Marc's Public Blog - Skiing / Snowboarding / Snow

Current Music: Dj Doboy Trancequility (silly name, but good DJ) / DJ Mike Rothwell (8H while boarding)
Current Mood: tired, but with a big grin on my face :)
Link Of The Day: Ever heard of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch ?

This was definitely a great weekend. I was just mentally tired yesterday, so my reflexes and wits weren't quite there, which is not a good thing when you try to do a jump turn off a corniche, or ride a dense forest :)
Today was however much better (not counting the snow, which while it wasn't so much powder that you could drown in it, it was still a respectable amount).
You can find the pictures here :


Saturday was still nice because I managed to go farther out of bounds that I ever managed to go off palisades (ended up way out there on the road, past the resort)
Sunday, I used the time on the lift to study and practise a few blisnosys patterns and managed to do hard riding without stopping (eating on the lift)
Also, I used the time in the car and hotel room to finish my new anti spamc code, which I'm hoping to release very soon now, and possibly even install at $COMPANY. Those ski weekends end up being great for catching up on my personal Email backlog and coding ;)

I realized today that I'm hooked on the adrenaline of dropping from cornices, riding somewhat dense forests, and doing random jumps as the terrain allows.
I've recently become a fan of WRC (world rally championship) as I've grown the utmost respect for the folks who drive those cars balls out with a cliff on the side and half the time, without a guardrail.
Those folks drive their cars sideways at the limit of control, through snow, dirt, and even rivers, and it takes an incredible amount of split second thinking and reactions to make it to the finish line without ending up upsidedown, or in a tree. Check this highlight video out to see what I mean (warning 150MB, but it's worth it). The hardest part is in Corsica, France , hopefully there won't be any major accidents there this year.

Turns out that I've found the snowboarding I do brings similar challenges and joys when you make it (without me needing a full mechanic crew and a new car every 50km :-) ). Of course, I wouldn't dream to compare my skill to theirs, but I still feel I get a taste of what they experience.
During forest runs, you do get those split second decision moments and you must also be in good enough physical shape to perfectly react to the decision (which usually makes the difference between scoring a nice jump off a snow hill between two trees, or ending up face first into a big tree trunk).
It's a good way to be tuned to your body and be able to know what shape you're in at any moment in time (at the precise moment you need to do something tricky, if you're getting exhausted, you'll get sloppy, missturns, and generally hurt yourself pretty badly if you don't get the hint quickly enough and back down on tricky riding)

Then again, regardless, if you're going off the groomed trails, you'll want:

1. a helmet. Don't even argue, your skull and face are valuable
   
2. solid googles (saves your face and eyes from scaring if you get a branch in the face)
   
3. wrist guards (no matter how good you are, you will use your hands when you lose balance off a 60 degree slope, if you happen to fall in some unexepected fashion). Too many snowboarders break their wrists, you don't want to be the next one, it really sucks

Turns out that just today, on my one but last run, I did a nice jump off a flat crossing path for people who need a green way back home, but didn't see the small pine tree that was diagonally in my landing zone.
I managed to land on my board and back to slow down and mostly avoid it, but its branch hit me in the face pretty hard. It threw my goggles off, and moved my helmet on my head. That said, I didn't get hurt in any way thanks to those two protections.
If you're adventurous, this could happen to you, so wear your protection :)

Current Music: DJ Tiesto - In Search of Sunrise 2
Current Mood: Tired, even exhausted, but still happy :)

Ok, I admit, if there is anything resembling fresh snow, I'm there.
This was a good weekend overall, I was able to do a few sweet moves that I don't think I'd have been able do to before. Ok, eventually I pushed my luck a bit too much when I tried to jump a 2 foot pine tree on my way down of a goalie that I was riding like a half pipe, but I almost made it (even if almost doesn't count :-D)
In other news, while going doing a very narrow shute between two rock walls, I was jumping over rocks under my board so as not to further damage it, and I messed up one of the jumps and ended up head first agains the rock wall on my right.
Since I was wearing my helmet, I just got up and laughed it off. Without it, it would have been very ugly...

Bad points:

• People I went with are more party folks and we started on the slopes at 11:00 instead of 09:00 on saturday, on this perfect blue bird day :-(
  
• Got home past midnight last night because of how late my ride left and a food stop that just put us further behind (I could have gone to bed at 22:00 instead of 01:00)
  
• Rode in the back of a beat up truck with suspension that was so bad that the whole thing would rock left and right in resonnance around 70mph until it was apparently ready to topple over. Ugh...
  
• I'm usually way too trusting of other drivers as a passenger (I should know better, but I'm usually relaxed anyway, maybe because I'm a fatalist, and being all worried won't help :), but I wasn't happy with the fact that the driver was drinking beers on the way (both ways), even if it was not enough to get impaired (not that I would know)
  
• on top of that, he drove too fast for the weight and braking power (or lack thereof) of his truck, and we did a 180 and hit a snowbank to avoid re-ending the car in front of us. No harm done, but still...
  
