Journal of a Sysadmin

Snowboarding with…

jhb!

For the first time since she was preggers with Jonah we were able to go boarding together today. Since she wasn’t working, I wasn’t working, and little J was in daycare we went west and got a few runs in. She’s getting good too. We had lunch in the rather cramped lodge (a lot of people out today) and put a few runs in then drove home again. Long drive, well worth it.

Any time we get to spend time boarding together it’s great!

Inagural Ride

For my Christmas present jhb bought me a new snowboard which is exactly what I asked for. We’ve been riding now since March of 2004 and I bought the board I had, second hand from a pawn shop 2 years ago. I did about 25 days that year, about 20 days last year and now that board has more gouges and gashes than Van Gogh’s ear.

So she let me take the pick of a few different boards, all in the mid-range and I picked out a K2 Select Wide.

On Saturday Connor and I woke up early, and drove the 1.5 hours to Sunshine (the closest decent hill is where we have our passes) and I took it for it’s first outing in the snow.

Now, I have to say coming from a 156 narrow to this thing is a big change. I’m having a bit of trouble in the switch ride department but it is more stable, which helps me to be faster, it’s more difficult (at least at this point) in the deeper snow but I think that too will be just a transition thing. I have really noticed the stability though, wow. Smoking along, you can hit a bit of a drop and catch some air without worrying about wiping out, as long as you can stay standing up .

We’re hoping to get out again on the 27th, hopefully that comes together, then again maybe on the 31st or on the 1st. The more time on the hill the better =).

Boarding and the Gym

So, among other things (family, work, sleep) I’ve been doing a lot of boarding at sunshine and gone to the gym a couple of times.

I must say that the boarding is getting really good and last Friday I managed to actually start carving on Goats Eye! It’s a really cool feeling whipping along just on your edges, but at the same time the speed still freaks me out a bit (I imagine catching that edge at Louise, and going down on my shoulder). Anyway, I need to get better still (steeps also still scare the shit out of me) and will if I can manage to keep it up. We’ll see.

It’s snowing now and I hope by Saturday there’s three feet of fluffy white stuff at the top of the gondola!

Wonderful and Weird Weekend

Friday and Saturday were great, Sunday was good but kind of strange at the same time.

So, Friday being jhb’s birthday (and no, you don’t get to find out which one) I took her out to dinner at a restaurant that she wanted to go to and she got to order what ever she wanted. She did, and she loved it. We’re also making a rather largish purchase towards the end of the month so technically that’s mostly her present. I still wish it could be more…

Saturday the kids and I went to Sunshine and it was increadible. The snow was really nice most places and the only other thing we could have asked for was more sunshine. This is now the 5th official snow board day for me and I have really improved. Linking turns way better and more aggressively and *not* falling down all the time. Still need a bit more confidence there but I’m definately getting there. The kids are really getting better as well and they both are able to take most hills how. They still have to learn to link turns but that’s coming (they have actually figured out that they need to know how to link turns and have started trying to learn how). Soon(ish) they will get that one under their belt.

Sunday has been odd but good. Imagine arranging a date for your puppy then hanging around, talking to your sis and her family (and having brunch and dinner with them, thanks ‘ree) then going home because the date turned out more like that junior high school dance you attended in grade 9, you know where the girls and boys joked at first then ended up sitting at opposite sides of the gym? Ya that one, well puppies can do that too… The whole puppy dating scene in itself was just odd, but I did have a good visit with part of my family and so did jhb. All in all it was a great day and a wonderful weekend.

Now, I need sleep!

Christmas day snowboarding

So, since we did the present thing on Christmas Eve and we had a single lift ticket for Nakiska that had to be used before the end of December (we bought it last year) I took my new bindings and my board out for a test run. The new bindings are Flow Mk2, which are these bindings with a large single tounge over your boot and the back folds out to allow you to put your boot in the binding. When you put your boot in, you fold the heel up and lock in a catch.

I was skeptical at first but compared to the Duke bindings I got with my board these things are awsome. They lock you onto the board and it feels just excellent to ride.

