Vancouver to Armenia @ Rockstar Energy Drink Snowboarding

Vancouver to Armenia

I started in the Roxy RV Bus in Denver and visited snowboard shops all the way up to Vancouver. It took about 5 days to make our way up. Then visited another 6 shops in Vancouver. Here is the bridge that connected North Vancouver to downtown.

Part of going to Vancouver was to watch Torah Bright win the Gold!!

Nobody could beat Torah’s score! She killed it!

I was home in Utah for a week before going on my next trip to Armenia…Amber and I were asked by the US Government Deptartment of State to be Sport Envoys/ Ambassadors in Armenia. Amber and I are the 1st Snowboarders to be sent to another Country and we are the 1st American athletes to come to Armenia as Sports Envoys. The goal of having us here is to educate the Armenians on the sport and to encourage them to have more of a passion to use their Amazing mountains around them!
Below are the photos of our journey to Armenia and our 1st day in Armenia….

: Our flight was 2 hours delayed leaving SLC. So we were re-routed turning our journey into 40hours. Our 1st stop was Paris. We had a 10 hour layover so we decided to tour the city.

: Here is the outside of the very famous Louvre Museum.

: Amber and I are about 30 hours into our travel!

: Our next layover was in Dubai! We took a taxi tour of the city to see all of the new architecture.

: We were also able to see the tallest building in the world Burj Khalifa in Downtown Dubai

: After our 40 hours of Travel we finally made it to Yerevan Armenia. Of course none of our luggage made it so we had to shop that night for business attire for our press conference meetings the next day and for our meeting with the Armenian Olympic committee.

: At the Olympic meeting

: This is a photo with Razmik Stepanyan who is the 1st Vice President of the Armenian National Olympic Committee. Mr Gagik Tsarukian who is the President of the NCOA and owner of the largest Cognac and beer Factory was not able to join us..

: Amber and I getting as close to the rings as we will ever get!

: After the meeting we met with a bunch of Middle school students to tell them about snowboarding. Then we autographed our postcard for them and believe it or not Amber and I are under there signing!

: Here is a reading room for the students in the school. Pretty cool throne!

: Then we met with a bunch of University students. They were all women except for 1. They did not like the idea of snowboarding because they thought it was to manly.. But they were surprised that Amber and I looked like women. Haha so we tried to tell them they can do both

: While Amber stayed and visited with Film students I drove an hour out of the city to Tsaghkadzor. This is the closest resort to Yerevan. I went there to check out the slopes and decide where to design their 1st ever Snowboard contest. They wanted me to design a boardcross course. It was quite funny and intense to tell them the measurements of the bumps, jumps and width of the run. They have never done anything like this before!!

: This is Tom he is the Public Affairs Officer at the Embassy. We both put skies on in our street clothes to look at the run for the contest.

: Finally at the end of the night Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch held a special party at the Embassy residence in our Honor and invited all of the other Top Armenian athletes to meet us. The main sports in Armenia are Arm wrestling. Wrestling, Boxing, weight lifting and Judo. In this photo this is one of the girls that is really excited to ride with us this friday for our beginner class.

One Response to “Vancouver to Armenia”

Argen Says:

Snowboard teacher and X sports fan! Armenian from LA, moved to Yerevan…Looking for some people to do some good for these people! Would like to have a contact chance. good luck and good job!

December 25th, 2010 at 9:23 am