By Cristina Kumka
posted
Dec 27, 2012
Photo by Cristina Kumka
Snowboarders Dylan Lynch and his brother Tyler, raised on
Fairview Avenue in Rutland are back for Christmas and have brought
nine of their friends with them, all in a bus marked with graffiti
and a message of sustainable living.
Raised in Rutland, now specializing in snowboarding with a focus
in doing the right thing, about a half dozen residents are making
their way across the country doing what they love and trying to
inspire the next generation of Vermonters.
Dylan Lynch and his brother Tyler, raised on Fairview Avenue in
the city - a stones-throw away from what was then called Zero
Gravity (now Flipside) skateboard park - are back in the Rutland
area for Christmas and have brought nine of their friends with
them, not to mention a bus marked with graffiti and a message -
sustainable living.
You might see the souped-up school bus, converted to run off
diesel and unused vegetable oil from restaurants, and the boys
throughout the Rutland/Killington region this week.
Killington Resort is where their passion first ignited.
Most of the crew calls themselves Gremlinz or the GBP (Green
Bandit Productions) and most are from Rutland.
They started in elementary school, skating at the park, and
formed lifelong bonds.
They left Rutland after high school to snowboard out west, now
living in Lake Tahoe on the border of Nevada and California, and
make a living filming extreme snowboarding/skating/surfing videos,
distributing them worldwide and selling t-shirts and
sweatshirts.
That eventually led to most of them getting sponsored by
big-name winter sports companies and, even starting a snowboard
company that ships freshly-made boards all over the world.
Some crew members have made more than $100,000 a year, they
report.
But, according to Dylan Lynch, that's not the climax of their
success story.
"Our goal is to end up on land with self-sustainable houses and
promote that lifestyle to people in the future," he said.
The crew's website, www.gbp-gbp.com, boasts information about their
ultimate goal - creating a "Sababaland" where their friends and
family can one-day come live off the land, something they want to
preserve not just because they make their money riding the Earth's
snowy slopes but because it's the right thing to do.
The crew spreads a message, reiterated by one of their role
models, New Mexico architect Mike Reynolds. A documentary called
"Garbage Warrior" is posted on the GBP website and in it, Reynolds
says the new American Dream is not about what career you have or
how much money you make, but how Americans are going to figure out
"how our children and how our children's children have a chance at
life" on this planet.
Reynolds has been building sustainable, off-the-grid homes for
the last 30 years out west.
The documentary chronicles Reynolds fight with the New Mexico
State Legislature to let him build experimental homes that are
wholly sustainable - making their own heat, water and power by
capturing the sun's heat with glass bottles and using mud to
insulate used tires and hold temperature, making them pure examples
of thermal-mass.
Reynolds and his own crew traveled to India and Mexico in the
wake of tsunamis that have happened over the last decade and the
homes they built are still being used today by the native people,
who were given the tools to build more of these sustainable homes
on their own.
The film concludes with news that Reynolds' proposed law, one
that would allow him to continue building the experimental homes in
his home state, was passed in 2007.
"We are running out of oil, water and our climate is changing,"
Reynolds says in the film.
"We need to be doing it now, tomorrow morning," he said of
building all-sustainable homes.
Rutlander, Dylan Lynch said, "Many of us are from Vermont. We
have grown up with more green surroundings than others. We're about
it. It's disgusting going to cities and seeing unsustainable
economies... We are trying to be self-sustainable and trying to not
depend on government or anyone else."
The GBP crew can be seen driving their bus around the
Rutland/Killington area this week or can be reached via their
website www.gbp-gbp.com
Cristina Kumka can be reached at cristina_kumka@yahoo.com or
802-770-4373