Nakiska was an ice rink first thing in the morning. It would have been much better to wait until 11am or so to start but I was there at 9 and did two runs before 10am. I had my edges tuned (they were really bad) and went up again. The tuning helped but when the sun started to soften the top that’s when it really started to get good. I did about 6 runs down North Axe and was finally really starting to get the idea of transitioning both sides while at speed. It was good, and I was having an incredible time.

Don’t know if that’s what did it but I ended up catching an edge. I went down and in doing so managed to pull a muscle in my lower abdomen (OUCH, I had no IDEA it could hurt that much!). After sitting there for 15 minutes, then asking someone to get a ski patrol down and letting them check me out it was about 45 minutes to even decide I could make it down the hill under my own steam.

I did, it was fine (they were worried about internal damage that could lead to bleeding, fortunately that wasn’t an issue). I drove home and have been taking it easy since then. I’m hoping it’ll be good by Thursday because I want to do Sunshine on Thursday all day. I was having such a blast yesterday before I got hurt I can’t wait (I want to run out to COP right now but Jaime gives me stink eye every time I mention doing anything =).

Thursday will have to be soon enough, and it looks like sunshine might be fresh snow by then too =)

WooHoo!

I almost forgot. I wanted to write down a few of the things I saw this day. I wanted to write them down because they seemed singular, although I know if I timed it right the same image would be there. It’s more then that, it represents single moments in time that will never come again.

• The cresent moon over Mount Baldy. On the way south on Hwy 40 you go around Mount Baldy. While on the north side of it driving south west the cresent moon was visable on the stepped part of the mountain to the west. The sky was blue and cloudy, it was about 8:45am.
• Wind and rain in the mountains while there was snow on the ground. I was riding up the silver chair and it started to rain a little. The air of course; crisp, cool, clean, smelling of evergreens and dampness. I love the mountains for that smell, it is easily as memorable as the smell of the ocean on the west coast.
• Feeling of floating over the snow the first time I figured out how to carve on my snowboard. My version of carving at this point of course is likely a jerky, clumsily executed pull back and forth of the board but, to me who had never experienced that before, it was so cool.
• Warm west wind blowing the trees around and the clouds past at 75km/h.
• The way people ask if you’re ok when you’re down, making sure that some one helps you if you need it. In so many ways, human kind can pull through their brutish, unfeeling, uncaring, jealous, sinical, obsesive distain for one another. If only our leaders could see this.

Just a few observations.

More boarding and…

So we took the kids to Nakiska today. The local CO-OP has this deal on that for $99.00 you get 4 lift tickets and rentals which makes it cheap enough to go.

So we go, get the youngest a lesson because he’s never been to the hill before and spend the entire day going up and coming down (I think we did 5 lifts and runs today).

At any rate we came home, the kids fell asleep on the way home and we got home and went for a 15 or 20 minutes bike ride just because we felt like it! I think the working out, the snow boarding, the eating new foods, the stopping smoking, everything really has really started to pay off. I like it =)

And now for the news

So, what happened exactly that I can’t lift my left arm?

Well, it all started on Saturday. jhb and I first were looking at our boards and I tweaked both of our bindings (my feet are so large I had to adjust my bindings toward the heel of my boot to centre my foot more on the board and jhb’s feet are so small that I had to adjust hers the other way) then we decided we both needed stomp pads.

Stomp pads are made of metal, plastic, or foam rubber and you put them between the bindings on your board to give your back foot something to step on when you’re “skating”, meaning your back foot isn’t in the binding but you push yourself with it like on a skateboard. See, this helps a lot when coming off the chair lift as you can then put your foot on the pad and glide off, still using your back foot as a rudder, to steer you clear of any obstacles like fallen or dumb people in your path…

So, at that point we hit about 5 different stores looking for the foam rubber ones (and 2 of the stores we were pretty sure wouldn’t carry them) and spent more money of course than we should have. At the same time we bought a MEC membership (something I’ve wanted to do for a while) and dinner stuff for saturday night (from a Korean store down by MEC).

So we arrive at home, laden down with Clif bars, sippy cup inserts for our Nalgene bottles, a book on mountain biking in the Canadian Rockies, boarding gloves for jhb, miso soup mix, and other oddities INCLUDING stomp pads. Saturday night we turn in early to get a good start on the day at Lake Louise.

