When I was a little kid, I was scared of a lot of things. The strange monster that stared at me every night with his two red eyes. The floor boards which constantly creaked, as if someone was coming to kill me. The bathtub where I thought I was going to drown. Or there was that bully at school who told me I was a chicken and only had one day to live. I guess they were normal fears that every kid had.
Till the day my aunt got me Pouloulou, my teddy bear who was not a bear, but a cute sheep. He calmed me down completely and eased my nighttime apprehensions. With Pouloulou by my side, I was untouchable.
I actually felt like I was a part of the sheep family, with my insanely curly hair. Even my friends said I looked like a sheep, but after Pouloulou came into my life, I didn't care what they said about me anymore.
Every night from then on, when it came time to go to bed, if my mom couldn't make me nod off with her usual boring story about some farmer (oh god, not again!), I would just pretend to be asleep after 2 minutes. And as soon as she was gone, I would start to count sheep with my buddy. And the comforting vision of my little friends jumping over obstacles, one by one, with graceful little hops, was the best thing ever to send me off to meet the sandman.
Sheep played a protective role throughout my young life. Sheep made me become a real man. But as the years passed I lost my affection for sheep. I grew up, sold my 14 stuffed sheep, shaved my hair repeatedly, etc. I did have a little toy sheep under my rear view mirror in my car, but it didn't prevent me from having 3 accidents. So I slowly but surely gave up on praying at the altar of the sheep god...
In the meantime, my snowboard skills were getting worse and worse. I was totally insecure, I couldn't do anything I wanted with my board like I used to before, until one day I was saved from sucking.
The HKD DEVUN snowboard by DC made its debut and suddenly it didn't seem like such a bad idea to have sheep graphics on my board, even though I still felt like I shouldn't... In the end I went for it and what a renaissance it was for me. There were sheep under my feet, that's for sure. I could have ordered an entire boatload of these sheep decks, my outlook on life had changed that much.
Devun had the best idea on earth to use this illustration of sheep to complement such a awesome shred blade. It is so amazing to ride, it almost feels like there's a computer chip inside of it guiding you, but it's actually the sheep faith. Even though this new model is an updated mix of all the tech featured in the HKD board series, with a tight graphic package plus a Sintered Supreme Optic Base, it's not technology that makes everything happen.
After I got this board me and the rest of the crew ran to the mountains like a herd of sheep. Hitting the park with the lamb-sized 153 model is perfect and the bigger 158 mutton is ideal for grazing some deep powder fields. Believe it or not, but at the end of the day of rippin' around on these boards the only thing I was screaming was: "Baaaaa, Baaaa, Baaaad Ass!".
By Florent De Maria
