The other day I sat down with Ski Acres’ local ripper Austin Hironaka to catch up on his shred log from the past couple of seasons. Austin is busy filming for Ride Snowboards’ new series, Ride With Us, but was kind enough to let us break into a quick garage session for the scoop.
Jake: It’s been a busy year dude – Ride moved you up to the Pro team, you’ve logged some big trips, filmed quite a bit, and now you’re making a web series with the Snoqualmie crew. How’d you score that?
Hiro: Well, my homie Tommy Little that I filmed with last year has been doing a really good job and when Ride saw his work they offered him a job. Tom asked Ride who he should film and was given the opportunity to choose his crew. It ended up being Seth Kitzke, John Shaw and me shooting with Tommy, so now I’m riding with the homies doing what we do.
Jake: Are you guys riding locally for most of the season or will you be racking up the air miles?
Hiro: I think there’s going to be a midwest rail trip in there, definitely some Tahoe stuff, maybe a Salt Lake trip, Idaho – who knows. Ride With Us. Wherever the hell we’re going, you should come. Got that Gold Pass this year from RideWashington so we’ll definitely be making some local stops.
Jake: PURE GOLD! Other than Ride With Us, what’s coming up for you?
Hiro: I’m gonna try to stack a two-year part during our Ride With Us travels and see what I can’t put out in two years time.
Jake: With all these projects in the garage I can imagine it’s tough to get away from home. What’s with all the Hondas around here?
Hiro: They’re from the homeland! The land of the rising sun. But beyond that, it’s a cool platform to work on because there are so many customization options, and you can put parts from an Acura in a Honda and vice versa. Honda’s are solid.
Jake: You got to make your first trip out there recently, correct?
Hiro: Not only did I go to Japan for two weeks and ride some of the sickest pow of my life, I got to go to Talon, Estonia with the FODT crew and filmed for Familia 2. That was such a cool experience – our tour guide was a famous rapper from Estonia – total chart topper. They did it in their time. RIP Revo. Turkey was two years ago, which was epic too. Life is good.
Jake: Japmobbin’ the world over.
Hiro: Japmob
