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.
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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.
Whoa. Just spent $50 USD at Hanamaru for dinner. Oh, it was really good. I’m pretty sure that it is easy to get out of there for less than $20 for a set meal, but if you go the izakaya-style picky dishes route, it can get up there. In depth review to come soon. Definitely a better way to spend $50 than going to tonight’s Bon Jovi concert!
(0)Saw a overly tinted black Hilux Surf today with one of those grossly deformed, overly stylized Hinano girl rip-off copyright-infringement diecut stickers on the back glass. Not out of the ordinary, except for the subtitle, “Respect the Culture,” below it. Huh? What? Really – what the F is that supposed to mean? Which culture? Are these words related in any way to the Hinano girl, or do they just coincidentally occupy adjacent space?
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Earlier last week, Chris let us know that Vince “Akron†was in town on a surfing trip with his friend, so we put together a ride this Sunday afternoon. The word went out, and surprisingly, everybody showed up. 10 riders! That’s the biggest turnout we’ve had in a while. After gearing up, we headed up Government Road and did the side loop. Ckucke and Akron immediately got into their classic banter as if no time had elapsed since the last time they had seen each other. Akron got to ride Chris’ long forgotten Planet X freeride hardtail. There were no problems as he adapted readily to it and kept the pace with the group. Continue reading ‘The Return of Akron’
JT’s frantic calls for a St. Louis ride were finally realized this past Thursday when we met at Kanewai Park to shuttle up to the top for a run. Kevyn had some neck pain, so he bowed out of the ride, but he graciously volunteered to shuttle us up. Twice! After he dropped us off at the top, we hit mainline to the concrete road and gave him a call. He met us at the park and gave us a ride back up. Cool! We took dumps on the second run, heading straight out the lowest trail at agave. I hadn’t been this way in a while, and was pleasantly surprised at the nice grooming at the beginning. This unfortunately got me up to a speed a little too high when the groomed dirt ran out and the frantic back-to-back rock jumps and drops began. I kept it together somehow and stayed with JT who was leading at dust-cloud-making speed. Ckucke and I traded bikes at the concrete road. He got a reminder of the true horror of riding a hardtail down St. Louis. His dual-squishy was sofa-comfortable, especially the Fox 36 up front which was way more supple than my Sherman even with 20mm less travel. Dammit! I need a new St. Louis bike!
Pictures here
D = 6.74 km (4.19-miles), Vavr = 16.4 km/h (10.2-mph), Vmax = 38.1 km/h (23.7-mph), T = 25-minutes
The blue-tinted grey sky stretched cloudless above the sprawling loose canopy of the albizia tree expanding above me. The muffled clicks of the DT hub grew slower and slower, drawing to a halting stop with one final delayed tick, like the heartbeat of a dying organism. Around me, the disturbed grass and shrubs settled back to their resting state as the dust settled. The sun cast dancing beams of light through the thickly hazy air below the swaying treetop like something out of a renaissance biblical painting. Was I dead? Had I passed into the next world and was being drawn toward the light?
Today was our last snowboarding day in Whistler for this trip. We were up early to queue up or the Whisler gondola, but there was still a long line. All the American long-weekenders, fair weather Canadian snow hounds, and local Vancouverites displaced by the closing of two of the town mountains to preserve the snow for the Olympics were represented in vast numbers. Avalanche conrol was sill bombing the mountain when we got up top, but the peak chair was running, so that was a good sign that they were opening the alpine areas. We took a warm-up run down green, but everything was amazingly chopped up, even though it was early. The lift queue was nuts! Continue reading ‘Saigo no Yuki no Hi’
The powder poaching pirates were denied their booty!
Continuous overnight snows laid arond 50cm of new snow on top of what was already there, with another 15cm or so predicted to fall during the day until the system passes around noon. We headed out to make the lift opening at 08:30, slogging through the slush laden village mall to queue up in the crazy Whistler gondola line. All the lights on the status indicator were at standby or closed, and the gondola was not moving. Some time after lift opening time, the Blackcomb gondola started moving, but not loading. Over an hour after lift opening time, a liftie came out and said that there was a tree across the upper gondola line, and this in conjunction with bad weather, meant that Whistler would be only open from base to midstation, and it would be almost an hour until the gondola would actually open. Continue reading ‘Repel Boarders!’