Describe yourself in five words.

Oh my gosh, that is actually kind of a hard one. I'll just say red, smooth. Hungry….and I was going to say fast, but most people would say that I'm pretty slow, so I don't think we'll go with that one. We'll say, capable…and determined.

Hell yes. You did it, Dan.

Those would be a couple.

I was going to say kind.

Oh, that would've been a good one too.

If you had to give up hitting street spots or riding pow, which would you give up and why?

I think I'd give up riding street spots, because riding pow is so sick and I've ridden street spots my whole life.

If you had to give up riding dirt bikes or riding regular pedal bikes, which one would you give up and why?

I'd give up pedal bikes because dirt bikes are sick.

I've always found it funny that I've never seen a street snowboarder listen to music when they're hitting a spot.

Dude, I've never seen it before either, and no one ever does it when they're in the backcountry, either.

Do you listen to music when you snowboard, like just freeriding?

No. I've tried back in the day riding Hyland, but I didn't really like it. I liked being able to hear the snow and hear my board and hear people yelling and talking and stuff.

What is your favorite rope tow resort that you've ever
been to?

Hyland Hills. That’s my home resort. Well, Trollhaugen is also really good. Hyland and Troll are pretty all-time. I went to Talma, Finland one time and that was super fun. I guess it’s more T-bar style, but we'll call it a tow rope. That park was super fun.

If you're not snowboarding, you're doing what?

Working on projects around the house or dirt biking or skating…or just hanging.

What is your first snowboarding memory?

Damn, that's kind of a crazy one. My neighbor’s older cousin that we thought was really cool came over and brought his snowboard, and we watched him ride it, and then all we did was stand up on our sleds after that to mimic snowboarding, and those are my kind of earliest snowboarding memories.

Was it a Black Snow that your buddy had, or was it like an actual snowboard?

No, he had an actual snowboard, but my other neighbor did have two Black Snow boards with the little rope on the front, and we used to ride those, but not often. But then when we saw this dude riding an actual snowboard, all we did was ride those Black Snows and stand up on sleds, and then we finally got our own snowboards.

What is your favorite breed of dog?

I really like Vizslas.

What's a Vizsla?

They kind of look like you and I.

Hell yeah.

They're like a hound, but they're skinny and don't have
big floppy ears and all that.

So you're saying they're extremely handsome?

They're super, super handsome…and cute. Very cute and
handsome.

What's the best and worst part about owning chickens?

The best part about owning chickens is that they're cute and they produce a lot of eggs, which is really nice. And then the worst part is probably just every once in a while you
gotta clean the coop out. That's about it.

Do other predators ever try to eat your chickens?

Dude, yes. We've had hawk attacks and it's gnarly. It sucks. And then one time…we
don't even know what it was. It must've been a raccoon or something, but
something got into the coop and killed one of our chickens. Okay. That's
maybe the worst part of having chickens, sometimes something goes after them
and it sucks.

If there's one thing you look for in a snowboard—one
characteristic in a snowboard that would make it ride well to you, what is
that?

A good shape.

Is that because looking down at it, you just want to see a
good shape or does that have a functionality to it?

I think a bit of both. If a board rides terribly but looks awesome, I'll kind of make it ride well as best I can.

This is going to be a really hard one, Dan, and I'm sorry
to do this to you. Top five favorite snowboarders of all time.

That is definitely a hard one. Okay. I would go with David Benedek, Noah Salasnek. Jonas Michilot. I would also say Travis Parker. I would stick him in there. He was incredible and Matt Boudreaux.

Boody! Hell yeah.

Yep.

Why Armada? What was the tipping point when you were like,
“Damn, this is a little risky, but it's worth the risk.”

The people behind it. When it's your best friends finally doing it, it was a no-brainer.

I'll never forget, I don't know why Tanner and I were so
nervous to call you, but we did and you were working on a house or something, and I believe we got three sentences out. We weren't even close to being done with our pitch, and you were just like, "Yeah, this all sounds good. I'm down."

Yeah, it was awesome. It was so cool. When I was younger I would look at
certain companies and be like, “Wow, this company's so cool,” but I wouldn’t know
or care to know why. They just looked cool. But nowadays, it's all about who's
behind it.

Here's a hot take for you. I think boardercross is cool as
fuck. People clown on it, but I think it's dope.

I think boardercross is cool too. I think that snowboarding is getting cooler as time goes on.

Lastly, I wanna get your take on the testing process this
winter that went down at Loon Mountain and Powder Mountain in order to get these boards dialed in and up to your standards. Especially your signature board that will be coming out.

Yeah. The testing process was great. Luckily, we had really good conditions the whole time at both places. Loon was a bit more powder than we were expecting, and Powder Mountain was just the perfect kind of spring, almost slushy style riding where the resort is so good to ride. It's easy to turn, easy to test, easy to jump and go from board to board. And having the engineers there was awesome. They're good riders and it's almost like they already kind of know what we’re looking for and even when you tell them what you want, they're kind of already going, “Yep, I was already thinking about that and we’ve been doing this in advance.” Honestly, the whole testing process was fun and was quite effortless.

And so far, how are the boards riding?

Awesome. They've been great.

Oh, one more thing. The graphic inspiration for your signature board. Talk about working with Josh Manoles and all the little things that go into making a really cool board graphic.

Josh is super easy going and everyone loves his style, so it was really nice to just let him do his thing. I took some of my dad's old illustrations and then picked one that I liked and gave that to Josh to incorporate into this graphic. So it was a little blend of an illustration that my dad drew and then Josh doing his thing and then both of us checking it out every once in a while and tweaking it. And then of choosing colors, picking a layout, making sure that we were both down and we liked it.