This content was pulled from SNOWBOARDER Magazine’s September 2010 issue is on newsstands now. Go to your local snowboard shop, bookstore, or download a copy from Zinio.

Words and Photos: T. Bird

Check out the opener below, as well as some extra photos and videos from SNOWBOARDER Magazine’s article about a trip to Turkey with some of the Ride team including Darrell Mathes, Austin Hironaka, Hana Beaman, and Alex Cantin.

Austin Hironaka makes friends with the local police force. I hate cops.

"A heavy grey hangs over Istanbul. Shoes shuffle on pocked pavement as shades of pastel flake off dilapidated apartments stacked many stories high. The ocean is a dense, charcoal smoke. Mosques are frozen in time, looming above the landscape, forlorn, and capped with warm gold. Muslim songs drone from unseen speakers, resonating through the city's electric streets, and spray-paint jibberish scrawls cement walls. A weathered old dog passes, its hair tangled in knots. He wants nothing to do with the piece of pretzel I toss it, having eaten enough today. The market is bustling. Within the delirium of the Grand Bazaar marketplace, a man has toppled over and passed out on the sidewalk. Elderly women place Misbaha prayer beads into his limp claw. Most likely a drug overdose, I'm told—the last strides of a midnight run. The thick stench of burnt hair that envelops the city is pungent, but two days in, I'm used to it. Merchants yell for attention in broken English, and pigeon shit blankets every inch of cement. Vibrant colors of storefront spices burst from the drab, brown slats they sit atop. The grey never lifts, and so evenings get dark—pitch black; the sky completely absent of stars. Into the twilight we dissolve, waiting for something, anything to transpire.

This photo was glowing after Darrell rode the pole. It was weird when the photo asked for a cigarette, though.

'We're here to snowboard,' I tell a confused man at a discotheque. He has a thick mustache and black, dark-set eyes with a round nose that contrasts his stickish facial features. Techno blares from unfinished hand-me-down subwoofers unstably stacked to the ceiling. He says something in Turkish. Our guide translates: 'He does not know why you came here to snowboard.' Funny thing was, neither did we."- T. Bird

To read the rest of this feature, pick up a copy of SNOWBOARDER Magazine's September issue on newsstands or click on the links below to subscribe.

Austin Hironaka is part Asian, so it was no surprise when he dropped this bomb on foreign soil.

This was the only tail Alex Cantin got on this trip.

We couldn't stop asking Beaman if her turkeys were done. It was that cold.

Native Turkish women might get stoned for wearing pink pants, but Beaman ain't no stranger to danger. Rock solid 50-50.

Le Canadien français Alex Cantin, en mettant “le peut” en arrière dans son propre nom.

Darrell Mathes couldn't run from this 5-0. God, I hate cops.

Scenery? Who the hell wants to see a scenery photo? What's this turkey? Hironaka is in this photo, but I bet you already knew that, didn't ya?

We busted Beaman human trafficking.

Hay is for horses, better for cows, most people don't ride it 'cause they don't know how. Alex Cantin.

In twenty years, people will look back and say that Darrell Mathes was a sick rider in his heyday.

This little girl's favorite color was "tongue-sten" blue.

Hironaka's got some balls. Unfortunately for him, in this photo they are blue.

Below is an edit of the trip from Ride’s Team Manager, Matt Sickels.