Suffrage

Before long, this man will be making my life very miserable but the reward at the end of it all should be worth it.

I will spend several hours hiking up a mountain similar to this one in order to make one run on my snowboard.

After that, however, I will be enjoying some relaxation and icy cold beer.  It will be well worth the pain and suffering I will endure.  I guess that's why they call it earning your turns.

Silly Rabbits

So I'm back from my little internet hiatus.  I will say that I've got much faster, consistent, and better service than I did before, and it's totally worth it.  Sure I'm spending a little more money but now I'm co-habitating with my lady friend so she's helping to pay for it, which is okay by me.  Anyway, since I've got my interwebs back I'm able to continue sending my wisdom to the world.

After many long weeks of work and many long weekends getting the house "organized" for the big move (i.e. the co-habitation), I had a weekend off.  Fortunately, B-Diddy was also hosting the annual rabbit camp.  I took this as an opportunity to enjoy some time out in the woods with guys hanging out at the cabin telling lies, playing cards, and having a few beers.  Also, we were doing so ice fishing and rabbit hunting but that almost seemed secondary.  

To some things up, we ate a lot of really good food that basically consisted of meat being put on a smoker (no vegetables to been seen) and there was a lot of it.  We had pork shoulder, goose, scrapple, bacon wrapped sausage, cheese, and there was also a rabbit that was freshly harvested.  It was all extremely delicious and lots of fun.  Unfortunately I didn't take any rabbits but I had fun blowing through two boxes of shells shooting clays.  Sometimes it's not about the hunt, but more about the time spent hanging out with friends.  

Take Five

No I'm not referring to the late great Dave Brubeck, I'm referring to me, taking a possible break from this little rant I've got going on.  See, for a while now, I've been having issues with my internet service.  While I'm not going to name any names or point any fingers, I will say that the consistency of the connection was less than ideal.

To make a long story short, I had two technicians come to my house, spent hours on the phone with technical support, spent hours on the phone with customer service, and at the end of the day it was going to cost me more to reduce my speed (which I was told would fix my problem).  I took this as a sign that it might be time to part ways with my service provider.  As you might imagine, that was no easy process either.

Now, I'm in the process of getting new internet hooked up, which seems like it is taking more effort than I anticipated.  One service call for installation resulted in the technician telling me that I needed a new line run from the pole to my house, and that he would have to come back later to make that happen.  Apparently it was too late in the night and too cold for him to climb the pole.  I guess the techs don't like working in the dark when it's 18 degrees outside.

So for now, I'm "borrowing" internet from someone in my neighborhood.  It's not the most convenient situation but it works for now.  Of course, this might cause me to miss a post or two in the coming weeks.  But for now, thanks "adam", whoever you are, for letting me use the tubes to get this post up.

Stank-olia

Over the past weekend, the SC saw a solid week of chilly temperatures.  When I say chilly, I mean wicked cold; like highs in the low teens.  These were the kinds of temperatures that made it hard to breathe if you were outside and made you not want to be outside at all.  It was also the kind of weather that is ideal for keeping (and making) snow on the slopes.  Luckily for me, the was my weekend to be on shift (trying) to keep all the patrons safe.  

My schedule called for me to be at the mountain from open to four pea em on Saturday (a seven hour shift) and the entire day on Sunday (plus two hours of training after) which made for an eleven hour day.  Luckily, conditions were ideal, which meant I was on my board for a majority of the time.  Also however, to keep things interesting, I hiked for a few turns too.  This, unfortunately meant that I was sweating; a lot.

I'll put it to you this way: I really only have one solid set of base layers that I wear when I'm on the mountain.  When the conditions are good I ride my board as much as I can.  This also means that I'm going to get really warm in my gear, regardless of how cold it is.  When you add in the hikes you only increase the bodily warmth by a factor of three (at the minimum).

So there I was, wearing the same kit for two straight days, for eighteen hours on the slopes, for (at least) four hours of before and after time, for way longer than I should have without any semblance of cleaning in between wears.  As you can imagine, I was/am beyond ripe.  Luckily, I have a girlfriend that doesn't care about how (bad) I smell.  And fortunately for me, she spent her first day on the slopes and didn't hate it.  

What's in a Name

Lately I've been feeling like this blog is kind of a sham.  It started out as one thing, but really never materialized in that regard.  Instead I've talked about just about everything other than stacking cheddar (or any variety of cheese for that matter).  I don't know if this is because I just don't have the energy to come up with new topics that revolve around the snowboarding radicalness that I like to portray, or some other reason.  I have a few thoughts so in no particular order, here is a list.

01 -  I'm too old to really be "hip" in the snowboarding world

02 -  The snowboarding industry isn't quite as lame as I once thought

03 -  I have a girlfriend that doesn't let me have fun

04 -  I lie about my girlfriend not letting me have fun

05 -  I just don't care enough to spend the energy

06 -  There hasn't been enough snow for me to consistently ride

07 -  I don't like cold weather

08 -  I'm too slothy to pull off radical maneuvers

09 -  I'm too scared to try radical maneuvers

10 -  My gear is too old to be radical

Anyway, I could continue with a boring list of things but I'm not.  I just know that this blog is going in a different direction.  If this continues, maybe I'll have to change the name to "Stacking the Couch."  Fortunately though, there has been good snow lately and it actually feels like winter in that it's been wicked cold.  Hopefully it keeps up so I can get in some quality slope time and maybe get back some of that awesomeness that I once had (seriously, I really did).

Equations

So I've never been very good at math but I do enjoy it.  Specifically, I like the word problems.  Here's a little equation that I recently found myself working on.  It goes something like this:

What do you get when you take a lot of snow and add a lot of warm air and rain?  While the answer might seem obvious, it's not as simple as you would think.  In some cases, the product of this little problem is different depending on who is trying to solve it.  For me, the result tends to equal depression.

See, the weather here in the SC was just getting to the point where the slopes were open and operating nicely.  It was plenty cold and we had some help from Mother Nature with a bit of early season snow.  Now, all we get is mud, bare spots, limited slope availability, and a season that almost was.   

Sure there is cold weather on in the forecast and the slopes will bounce back, but it's tough to really get motivated about a ski season when your standard February warm spell hits in January.  Granted, it's still early and there are plenty of weeks of possibility for another coating of natural but at this point, I would just take an extended cold snap that will allow us to get back to what we all look forward to in the winter; skiing, snowboarding, and building the occasional snowman.  

Digging Trenches

After a nice long summer and a festive start to the new year, it's been plenty cold for the past several weeks and the local ski hill has enough snow to cut some serious turns.  Of course the ten inches of fresh that Mother Nature provided wasn't bad either.  With that in mind, I spent my first few days on the slopes patrolling.  In fact, this past weekend was one of my shifts and, as the sun was slowly sinking beyond the hills, Ieva managed to snap a few sweet pics.  This is one of those.  I don't really see the need to clog up the rest of this post with a bunch of pointless words so I'll leave you with that.