Gung Hay Fat Choy

Happy New Year, it's year of the boar. M and I headed down to China town for the celebrations. We enjoyed the parade, which was longer than previous years. After a hour or so we headed for some Vegetarian Dim-Sum which was delicious. mmm-mmm.

Banff, Dude.

We're heading out to Banff tommorow for a few days of fun with the Rocky Mountain Regiment - M, Chicago Style & Ms Basque. Looking fwd to a happy mix of boarding and relaxing in the epic, epic, epic Canadian Rockies. The mountains are beautiful - a lot older than our local mountains, more uplifted and eroded. Rather than jaggies, the peaks are sheer. Because any town you stand in around there is a mile high for starters, the tree line ends quickly exposing the mountain massif rock faces.

As the plane-flys Banff is around 400 miles away from Vancouver. We fly to Calgary just east of the Rockies and take a bus into Banff. There's a great sight to be seen as the plane passes over the last peaks and exposes the vast plains of North America. Visibly you can see the mountains end and the praries begin - high planes drifting.

Powderhound Session 2007.6

I've said it once, and I'll say it again .. "Everybody love's some Striker time", and happy we were to get an invite to come join Striker & Ms. Derby Days in a lovely condo in Whistler.

We left Vancouver before the rush-hour and took in the daylight delights of the the sea-to-sky highway. Nightfall came, and the road condition became terrible. We could barely see the centre-line! How many years till the Olympics? They've got a lot of work to do.

We met up around 6:30pm and checked into the condo. M made a fabulous dinner, which we all enjoyed over stories of recent adventures. This was the 1st time we've met Ms Derby Days and we like her a lot. After dinner we headed through the Barry White styled master bedroom and jumped in the hot-tub. Ahhhhh... very nice. It was quite the luxery condo, complete with steam-room.

We awoke to decent weather, and leisurely idled away the morning before Striker and I headed up Whistler mountain for Powderhound Session 2007.6.

Starting off on some dodgy mogully runs, we sought and found a great run. Getting major speed, we carved up that mountain along what must have been around 2 miles of terrain. Personally, I think I did some of my finest boarding ever. Striker was on great form and run after run we charged down the mountain. Epic flow. Today was exactly why you go to Whistler - fab runs, fantastic scenery ... good powder. Living the dream.

Getting a late start, it was a short session of around 3 hours - more like a powderpuppy session ;) Lastly, we did the monster run ... heading down to Whistler Village. Here's today's video, enjoy.

Powderhound Session 2007.5



Oz and I headed up to Whistler today for a session on Blackcomb mountain.

We left Vancouver around 7:45 and found ourselves on a run around 10:45 - good going because we stopped off for coffee along the way. Hey ho!

Overall the day was challanging and conditions varied. We covered a lot of terrain - glaciers at 7000ft, alpine meadows and lower mountain. Lots of new snow but it covered a layer of ice so there was skidding in parts. As the day advanced conditions did improve and we checked out some sweet locations with not a soul around. Of course the vistas were epic and the glacier peaks looked other-wordly.

All in all we had a great day, and saved the mightiest run till last. Get this - we came down from the top of Blackcomb and boarded into the village .. which took 1 hour!

Terragen

Terragen is fantastic landscape generation tool that's been around for a few years. It's been a while since I last checked it out, so it was time to check in and see what's advanced. It's free! so if you fancy checking it out CLICK ME for the download.

Feeder


I hung my fab bird feeder up that Mr & Mrs Wii bought me for Xmas. Thanks a lot, it looks great. Now comes the challange of attracting birds, not in the English sense - requiring charm and personality, but in the Canadian sense of announcing that my feeder is open for business. The instruction manual recommends I place a white dish filled with seed near the feeder - "Their eyesight is good and they will spot it". Let's see how it goes and see what birds come around - maybe I can get some pictures.

Emerald City

This weekend we headed down to Seattle for M's birthday and to catch up with friends we didn't get to see this Xmas.

First up we checked out the Seattle Art Walk. A kool event which takes place the first Thursday of every month. Galleries open their doors, and out come the artists all heading for Pioneer Square district of Seattle. M, Ms Cadiz and I strolled around checking out the good, the bad and the just plain ugly.

After the event we checked out our fave bookstore in Pioneer Squre - Elliot Bay Books. As always I gravitated to the Pacific Northwest books taking a mental note of the books I should buy someday. Next call was the new non-fiction selection ... checking out a book "Get Back In The Box" ... interesting ... the books position was that all the 'thinking outside the box' was hurting companies core competancy ... and they should stop taking risks and stick to what their good at. mmmmm ... I was meditating on this idea when I heard banging on the window and a yelll "Awwwww-yeahhhhhhhh" . It was my mate Chigago Style.... lol

We chatted, exchanged stories and forged plans to meet up on Saturday ... which was nice.

Heading back to West Seattle where Ms Cadiz lives we stopped off for a view of the city. A great view of the city, which I remembered seeing when I first moved there.


We awoke to a lovely winters day and drove around West Seattle checking out some of our fave spots. Great views of the Olympic Mountains and Mount Rainier.

After a brief session downtown we headed of to Snoqualmie (aka Twin Peaks) to meet Ms JoyVille. Somehow we forgot how near the place was and ended up arriving hours before we should have. What to do? We decided to head further along the pass to check out the some of the ski-resorts I used to frequent for old times sake....

... Still too early - we checked out the falls at Snoqualmie ....

.. And checked out some of legendary pie at the 'Twin Peaks' cafe. Damn it was good.

Hours later we hook up with Ms. Joyville for a great night. Being the rock star she was there's all kinds of music gear around her fab house - drum kits, guitars, horns ... keyboards to play with. She made us some yummy food which consisted of about 4 courses. Between plates - we drank, caught up and one at point we headed out into her freezing garden shadowed by Mount Si to sart a fire in hee Chimnia. Fortunately, we got it going - so we stayed outside to check out the massive starscape.

Next day we met Chicago Style and Ms Basque for a fun lunch in the Pike Place market. We met at an old fave - The Athenian. It's a great old bar/restaurant overlooking the Puget Sound. With a large menu, great frosty mug beer list, good crowd - it's the brunch of choice. Once again, we caught up - exchanged stories and laughs. Good times for sure.

In the evening we headed back over to West Seattle to visit Mr G and Ms Sau Paulo. Good times again catching up, checking out their photos from recent trips and chowing down on a delicious meal Ms Sau Paulo put together. Later on we watched Liss Miss Sunshine (!!yeahh!!!) - which comes highly recommended.