We hit Whistler on Monday and Tuesday. There was a good amount of snowfall on both days, supposedly around 15cm settled times two days, but the high freezing level made for some sticky, packing snow on Monday. It was pretty much snow flurries at the top of green chair, and rain halfway down. It was gruelling and miserable. The snow was soft, but very heavy and difficult to ride on. Tuesday had a higher freezing level and more new snow, so we returned to Whistler to crank some stashes of untracked, deep powder. The alpine areas were still undergoing avalanche control, so were not open. It was still raining down at the green chair base, but it wasn’t too bad. At least the snow was soft. Today, they opened Seventh Heaven up again, so we returned to Blackcomb. Two days worth of deep snow made for lots of fun in the gladed areas. The open bowls were pretty windswept, and there was not much new development over what was there on Sunday. Hopefully the Whistler alpine areas will be open tomorrow so we will have some new powder to cut up. Rain will probably return to the area tomorrow afternoon, but hopefully the freezing level will remain low. I’m not really optomistic. Continue reading ‘Rain, Snow, and Freezing Level’
It was drizzling in town as forecast, so we headed up to Seventh Heaven on Blackcomb to stay above the freezing level. Snow was soft in places, but not “powder”. Sticky and slow. There was a fairly good windchill up top, with a serious headwind heading down the first pitch that combined with the sticky snow to prevent forward motion. Most areas were pretty ridden out, but there were a few stashes here and there. We rode down throught the terrain garden on our last run down, then caught the lift back up to the top and rode PTP over to Whistler then downloaded on the gondola – no point in burning out our legs and wasting time on krappy conditions on the rideout! Are we “snow snobs”? Supposedly there’s more rain overnight and tomorrow with the same 1800 meter freezing level, possibly some high winds, maybe subsiding tomorrow. Whee. Doesn’t look good for tomorrow… To sprinkle powdered sugar on our already dubious day, when we went by Sushi-ya for dinner, the space was dark, and there was what looked like a “this space available” sign in the window. Fabio went upstairs and there was no “we’ve moved to…” sign on the door. Guess our favorite sushi place in Whistler is no more. Boo. Sachi Sushi was our fall-back. Sushi was good except for maybe the BBQ smoked salmon roll, which was a little on the dry side. The beef tataki was ma-ma. Chocolate ice cream at Cows made everything all better. Continue reading ‘First Snowboarding Day of 2010’
Okay, we’re here now. Check-in was as slow as usual in HNL, but security was quick and professional, so we got through in time to go to KBC for some wings, pizzas and beer. The two pizzas were $20 USD each (ouch!), but were excellent. All told, we ended up dropping $31 USD each for everything including a good tip for the cool server dude. We met Kevin and Naomi at the gate, and we were shortly boarded. The center overhead bins in the 767-300-2 (four-door/no overwing exits) were a little small for the Kifaru X-Ray with side pockets, so I had to pull the laptop power supply and ultrapod out and put them inside the pack for the bin to close. On takeoff, a bad baby immediately set to screeching and wailing inconsolably, but after bevvie service, the turbulence set in and I was rocked to sleep. Continue reading ‘In Whistler’
Yeah yeah, what the heck was I doing waiting until the day before leaving for trip to set up new bindings. Well, they’re newer year of the same model I currently run, the Flow Teams and there are no changes to the geometry. Just have to match up settings and should be good to go. Right. So two days before departure I finally tried to setup the new bindings to discover new fastners. While I’m glad Flow listened and did something about the tendancy of their previous fastners to work loose, this was ridiculous. Continue reading ‘Chine?!’
No, I really don’t know. If you know what bread pudding is like, it’s that kind of pudding – not the “wet†kind. If you’re really that curious, go hit up Wikipedia for more information.
In anticipation of the upcoming Whistler snowboarding trip, I wanted to update my first aid kit. I have heard of these coagulating products from reports coming back form the sandbox. For heavy trauma, even arterial bleeding, this stuff forces the leaking blood to coagulate and form a mass. The blood flow in adjacent tissue is unaffected, so there are none of the necrotizing effects associated with tourniquets. For amputations, a tourniquet would be required, but for nearly anything less, packing on coagulating agent seems to be the best course of action to stop the bleeding while the victim is being transported to a medical facility. Bigger hole = more packs of coagulant. Continue reading ‘Quikclot Sport’
Bathroom deodorizers really shouldn’t be scented to emulate edible products. Before spraying, the bathroom smelled like shit. After spraying this, it smelled like berries… and shit. Now when I smell berries, I’ll think of feces. In all honesty, it didn’t really smell like berries: It was more of an excessively strong potpourri scent. The scent is strong in an attempt to load your smell receptors so the poop smell molecules can’t find a home, but the net effect ends up just being additive instead of masking.
Alright guys, you need to give the people in the packing department more material and stop skimping. This is the second package of high dollar fairly sensitive electronic and optical equipment I ordered from them that arrived with inadequate packing. Is the risk and return rate worth the savings in material? Sheesh! When I picked up the box and did the tilt test, I already could tell they had done it again, hearing the item inside sliding around freely. They were lucky with this one, Panasonic’s OEM packaging for this lens was fairly minimal. I am going to yet again write a negative feedback on packing to Amazon, this time probably more scathing than my previous one. Lemme dig up my pic for that one….
Ah, here we go, the camera had some fairly robust OEM packaging, but still…. It bugs me. Both pieces of equipment appear to have survived intact and fine, but really, a big name mail order business like this really should take more care in their packing. Even a monkey could have packed these better!
I was cleaning out my wallet today at lunchtime, and found the receipt from the time I went to Good to Grill after the Honolulu Marathon. $8 USD for the Surfer Special (2 pancakes, 2 eggs, bacon or SPAM) and $2.50 USD for a cup of coffee. The food was fine, and they actually had real butter instead of margerine for the pancakes, but all the service items were third-party prepacks from like Y. Hata or somewhere like that. The service was excellent. One of our group even knew the owner, and we got to meet him when he came by before just we left, but we had attentive service before any of the staff knew this. I would have to drop by for lunch or dinner to really pass judgement, but from this breakfast experience, I’d say that I was underwhelmed, in particular value wise. The Euro Illy coffee was just coffee – there are so many good locally-produced coffees that the rationale of bringing in a supposed premium European brand feels like pompous name-dropping.
Ambivalent – give them a try and see what you think
Two-and-a-half out of four breakfast scarfing monkeys.
Chris had free time on Saturday, and the weather was outstanding, so he and I met Root and Ckucke out at the Ditch. Jeff and Sara were out on the water, and JT was working, so it was just the four of us. Although the sky was perfectly blue, the ground was still damp from rains on New Year’s Eve. We figured our best bet would be to stay up high, so we climbed Government Road and took the Demon Trail all the way to Pube Tree. Demon Trail was slightly damp, but no worse than usual. The further extent was a little grown in with invasive weeds. Continue reading ‘First Dirt of 2010’