straight steezy

By: Courtney Stone, Our Project Manager

Y'all may remember from an earlier post of mine that when I first moved to Whitefish as a fresh faced 22 year old, I did not know how to ski and yet somehow interviewed for the Snow Reporter position at Big Mountain, where I first heard "mashed potatoes" and "corn" used in reference to snow.  

I can talk about frog stranglers and my third cousins twice removed and the subtleties between North and South Carolina barbeque sauces with authority and panache.  And while we're on the subject, barbeque is a noun, y'all, not a verb.  I'm a proud product of Virginia + Georgia, and though I've been a Montana devotee for 27 years now, and lived here full time since 2002, my first and native tongue will always be that of the South.

But of course I've learned other languages in my life, those of English majors, lawyers, and retail honey specialists, and two months into my career here at Wheelie, I'm trying to pick up a new one: design.  Outdoor specialty industry design, to be specific.  Emails filter in and out of my inbox all day that keep urbandictionary.com open in my browser, as I strive for fluency.

The graphics on that hat are straight steezy.

I'd heard the term in passing before, in the Pine parking lot on the mountain, between overly stoked snowboarders at Logan Pass last July, and definitely on the deck at the Northern bar downtown.  I'd heard it often enough to have a sense of it, but not enough to respond authoritatively to a work email containing it.  So, to Urban Dictionary I surfed.

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Style + ease.  Got it.  I'm a skiier, not a snowboarder, and a Backpacker/Hiker/Scrambler at heart, but I can appreciate anything that combines style with ease, right?

But can steezy be applied to objects not necessarily fresh and current?  We told y'all you'd find Wheelie, Wheelie Deep Thoughts here.

I say, in all of my enthusiasm for new language learning: YES.
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To me, my practically vintage Gregory Women's Shasta Backpack is straight steezy.  For 20 years now, it has carried me down scree fields and over high passes with style and ease.  

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As I recall, the Shasta was one of the very first truly women-specific packs -- contoured and engineered for women's bodies, and not just straight marketing -- available.  I'm pretty sure my parents gave it to me, along with their love of backpacking, in 1996.

Examining it 20 years later, I think that Gregory hit it straight out of the design park on practically the first pitch.  The sternum strap hits high enough on my chest to be utilitarian and not a nuisance; the hip belt is wide enough for hips that have balanced babies for the last five years, and padded enough that it was comfortable even before I had those babies and the requisite extra padding to show for it; the classic forest green color palette is timeless and hides wear and tear well.  5'10 me can carry 65lbs with style and ease in this pack.  The material is apparently bomb proof as there's only one duct tape patch on the whole pack, and it's travelled many miles with me.  I wish I knew how many.

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Recently, a dear friend bought me a new pack.  And it's very stylish.  I'll be taking it into the Bob next weekend to determine if the style it exudes translates into ease, and steeze.  Stay tuned. 

In the meantime, I'm raising my glass to my best girl, my Shasta pack.  Thanks for all the adventures I had back when I was young and actually steezy.

Now it's time to go back to being old and looking up these terms and maybe not actually usually them in blog posts.  

Happy weekend, Wheelies!  Y'all get out there and get after it.