While I was in China I made some great new friends including Andrew Guan and Eli Kislevitz. Andrew and Eli both held me down considerably over there and were instrumental in the trip being a success. And both are here in this second video I made for ESPN (edited by Andrew Pattison), Andrew on-screen and Eli off (he’s the voice of Che Lin). Xie Xie to both you dudes, I can’t wait til our paths cross again! Check out the rest of the ESPN report on China with photos by Andrew and myself and words by Matt Higgins here.

I was in China all last week for the opening of the insane new Woodward Camp in Beijing. As you can see, I was pretty much the man over there – these girls followed me everywhere and fanned out into a cheer pose every time I stopped for a photo. Unfortunately they couldn’t all get visas or I would have taken them back to NY for sure. It wasn’t all fun and games though, I put in some work which can be seen on Radcollector and in this video I did for ESPN. From Tiananmen Square to the Forbidden City to the Great Wall, every time we all realized we were in China because of skateboarding we couldn’t help but bug out. It was pretty unbelievable.

I usually don’t get all corny on Thanksgiving each year and spout all sorts of reflective shit about thankful this and thankful that, I usually just drink too much red wine and alienate friends and loved ones. But this year my Thanksgiving was super mellow and in the absence of copious amounts of wine I actually did get to being thankful about some shit. Then today I woke up (early I might add) and got the news that the story I did for ESPN Skateboarding about the Tony Hawk Show in Paris had achieved page one status on ESPN.com. That’s the world leader in sports yo! Needless to say I was buggin. A story on skateboarding hammering it out on the ESPN home page in the heat of college football season and on the same day Tiger Woods gets into an accident! If I didn’t already know it, today would have sealed the deal, we are here to stay! But the real point here is about thankful-ness, so this year I want to make it completely clear that I am a super thankful motherfucker. Most of all I am thankful for opportunity. If you take it, opportunity is the gateway to everything in life. Aside from opportunity, and completely in tandem with it as well, I am thankful for my friends and family. Every opportunity I’ve ever had has come through the amazing bunch of people I’ve come to know and love in this short life. Thank you. But enough blubbering. For this project in particular I want to thank Catlin and Shana for making it happen and to Tracy and Adam for pushing it through. And I thank skateboarding and snowboarding for changing my life. My video interviews (edited by Salo) are above and a bunch more of my photos from the event are after the jump. Paris J’adore!

Had a blast with the Burton crew last week, as you can peep in my hard hitting ESPN report, but sadly one photo didn’t make the final gallery edit. Nah sons, 13th Witness too raw for Disney! But here we could let you fly kid!

Every year in March, I make a pilgrimage to Vermont for the last great weekend of the East Coast season: The US Open and World Quarters. Its an almost Groundhog Day-esque affair, each year the snow is sparse, the sun is shining and everybody is in the mood to wile out. Ok every now and then the weather gets wack but the wile out part, that’s always true. This year was no different. Actually, this year was off the hook. Uncle Craig (Frank151), Michael (Shut NYC), Tracy (ESPN) and I packed up a brolic Toyota Tundra LTD Crew Max and headed up to Stratton on the Wednesday before the Open so we could get entrenched before the madness. For the next 6 days the entire shred world dropped in and did it right: Danny Kass won his fifth US Open halfpipe, Louie Vito turned 21 and the World Quarters pushed the boundaries of competitive riding from rad to literally fucking insane. Check out the full trip photo gallery courtesy of Craig Wetherby after the jump.