So here we are having gone around the airport one lap. Apparently they overloaded the plane and some people and their stuff need to get off.
Just swell. At least the seats don’t totally suck.
Archive for the 'Travel' Category
Page 24 of 32
Well, I guess since I have no means of getting to the snow during this early part of the season, I’ll be downing brews when I’m not out hiking. Enjoy the beer reviews! For Hawaii readers, many of these JDM production beers and jibiiru are available at Marukai, Liquor Collection, or Don Quijote – check it out.
At least Root and Fabio will be ripping fresh lines in Whistler this American Thanksgiving!
The base at Sapporo Kokusai had been steadily shrinking from the 50cm on opening day with no resupply in sight, so instead of blowing cash to ride out there on the bus and risk injury on the concrete-hard refreeze, I decided to head for the hills in a different way – on foot. I loaded up my pack with foul weather gear in case the forecast rains did arrive, and headed intop the hills above Sapporo. As a warm-up, I went up and around Maruyama. The trailhead for this 3km loop is just down the road from the Maruyama Zoo. There were about a dozen other people out on the trail with me that morning, along with a bunch of crows that followed said people, waiting for them to drop potentially edible things. On the return to the trailhead along the stream that runs down alongside the zoo, I found an Ezorisu that was hoping for a handout. Making squirrel noises kept him hanging around, even if I didn’t give him anything. I’m not sure if MTB riding is prohibited, but the amount of wooden steps would make this about 30% portages. Continue reading ‘No Snow? No Bike? Hike!’
Kuso! POS! F! I dropped my Niseko lift pass somewhere between the hotel room and the ticket window, so I couldn’t get my 1,000-yen deposit back!
(0)Well, the Sapporo Soup Curry Yokocho has all but dwindled down to two shops. The one I used to go to is gone and another new garishly appointed shop stands in its place. Boo. Luckily, I found another place that is actually better than the old place even closer to Oodori. There is another new shop out toward Maruyama to try next time. The one closest to where I am is pretty terrible.
(0)Just got back into Sapporo from three days of boarding in Niseko following three days of bus-tripping out to Sapporo Kokusai. Pretty much every day was going off at Kokusai, with between 4 and 8cm of new stuff to ride every day. On the first day there was a pretty hard melt crust under the fresh, but this made it easier to hike back in-bounds (don’t ask). Each aditional day’s snow added to the soft layer. On Friday when I headed out to Niseko, the snow was crazy dumping in Sapporo, probably around 6 to 8cm of new snow in town. The sound of the front-end loader scraping the street in the dark of the morning gave it away. The further out from town the bus went, the less and less significant the signs of recent snowfall became. After seeing a reasonably good layer of wind-redistributed snow at Nakayama-touge, I figured it had snowed out that way, but the wind had just moved it around. Arriving at Niseko, I discovered that it had in fact snowed there too, but the bluebird weather made the new snow adhesively sticky down at the lower elevations. Root will remember the glue-like grip of the snow down at the Hanazono base. Continue reading ‘March Powder Fest’
Flying out to Sapporo for snowboarding tomorrow. Will hit an onsen this weekend, then session Kokusai and wherever else all week and hit Niseko the weekend after. It was -20C and dumping snow in town a couple of weeks ago, but it has returned to just below freezing now. There might be some snow starting up at the beginning of next week, so I might luck out. I should have jinxed it by packing my park board.
Good night.