Whistler Opening 2005

Last weekend a bunch of us headed up to Whistler for opening weekend. Cam, Chris and I took advantage of US Thanksgiving and left Wednesday night to board Thursday and Friday. The conditions were good for early season. Only the top of the mountain is open so I'm glad I brought my rock-board. Paul and I spent most of our time dropping off the Harmony ridge into chutes containing 3-6" of powder. Riding the bowls was a bit sketchy. Every once in a while one of us would clip a rock and tumble through the snow, but that's the price to pay for early season pow. Good thing we wear helmets.
Thursday night a dozen Seattle-ites ate at Bavaria, which serves some great fondue. Chris convinced us it was a good idea to go drinking before dinner so Friday was a slow start. Here are Cam's pics from the weekend.
Friday I met up with Amanda in Squamish and we headed over to the island to visit her parents' and their new house in Campbell River. It's a nice place and her brother is building a huge cedar deck out back. We had a bonfire, Amanda's mom cooked a deliecious ham dinner, and we watched the hockey game in true Canadian fashion. Speaking of being Canadian, here are some humerous clips of Rick Mercer exposing how little some Americans know about it.

Motorcycles in November?

Yes I know it's almost winter. But even on the hills we've been thinking about the track. My friend Corey mentioned an awesome opportunity to take the STAR (Skills and Techniques for Advanced Riding Motorcycle) school at Thunderhill (CA) in April. Here is a VIDEO of the track. Jason Pridmore is one of the instructors. He rides for the Michael Jordan GSXR team in the AMA and won the Daytona in 2005. Anyway, something to think about. They run the track forward the first day, and backward the next (better tyre wear!).

While I'm at it I have to mention MotoGP. I posted way back at the start of the season with some predictions. I was right on one account, Rossi came in first waaay ahead of the rest. I predicted Gibernau would do well but he had a bad season. Winning no races. My other prediction was for Capirossi to be in the top 3. He came in 6th overall but scored two wins back to back and 4 top 3 finishes in 2005. I'm sure we'll see more of him next year. Melandri came in second overall and finished off with two first place finishes and 7 top-3s. Hayden came in third overal which is an impressive season for the American. He lost to Melandri by a fraction of a second in the last race, almost proving his ability to win outside of the USA. His only win this year was in Laguna Seca,CA. Next year should be exiciting with the 23 year old FIM world-championship racer Chris Vermeulen joining Suzuki.

Snow-time!

It's officially no longer null-season. Record dumps of snow have fallen on the Pacific NW. Mt.Baker has the most snow of any mountain in the world. I hit opening weekend at Crystal (30" base), opening day at Baker (80" base), and a sick 18" powder day last Saturday at Baker. I've been using my new Ride Prophet 163 which has been great in the powder. The new Salomon Malamute boots are providing amazing support and carving abilities. I think I need a soft boot setup with a park-board for when the conditions get crappy though. It's tough to ride a stiff board with unpredictable terrain and no visibility.

Tom has pictures up in his gallery. He caught a sick pic of me doing a flip off a cliff in the backcountry. The lighting was bad so I spent some time with photoshop touching it up. I also created a watermark for my pics. Feedback appreciated!


Here's a fun link to waste away your day. Hapland 2 is a deceptively tricky game where you click on various objects to trigger neat actions. Good luck! If you get frustrated there are a lot of walkthroughs available, but most of them aren't correct.

Atom feed added

I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Now my site supports Atom feeds. Most people are using some of the new search portals which let you integrate with various feeds and gadgets. My favorite is live.com. You can set your homepage to this site and login using your passport account. Then customize this site to show your email, weather, and interesting feeds such as my site! To add my site click Show Sidebar (if it's not already shown), then click Add Content. Click the Advanced button and enter the feed name into the Subscribe to Feed textbox. My feed is http://ecutts.com/blog/atom.xml. Then you can drag this from My Web to anywhere on the site. Rearrange the views by dragging them around, collapsing, and adding/removing them. It's pretty simple!

Lasers and stunts

Here are a couple of interesting links:

One, a stunt video. These guys are insane. Gainers front and back on land, plus some cool roof-top jumping. Don't try this at home, unless you want busted ankles.

Two, who doesn't want their own hand-held laser beam? Not just a key-chain, but one that blasts through steel. The best part, it runs on 12 AA batteries and recharges in 30 seconds! It's sure to be on many kids Christmas lists.