We arrived at Louise at about quarter to nine am (lifts open at nine), unload, change our shoes, put on our ski pants and wind breakers, get a locker (one of the great bits of Louise are the $4.00 a day, multi entrance, full sized lockers), then get our boards and head to the gondola!

We first went down the backside of Louise on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, then down again (second time I dropped over a small black cutoff that joined the top and bottom of one of the switch backs) on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, and finally back up and down Eagle meadows and Wiwaxy to the Lodge for lunch. It was good with only a couple bad spills.

One of the things about boarding is the transition from your toes to your heels then back again. You have to be very very VERY careful to not dig in that downhill edge (if you transition to your heel from your toe and your toe side edge grabs for example) otherwise you end up either on your ass or your face. VERY careful… Good fun, huh?

So, after lunch jhb decides to take a break and I went up the gondola. I dropped down the backside on Old-Ptarmigan then back up and down to Wiwaxy again. I was concentrating on linking my turns (transition from heel to toe to heel and back again). This is kind of like Tacking or Gybing a boat because you do a heel slide then a toe slide and it not only checks your speed but also allows you to control your direction.

So I was working on linking my turns, and transitioned from heel to toe (this I find is the harder transition) and guess what? My heel edge caught. I was actually moving fairly fast at this point so as you can imagine with my left arm pointed down hill, my heels (and the heel edge of my board) facing the slide when the edge caught and all 210 pounds of me flew very ungracefully through the airs above the ground. I lit on my left shoulder with my left arm under my side.

It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I had to sit there and recovered for about 10 minutes. Wow, did that hurt. The snap on the removable sleeves of my shell left me with a bruise on my elbow, and the force of my arm under my side seems to have pushed my ribs around enough that it hurts to cough.

I made my way to the bottom, then radioed jhb to find her on the gondola heading back to the top. Back on the horse I say and up I went to meet her. We came back down Wiwaxy and both of us made it to the bottom safely so all was good.

On our way home we stopped at The Grizzly Paw Pub for some offsales beer and dinner. Home again by 9pm to cats, dog, painkillers and the sofa.

So after a good sleep it feels better, but still sore. Assisted by my right arm I can lift my left arm above my head alright and my chest still aches from the pounding it took. Even though there is pain, and the fact that I know it will likely happen again, it IS worth it.

If you ever have the chance learn to snowboard do it.

I’ve been skiing now for almost 20 years although at times not that much I didn’t lose the ability at any point. Snowboarding looks like a lot of fun and it is. It may be a bit harder to learn (there’s more to it then skiing) it’s all the same from begining to end.

With skiing you start to learn by snowplowing, then you learn to keep your feet together and slide into the turns (completely different and you have to learn it again) then when you advance to the blues, blacks, and double blacks with bumps (moguls) you again have to learn how to lift your ski tails, then dig into the moguls and bounce out again to dig into the next one. Always learning new stuff.

Boarding on the other hand is fairly straight forward once you learn the basics. Heel slide, then toe slide, then transition toe to heel then transition heel to toe then link toe to heel to toe to heel. That’s almost it and with those basics you can go a long long way. Flat and steep or a glade it’s all the same, toe to heel to toe to heel to heel switch to heel to toe to toe switch etc (switch is when you board with the back end of your snowboard going down first and leading with the wrong foot).

So it’s easy to see why with boarding it’s harder to learn (that transition is a hard one to grasp) but once you get there it’s all the same and you keep getting better and better because you’re always doing the same things. Skiing, although easier to learn at the start, is much harder to get really really good at. It’s not uncommon to see someone boarding that’s only done it for 2 years looking like a complete pro and 2 years on skis you still look like someone that’s been on skis for about 2 years (turns are loose and such)… Some people naturally catch on faster but still…

At any rate, next weekend is Nakiska with the kids. Maybe one day maybe two days. We’ll see when we get there! I still want to get at least 3 or 4 more runs in this year.

Snowboarding, or free chiropractic in the snow.

So, my second-day-ever-in-my-entire-life of snowboarding is complete and I still have (one two three four) four working limbs and no casts. It’s a difficult transition going from skiing to snow boarding; going from being fairly proficient and capable of taking on most of the runs on a hill to not being able to manage a single run down green runs or get off a chair lift without falling.

Humbling for sure. Bone jarring for second.

