El camino largo detrás... del camino largo a continuación.

Nico Melendez extended the invitation to join the Levitation Project in Las Lenas, Argentina for a bit of this and that. After coming home from Canada and being in the abhorrent Utah summer heat, my enthusiasm for the Southern Hemisphere was growing. The fares out of San Francisco were much cheaper than Utah. Also Mike Wilson and Travis Ganong were aboard the same travel ship, so I got behind my trusty Subaru steed and drove West...



Mike always has to have the newest ish on the gadget market, so we used his iPhone and its expensive stopwatch to calculate the alloted travel time from Tahoe to Las Lenas...so counting my drive from Salt Lake to Tahoe and the cabin fever in Mendoza and all the other unfortunates it ended up somewhere around the 98 hours sum.

Once there I met up with the lens crew of Adam Clark, Will Wissman, Bridger Nielson, Dustin HugeBigGuy and Nico Melendez. The shred heads were Bode Merril, Phil Damianakes, Austin Granger, Billy the tool Poole and Julian Carcass hucker. Jumps, bumps, humps, lines, spines, wines, powder, chowder and...flan all were had.
The food usually was some sort of combination of ham and cheese. Not a very friendly place for a vegetarian like myself...,but I made due until this chile relleno came about one night...

Las Lenas is wild. Not much room packed with Argentina's elite brown eyes and their commercialized attitudes, along with the gnarliest wind storms, sideways snow and latest dinner time known to man. The American can be loved, hated and everything in between within a 10 meter radius. But our money is something that can cause one emotion to stand above all...greed...or maybe its the language barrier. Regardless we got away with a lot of rowdy behavior. Food fights, cop fights, McDonalds tent fights, arcade fights and others.


After the decadence in Las Lenas we ventured back to Mendoza for more mellow times. A little bit of tourism and nicer weather. If you ever end up in Mendoza the Damajuana Hostel is highly recommended. Fausto and Gabi will treat you well. Spend some time in and around the Plaza Indepencia, eat lots of Dulce de Leche and most food choices around there are tip top. But keep your possessions close. Some people like to have lose hands in those parts.




The travel home was up to par with the way there. Mendoza-Santiago-Dallas-San Francisco-Tahoe-Salt Lake. Two hemispheres, two continents, three countries, five time zones, three states and countless cities all in two days time. I couldn't make the final push into my Utah destination, so car camping in the Salt Flats it was, but sunrises always lighten the day...get it...get it. Lame.



All in all it was a super productive and fun trip. The movie is going to be a banger. You can't beat the El Ray, Stuntman Mike, Cherry, Levitation snow shred combination for a film. If you're in Utah on October 30th come see some good slasher action. www.thelevitationproject.com