On facebook

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Signed up for FaceBook yesterday. Decided to give it a go, despite all my grumplings about it. We'll see how it goes.. If you know me, add me as a friend. You know who I am, and where I live.

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First observations ... people like to show themselves partying - lots of drinking pictures. Friends from England like to swear on one anothers wall. Friends in Vancouver have lots of outdoors pictures. Old pictures of friends are entertaining to see. Let's see how it goes ...

Sunshine Coast

It's been a while since we've seen our pals on the Sunshine Coast so we headed over there to say 'Hello'. Being Easter we decided to exercise our civic duty and take public transport. Starting down the street we took our 1st bus for $2.50 and got a transfer which was good for the SkyTrain ride to downtown and the bus over to Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal. The ferry ticket was $10.50 round trip. I have a bus pass so everything was covered except the ferry and on Sundays family rides for free with pass holders - so that was $0.00 today. The whole point of this ramble it was entirely inexpensive.

Saturday was super sunny and the ride over was pleasant. We met our friends and went to their 'tree-house' in the woods. It's a cool place nestled amongst massive Douglas Fir's ,Ceders. Ms SciFi has got the artisic touch being a lighter, and ex-italian-artwork-renovator so she's done some nice landscaping.

We had a good visit, ate some tasty food, watched a movie, had some good laughs and enjoyed the company of their adorable 1.5 year old daughter. - super cute

This morning we awoke amongst the woods after a hard rain during the night. SciFi lived in England once so I made them an old favorite - 'bake-beans on toast' (skinheads on a raft) for breakfast. Yum! Yum! Yum! Afterwards we took a long walk along the beach for several before stopping for lunch at the famous 'Molly's Restaurant' from the 70's TV show - The Beachcombers.

Late afternoon we waved our goodbyes as we dashed frantically for the ferry heading back into the city. High winds hit the boat, lots of clouds and mist in the mountains ... beautiful stuff.

Powderhound Session 2007.8

Friday was a statuary holiday, and as I understand it - it's an offense not have a good time on these days. So ... we started the day off with a walk around Queen Elizabeth Park in search of spring flowers. There wasn't much in the way of colour, but there was masses of green bulbs ready to burst anyday now.
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Hunger struck around lunch so we headed down Commercial Drive for some Cuban food. Sat down on the drive the mountains looked super good and I felt like I need stretch after being sat in a chair all day ... so I called Flemish Economist and up to Cypress we went.
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We had a good afternoon checking out the mountains. Tried a few new runs, checked out the amazing views and light and had a good ole' time. It was nice to be up there during the day, and watch the sun go down. There had been lots of snow falling all week as storm-after-storm rolled in and hit low temperatures. I reckon we've got a month+ left of the season.

Galiano Island

Here's a video of our trip to Galiano.

Powderhound Session 2008.7

The East Van express left at 7:45am heading North on the sea-to-sky highway. The highway runs along the Howe Sound which is essentially a fjord. The views are spectacular - islands, mountains and forests provide a wilderness epic backdrop.

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A quick pitstop in Squamish for cheap ski-passes and coffee we continue onto Whistler. The drive is around 2.5 hours - well worth it. Whistler has 2 mountains to choose from - Whistler & Blackcomb. We headed up Blackcomb with 7th Heaven being the major attraction.

Visibility was great, the sun came out and we had a blast all day. My boarding skills have advanced for sure this season.

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Later in the day we got adventurous and headed around the back of Blackcomb to a huge bowl and glacier. It's a little dodgy how to get there - first up is a climb up a snowhill (not much fun) followed by a traversal on a chopped 'path' along the wall of a vast snow shoot (yikes! - why am I doing this?). We get a round the back and the clouds roll in. Ace! We're on a glacier, in the clouds, in unfamilier terrain and we can't see the run. Fortunately some kids slide by and point on the run is configured. We descend joyously below clouds and get a spectacular view of the back mountains... stellar!. Ripping down the bowl then around the side of the mountain we arrive at a highpoint which is the entry to a epic valley .. Blackcomb on the left... mystery mountain on the right. We pause, check out the sheer beauty then slip down the valley feeling like the weary gods we were ... this is exactly why I snowboard ... getting in the mountains and being exposed to epic nature.

The day dumped into 1's & 0's ...

Powderhound Session 2008.6

A sunny day - all day. Walking home from the skytrain I had a perfect view of the skychair on Cypress. Clear skies - would it be icy? I made some quick dinner and stepped out to the car. Rain? Rain in the city means falling snow in the mountains.

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Me and the Flemish Economist headed up for tonights session. It was perfect visibility, one of the mountains was a bit tooooo icy so we headed over to Black Mountain which was much better. We got so great runs in, went a bit to fast at times and dodgy maniacal skiers bombing down on the packed snow layered with fresh pow. Good session. Lots of carving on the empty slopes - nice.

Galiano Island

We headed over to Galiano Island this weekend for an overnight with our pals Wes + Marcy. Galiano is one of the Gulf Islands aka The Canadian San Juan Islands (as they are known in the US).

The island is a 1 hour sail from Tsawassan (South of Vancouver) across the Straight Of Georgia. There's not much on the island - cafe, some great galleries, gas station, grocery store, hippies painting butterflies - but there's lots and lots of epic nature. The island is 13 miles long around 3 miles wide, densly wooded with some mini mountains that offer majestic views of neighbouring islands and the mighty Vancouver Island.

We all had a wonderfully relaxing time enjoying the nature, experiencing wildlife moments with sea-otters, eagles, hawks and seals. The cabin we stayed in was nice and comfortable - wood fire, hottub and cable TV! We had guitars so we played acoustic under the glittering stars of the Milky Way - all delightful stuff.

It only takes an overnight on this islands to make you feel like you've been away for a week - which is nice.