But at any rate jhb and I made it back from the mountains as yet another day passes and we both get just a little bit better at riding down steeper-than-you-should-go-down hills on 1/2 a 4 foot long toboggan strapped to the bottom of both feet at the same time.

See what I find most difficult about this is, it seems like you have to not only stand (not walk) on a tight rope with your feet actually tied to the wire, but also the tight rope has two very large body builders on each end jerking and tugging at it.

Your feet go this way, go that way (sometimes unexpectedly) and you must keep your balance lest you fall forward or backward while still maintaining that forward momentum. It actually made for some really good drop tuck and roll drills for me today. But like I said, except for bruises and some sore muscles everyone is home safe.

Sunday will be here soon enough and I don’t know if I have enough time to heal before then!

And a good time was had by all

• 4 people with gear
• a car with 1640km to drive
• 3 seperate ski resorts
• 5 days

That’s what it has been since last Thursday. Yesterday we finished our last (and suprise) day at Sunshine as a fantastic ski vacation came to a close. Each morning we drove to the ski hill of the day and each evening we drove back to Calgary to eat and crash at the house.

Day 1: Nakiska
We skied Nakiska which is a small hill about an hour outside Calgary. The hill was a bit icy in places, but as the sun warmed things up the top of most of the runs broke up and it became more decent. It was a good place to start, get used to the skis and jhb could practice her boarding. The temperature was about 12C and it was sunny. I did manage to also take some photos of the day as well.

Day 2/3: Lake Louise
Having never skied at Louise I didn’t know what to expect completely. At 11am we were supposed to meet a co-worker at the bottom but unfortunately I missed him. Sorry Mrrrr, one of these days we will get together at a hill! I really enjoyed Louise as it has long runs and a lot of them. On day 2 I skied mostly with jhb while dwmw2 and phooka skied on their own. The green runs are really long which is good for beginners as they can then right once up (a gondola) and then come down at a slow pace for a long time. I did manage to get a few good runs in and even on the front side of the main mountain it was really nice.

Day 3 was amazing. jhb took a rest day and dwmw2, phooka, and I skied all over Louise. From the Larch area you can easily see Chateau Lake Louise on the other side of the valley. The runs were really good, even the bumpy ones =).

Day 4/5: Sunshine
Day 4 at Sunshine was really good. I have to admit that my favorite is Lake Louise but, Sunshine is almost as good and is about 50km closer to home. I spent 1/2 the day sking with phooka and dwmw2 and 1/2 the day skiing with jhb. The sking was really good, a bit icy but overall well worth it.

Day 5 was a suprise day (sorry no pictures, too busy skiing). dwmw2 didn’t have to be on a plane until 8pm so, instead of sitting around Calgary all day we went again to Sunshine. Instead of using my Salomon Prolink EXPs PR8s (210cm circa1999) I rented a set of parbolic Salomon Crossmax Pilot mid range 175cm skis (108,62,102 17R.). These things rocked! It was like I was a completely different skier. Instead of having problems in the moguls and rough terrain I was able to navigate anything I tried (perhaps with less finesse then others but still I could do it). Where my larger and heavier skis had difficulty these shorter lighter skis would carve into the bumps by just leaning back and into the bump. In a word, WOW. So now I’m convinced I need to buy some of these new skis in a 175 or so length. I should also then get newer boots as the ones I currently own are really old and heavy (less weight means easier on my legs =).

Over all the 5 days of skiing were great. There wasn’t a single thing I didn’t enjoy and driving to the hills, packing lunches, and making dinner at home saved us all a lot of money. Cost, including lift tickets was less then $350 CDN for 5 days. You really can not beat that.

We’re already planning our next outing and will be taking the kids I think, likely to Sunshine or Louise in the very near future (if of course we can afford it). If you have a chance, go! Sunshine or Louise offer really really good spring skiing.

Good things

Skiing was great.

Three days on the hill and except for my calves being sore I was ok. The people I went with were really great too (steph, ajh, pzb, and phooka thanks for coming!) and we had a complete blast. Even the weather co-operated.

So, on the first day I was skiing with ajh. He’s far more adventurous than I am and he managed to get me into a couple places I couldn’t handle. It would have been far better had I *not* gone down a double black diamond run on the first day, but oh well I still survived.
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