You can tell Shaun White appreciates an audience. He's a livewire - full of energy, joking, laughing, and well used to being the centre of attention.
He has his own superpipe to train on at the Colorado resort of Silverton Mountain, built for him by one of his sponsors, Red Bull.
The way White tells it, in snowboarding, heaven has a halfpipe - and it's full of new tricks.
"Man, I got foam pits, airbags, webbed gloves, wing-suits, massages at the bottom, a whole stretch team," he says, before cracking up with laughter.
"Nah, I'm just kidding you. I did get a halfpipe built for me. And it does have a foam pit with it, but it's no big deal."
Training on private custom-made halfpipes is how the prospective riders vying for selection in the United States snowboarding team roll.
With about 12 snowboarders seeking four spots in the US team for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next February, having one's own halfpipe is a smart move, White says.
Some of his fellow US snowboarders would also seem to think so, with multimillion-dollar sponsors such as Nike building airbag-equipped pipes for its team, which includes European Burton Open 2009 winner Kevin Pearce.
It's not about secretive snowboarders taking competitiveness to a new level in a bid for Olympic selection, White says.
"It's a smart way to do things. Motocross does it, but it's just never been done before in snowboarding.
"It's not like there's any beef between riders. It's just smart. We had a foam pit with ours, but I chipped a bone in my ankle trying to land a trick in that."
When I put it to him that competition for the US Winter Olympics team spots must be tough, he says: "Really? Who are those guys? Who are they?"
It is not a question anyone has to ask of White - the 2006 gold medal-winner in the snowboarding halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
The flame-haired Californian has been turning heads on the international snowboarding stage since 2002, when he won his first medal at the Winter X-Games.
He has claimed medals at every Winter X-Games since, with a tally that sits at 14, including a record four straight wins in the men's slopestyle.
White only decided to enter the New Zealand Burton Open halfpipe competition - at Cardrona Alpine Resort today - during a flight down under last week.
"I hadn't really planned on competing. But, the more I thought about the more I was just - it's good practice, people will be stoked, there will be some fans and there's definitely going to be some good competition."
New Zealand snowboarding fans will be some of the first to see what White has been up to in his private pipe.
"It's cool. I've got some new tricks I've never done in competition before.
"I actually want to see how I'll do under pressure with this new stuff," Practising at Cardrona yesterday, White resembled a whirling dervish, spinning through the air above the 6.8m-high vertical walls of the halfpipe.
His list of new tricks reads like a snowboarding manual in jargon for the uninitiated.
"I'm doing front double corks, cab double corks, switch backside spins, and other stuff,"It's funny, because today was actually the first day I'd ever done these tricks in public, so it was a little weird for me exposing my tricks to the rest of the crew."
White says he is feeling confident about the competition.
It will be his first event appearance in New Zealand, though he is a regular visitor during winter for photo and film shoots, aligned with his main sponsor, Burton Snowboarding.
At the back of his mind is gaining selection for the Winter Olympics, and his quest for back-to-back halfpipe gold medals.
The Flying Tomato - Shaun White (22)
• Who: Professional snowboarder and skateboarder.
• Background: A winner of 14 medals at the Winter X-Games since his first appearance in 2002. White has also crossed over into skateboarding, winning bronze, silver, and gold at the X-Games competing in the vert skate comp. A gold medal-winner in halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Olympics, White is known for his shock of red hair, the reason for his nickname, "the Flying Tomato".
