Day 1

Friday 3rd of November, picking up Nicki in Zurich, to drive all the way to Valais in the French part of Switzerland. Martigny, here we come! Surprisingly for a Friday afternoon, the Swiss highways were not completely blocked by traffic and we made it there in time.
As founder of Reverse, Nicki was invited to represent the media perspective, in a conference about winter sports, at the “Into the Ride” boardsports event. Other participants in the meeting were for example Xavier De Le Rue, Nicholas Hale-Woods (founder of the Freeride World Tour), the Nidecker snowboards team manager and a few others. I was sitting in the conference with around a hundred French speaking people and I proudly watched it till the end. It was probably super interesting, but to be totally honest, I didn´t understand a single word. Sipping constantly on my beer and watching super funny old school snowboard movies screening on the background of the conference room.
Once the meeting finalised, we checked out the exhibition hall and had a look on the venue for Saturday. Then, together with Milva and Fanta Antognini, two other fine food lovers, we decided to go for a real Swiss program and walked to the next Fondue restaurant. Great white wine and the local specialty “Tomato Fodue”, nothing more to be said beside: I want the same for breakfast again!

Day 2

Saturday morning, Coffee and Croissant, back to the “Into the Ride” exhibition hall. It´s kind of like a little ISPO, but way more focus on the athletes, skateboarding and snowboarding then on the products of the companies. Still a big meet and greet with a lot of snowboarder homies, who we haven’t seen over the summer. One of my favourite things to see were all the Volkswagen van models from the very first model from the early 50’s to the newest car. Behind every van, was exposed a fictive teen’s room with all the skateboarding essentials, wallpapers and movie posters from around the same time. How fun to see, the evolution of style, tastes, skate shoes, skateboards and even colours changed over time.
Then we moved to the brand area to hang out at the K2 snowboarding booth for a while, drinking beers and meeting Gigi Rüf, who recognized us with our Girls Are Awesome jacket. Then we went over to the spine ramp to witness some incredible skate action. It´s awesome to see boys and girls, men and woman shredding together and propping no matter the level.
Great people, good beer, interesting conferences, sick skate action, good concerts and a lot of inspiring stuff to see. Thank you “Into the Ride” for having us!

Cheers
Sebi & Nicki

Pictures: Nicki Antognini
Words: Sebi Geiger
Location: Martigny, Switzerland
Thanks to: CERM and the organising team from IntoTheRide