Is the ski-season over?

Every ski-hill in WA is closed (conditions). I'm praying that we get another cold-front and can sneak in a few more days at Baker. I've already sacrificed my rock-board to the snow gods and I'm running out of options.

On the plus side motorcyclists everywhere, including myself, are rejoicing the warm/dry weather we've had over the past few days. If you have 5 minutes checkout this video of the Ariel Atom. Finally a car maker is clueing in to what sport-bike riders love: no windshield or body and 0-60 in 2.9 seconds!

I've also posted the belated pics from New Years and recent photos from Phil's 24th bday.

Bump in the trunk

If you click on one thing today click on this.

I'm having a good weekend so far. We're going out for Phil's bday to dinner at Porti's seafood restaurant in Freemont. He doesn't know that 15 of us are showing up yet. SURPRISE! haha... I'll post pics tomorrow.

Oh yeah and I put a 400W amp in my car today with a 10" sub. I just had them sitting around but my friend Dan from work finally helped me install them professionally. Thanks Dan!

Whistler FIS Competition 2005

I've finally posted the pics from Whistler last weekend. The snow was well groomed but not too icy on Friday as it was sunny. Saturday it was overcast and the snow got progressively icier. Sunday I took the day off riding to see the competitions.

At one point Paul and I were on the t-bar that goes up the Horseman's glacier to 7th heaven. We were just mentioning how dangerous a fall from the 50 degree slope would be when disaster struck. A girl 2 ropes ahead of us fell right at the top and collided with her friend who was on the t-bar directly bellow her. The second girl lost both skis, her gloves, and poles and started sliding downhill backwards head-first towards us. Paul said something like "Weeerrrrrrr're screwed."

My options:
1) get nailed by the girl and risk breaking her neck and my legs
2) push Paul over (yeah right)
3) jump to the left down an icy dangerous slope with one leg in my binding

I chose 3. Paul managed to jump over the girl and I skidded uncontrollably down the icy slope with one foot in my board. Cam watched the whole thing from farther down the lift and luckily nobody was hurt badly. My butt had some bruises tho.

As I mentioned Sunday I was lucky enough to watch the men's and women's FIS snowboard-cross finals. Canada had two women in the final race but US Olympian Lindsey Jacobellis came in first. Maelle Ricker of Canada went home with a bronze for the ladies event.

Canadian favorite Tom Velisek was eliminated in the semi-finals but Francois Boivin made it right to the end. He battled Seth Wescott in the final who was recovering from a knee ligament injury. It was an intense battle with a lot of close calls for both riders. In the end Seth came in first and Francois got Silver for the day.

Here are the full results from the FIS competition. If anyone is in Vancouver I'd suggest heading up to Whistler for the Big-air event Friday and halfpipe competitions on Saturday (schedule).

While in Whistler I got to party with Hamilton who's living above the Longhorn in a condo with a great view. Also, Whistler was FULL of American college students since it's a long weekend and all the underage kids head up to Canada to drink. It's humorous to watch the sorority girls freezing their butts off in skirts. Everyone on our floor got evicted the last night for excessive partying. We all had an awesome time and plan to be back as soon as the snow gets better!

Jon Stewart for president

As everyone knows the White House has finally ended their search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. The result was not surprising: There are none. Jon Stewart put it best in the Daily Show last night when he said "So if they're not in Iraq they must be somewhere ELSE... Canada? We know you're hiding them, you're next."

I could go on about this but David Corn put it well in this article covering the press release yesterday. Here's a good excerpt.

If Iraq had no WMDs, there was no immediate threat to protect the American people from. If the aim was to bring freedom to the people of Iraq--who had been suffering for decades--there still was no reason to launch a war before the military was fully ready and before a larger coalition (perhaps with an Arab state or two) was established and before drawing up plans for handling the social, economic, political and security challenges of a post-invasion period. As the chief Army historian in charge of the invasion has noted, no such plans were drafted.

With that I'm off to Whistler today. I hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll take lots of pictures.

Whistler for the weekend

This weekend the crew is headed to Whistler. Conditions are supposed to be clear and COLD for Thurs-Sunday so bring your toque! I'm getting my rock-board tuned up so I can survice the icy hard wasteland of rocky death. 10 of us are staying at the Coast Whistler hotel in a 2 bedroom suite so if you're able to make it to the mountain drop me line.

The FIS snowboard championships are up there this weekend (Click here and 'Save target as' for the promo video - 25 megs). It's going to be the biggest event at Whistler leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics and should be a good indication of how they're going to handle large crowds. I'm interested in watching the snowboard-cross event on Sunday. There should also be a lot of pros in the blackcomb park pulling mad stunts.

I should get back to work... hope everyone is surviving the week.

so it begins...

Ironically the reason I finally got around to setting up a blog is in contrast to the title of this page (Riders Paradise). Today the road conditions on the I-5 sucked and we wern't able to make it up to Mt.Baker. They've received a HUGE dump of snow but instead I came into work today and then decided to try out blogger.

Some of the stuff I'll be posting here will include:

• random links to things I find interesting
• annoucements about upcoming events
• rants about the inequities of the selfish and the tyranies of evil men
• updates on new photos I post

I'll leave you with a couple of interesting links...

For techies: An interview with one of the engineering leads at Bungie. He explains some of the basics behing networking in Halo II: http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/halo-network.htm

For everyone: My friend Brad just got back from a Safari, checkout his pics at: http://bcs.smugmug.com/