grabs and I might also customize some clothing in a notable way. But then I got to thinking all announcing is is watching the action and talking shit about it as it transpires. This is something that I have done incessantly throughout my days as an actual participant in events. And I've been doing it for free all this time! After some time of ruminating over such tidbits of information, my curiosity about a new experience combined with my magnanimity toward the poor fellows who otherwise would have had to compete against me to compel me to take the offer to announce at the first-ever Winter Dew Tour. And announce I did. For five straight days, I chattered about my erstwhile competitors who had the absolutely UNenviable privilege of skiing a slopestyle course whose jumps couldn't be cleared because of 20-40 mile per hour winds, new snow, and subzero (emphasis on SUB) temperatures, and a superpipe whose slow surface and similarly shitty conditions helped to elicit not-so-much-to-write-home-about performances from most of the very rusty field. Honestly, who holds a halfpipe contest before January? And who holds any contest in Breckenridge during a time of year when Breck's weather gods are notorious for their inclemency? I don't know. But my heated booth and I were inclined to not care, if not to chuckle a little bit as well.

And the good news didn't stop there. In the middle of the contest week, Mike Douglas left me a voicemail saying, "John Sheemus. This is Mike Dougras. Car me back for information about a velly exciting adventure." I knew from the humorous transposition of the letters "l" and "r" that I was going to Asia. I like Asia. I mean, I go through most of my life being only marginally capable of communicating with the people around me. At least in Asia, there is a serious language barrier to account for that. When I called Dougras back, the information he offered exceeded my wildest dreams. This wasn't going to be your average, played-out trip to Japow. We were planning a trip to Powrea! For those of you less versed in international geography, Powrea lies on a peninsula to the west of Japow and to the south of Chipow. We're going to be visiting South Powrea, a place much friendlier to Westerners than the much more xenophobic North Powrea. I don't know our exact itinerary, but I hope that we'll get to see the DMZ, or the Depillowtoride Zone, which divides North and South Powrea. Look for it soon in Saromon Fleeski Terevision.

Luv,

Symms