January 2005

What's with the weather?

OK, so my last post was about how cold it was. This week, it's as though Mother Nature is playing funny buggers with us all and it's well above 0 again. It's been pouring with rain for the last week, the parking lots are full of mud puddles and the snow has been melting.

Anyway, despite all that, I still managed another trip over to Silver Star for a day trip. Went down all the runs which I was too scared to go down last time, including "Where's Bob" and "Chute 5".

Now I'm starting to plan a trip down to Apex Mountain near Penticton. 7 of us are going for a couple of days, so it should be fun.

Bloody Freezing

I finally gave up on my perfect season. I've now missed three days of boarding since the season started. The reason? The maximum temperature has been 25 degrees for the last three days. Minus 25 degrees. Apparently it's the coldest winter day ever for Big White and Kelowna. Going out snowboarding isn't fun in those kind of conditions, especially when the wind starts to kick in. At the top of some of the lifts, with windchill it's Anyway, all that means is I've been drinking lots of hot chocolate and sitting on the couch.

New Years and Silver Star

My first blog of the new year! Happy 2005 everyone!!! I'm kind of glad 2004 is out of the way. A lot of stuff went down last year, the biggest of which was finally finishing my bachelor's in EE. Now moving on to the real world, or at least when I get back from Canada.

I have some new photos and short videos taken by various photographers (mainly Richie, Paul and myself) of a few of us hitting the terrain park and various kickers and rollers around the mountain. Our jibbing needs a lot of practice, but they're good for a bit of a laugh.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to write an entry about my trip to Vernon to visit Natasha. It was an excellent road trip where I got to visit Natasha and her folks in Vernon again. Now all that remains is for me to meet up with Natasha in Africa, Asia and South America and we would have met up on all the continents. It also marked the first road-trip to another mountain, Silver Star. I had a blast with Richie tagging along. In the morning whilst Natasha went for a lesson, Richie and I went exploring the backside of the mountain. In case you don't know, Silver star has two sides, the front side with all the beginner runs, and a brutal back face with all the black and blue runs. Anyway, after spending all morning on the back, we found a pub at the top of the mountain where we had a few quiet beers before meeting up with Natasha for lunch and then cruised with her on the front side. We even managed to ride with Santa Claus who's updating with the times and ditched his reindeer and sleigh for a snowboard. It's a pretty good setup because everyone knows what they're doing on the back, so you don't have to weave around newbies all the time. I'm surprised how advanced Natasha was after the lesson. Not that I should be, she can pretty much do anything she puts her mind to.

But that's not all!!! Not only was it a great day on the hill, but I was introduced to the world of computerised trivia. This isn't like the dodgy trivia run in countless pubs across Australia. This is Trivia of the new Millenium. Everyone's given a mini computer thingy and you answer the multi-choice questions. All the results are tallied North-America wide. That's right, you're competing against people from pubs right across the US and Canada. In one round, we were ranked number 19 across the board, not a bad effort. Anyway, after a few beers, you kind of lose a bit of interest, but it's still amazing that you can compete in a bar against people all over the country.

Anyway, other than that, my life is pretty much the same every day. eat, sleep, board, work, pub, repeat. It's getting a bit repetitive (but in a totally awesome way). I still can't believe that I commute to work on a snowboard.

Here's to a great 2005, hopefully better than 2004.