• I missed friday, an epic 5 foot powder day

In a nutshell, I should have driven by myself thrusday night and gone there alone. It sucks a bit, but overall, I think it would have been a better plan.

Oh well, next time maybe

Current Music: Armin Van Buuren - Live At Eilat Israel
Current Mood: Must... get... sleep...

I usually don't sleep well while I'm in Tahoe, and this weekend wasn't an exception. Sure, I could take ambiant, but I'd rather not take more than I really have too.
The weekend went fine, I went to Diamond Peak and Sugarbowl for a change. The weather was too nice though, and snow quickly got slushy, to the point that you'd be hurling down the mountain, and almost hit a dead stop when you got in the slushy snow, and got thrown forward if you didn't expect it and didn't keep all your weight back.
Anyway, my friend was nice enough to drive to Tahoe and back (in my car) so that I could check up on mail and all the other stuff I need to catch up on. Funny thing is that for the first time in a long while, I was able to go through my random pictures/videos/jokes attachment list, and found a few funny ones there. I can't really post much of them here, but I might share a few with you if you ask me :)

While this weekend wasn't a stellar ski weekend, we still had a good time, and my friend and I took videos of one another.
What's funny is that I cleared a lot of jumps this weekend, and ate it on every single one that he filmed me on. Funny how that works :)

Anyway, you might enjoy this picture (I did land that one since it was not a video :)

As well as this small video (needs the divx5 codec if you don't have it)

Current Music: Armin Van Buuren - A State of Trance 138 - 2004-03-04
Current Mood: Fairly Good

So, since it snowed a foot or so on thursday, there was just no excuse not to go to Tahoe. The good thing is that it coincided with the trip a coworker had organized. So, the 7 of us ended up in a cabin in South Lake, and went to Kirkwood on Saturday.
The part that you had to be there for, is when the 3 early risers in the cabin all managed to fit in a (quite nice) mini cooper S, along with 2 snowboards (mine is 163cm), a pair of skis, and lots of other gear. That was quite fun ;)

The snow was reasonable considering, but for a change, I didn't disappear the whole day in a quest to get every inch of fresh powder, and ended up snowboarding with everyone in the group (in turns, since they had different levels and went to different places on the mountain).
The highlight was definitely when I managed to fall off the lift, something I hadn't done once the whole season, in an attempt not to be in front of my friends (both on my left and right). Unfortunately, the exit being a bit icy, this interesting maneuver ended up with me rolling over my head, and Bryan more or less riding against/over my head (thank god for the helmet).
No real harm done, except for screwing up my neck, yet again :(

A big after our late lunch, I went over to Palisades to meet the two bunnies in the group and ride with them until the end of the day. They did quite well considering the snow condition (it was becoming icy because the sun was too low), and it was too hard for me to manage any good faky riding (almost ate it 3 times, but somehow managed to save it each time)

Fun was had the evening after that, first by kicking butt at foosball (scored 10 goals, including 2 against myself which caused me to barely lose in the end :). We then almost won at pictionary, if it weren't for the winning team that was cheating, the judges not accepting answers in French (how dare they?), and my teammate being creative at choosing other words on the card ;)
The funny part is that I was so far gone sleep-wise that I was actually one of the few who was ok around 03:00, as my body had just given up on seeing any sleep anytime soon, but the other folks bailed, so I never got to see the end of strange brew, which is quite unfortunate as it seemed to be a fine piece of cinematography :) (no matter, I just started downloading it)

My only regret (kinda) was not being able to ride on sunday, but than again, I think I never hurt so much after so little snowboarding (not counting a bad calf cramp that woke me up during the night. WTF, I've never ever had a cramp from snowboarding before, and I usually ride a lot harder than I did saturday). I can't even recall really falling and hurting myself outside of that one lift incident.

Some of the pictures can be found here

Anyway, we ended up getting home, and beating the other tahoe bus, because Brian thought he should listen to bad advise about a "shortcut" :)
I got home around 18:00 and started working on hooking up the new AV system I had just received friday.
4 hours later, risking my life in precarious balance situations on a chair behind my TV, some of it is hooked up, but there is still work to be done. At least I can hear my music through the 6 speaker surround system again. Yeah!

Weather.com seems to have settled as far as kirkwood weather is concerned for this weekend.
It won't be an epic weekend. For that matter, according to the national weather service forecast office , it may just even be traces of snow, no mention of how many inches or feet as they've done in the past, but it's still tempting...

Mmmh, I guess I need to find someone to go with, the conditions don't warrant me driving there by myself