Linkstew

Once again we took a day trip following massive snow, only to be greeted by unseasonably sunny weather. At this rate I'm wondering if I'll even break 10 days this season, but I should still be able to at least make up the cost of the pass. At least we're not Washington, where there's apparently so little snow that the resorts are currently closed.

• Date(s): Sunday, January 30th.
• Who: Me, Rick, Trisha.
• We finally got our act together and actually drove up the night before. We stayed at the Best Western in Jackson, which was really pretty nice and only about $20 a head for the three of us, which is totally worth not getting up at 4:30 am. Instead we woke up at 7:15, after the sun had come up. If we ever manage to take a weekend trip this year, I think Jackson on Friday night and Minden on Saturday night would be the way to go.
• Even if it was a little warm, there was still a lot of nice snow to be found on the mountain. I didn't really jump very much, and instead rode what we felt like of the mountain. Eagle bowl and Sentinel bowl (especially one run to the left) were both especially nice. The drain wasn't bad, and the gully below sentinel was a lot of fun, too.
• I did manage to hurt myself more than average, but everything was minor: I cut underneath my thumbnail when I accidentally ran my nail through my pocket's zipper; I scratched the back of my hand on my pocket's velcro; I tweaked my ankle when I landed funny; I tweaked my wrist on another fall; I scraped my knee pretty painfully on some pretty hard ice when my two edge slipped out after a jump; And I tried to break my arm when I tried to push away from a tree going a lot faster than I realized.
• Most of my day was spent exploring how I actually felt about listening to music while snowboarding thanks to my new iPod shuffle. I liked it and I'm planning to do it more in the future, but there are definitely some details to mention:
  • My left ear bud was falling out all day, which was incredibly frustrating. I've already solved this problem by buying the Giro Nine.9 Audio, the purchase of which is what I was really evaluating. I'll have more to say about the helmet later.
  • I was carrying the shuffle in my front jacket pocket, which was mostly alright, except for two problems:
    1. During certain jumps I would manage to hit forward or back or play, which kind of ruined the experience.
    2. The buttons are a little too small to actually use when I'm trying to find the right button through the material of my jacket and my snowboard gloves, complicated further by the fact that the shuffle moved around in my pocket. I ended up taking my glove off to operate it most of the time.
    I'm ultimately hoping to solve both of these problems with the shuffle armband, but apparently not anytime soon according the estimated wait time ("5-7 weeks" as of this writing). The season'll be over by then!
  • Somehow the solid state shuffle got into a weird beeping / skipping mode about three times when I jolted it on a landing. It's a solid state device, and that shouldn't happen! If it happens more, I may complain to Apple, because it was pretty annoying; None of the buttons would respond, and I had to stop, take off my glove, dig it out of my pocket, turn it off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on. Not so good for a device targeted at active users.
  All that said, I still liked riding with music enough to invest in making it an even better experience. There's nothing quite like a long run down Eagle bowl cutting through mounds of powder while listening to "Where is my mind?"

It had snowed buckets the week before, and this was supposed to be a weekend trip, but there were three problems:

1. I forgot it was a holiday weekend, which meant it was extra busy.
2. The storm was over, and the temperature had suddenly jumped up to about 50, so I was pretty wiped out by mid-day.
3. E-ming felt like he was coming down with something.

So at lunch we decided to turn it into a day trip, and that was probably fine.

• Date(s): Saturday, January 15th
• Who: Me, Eming.
• Getting up at 4:30 am still sucks, so we got up at like 5 and got out the door at about 6... So we got on the mountain at almost 10.
• It was hot, and again I was riding in just my fleece. So far this season, I've had spring skiing in November, December, and January. What's going to happen come April?
• But at least this time, there was some good snow to be had if you looked for it. Eagle bowl and Sentinel bowl were both pretty nice.
• I moved my front binding forward two holes, which turned out to have probably been too far, because it left my left shin in a lot of pain -- especially on the long traverse at the bottom of eagle bowl. I need to remember to move that back one screw before this weekend's day trip.
• We didn't jump too much, because there were kind of too many people around. We did ride the superpipe once, though, and that thing is scary! At the top the walls are pretty much vertical, AND icy. The correct way to deal with this is obviously to go up and *jump* and turn around, but that's scary because your body is parallel to the ground if you do that -- but it's icy and steep so edging the turn is also pretty damn hard. I'm not sure the superpipe is a skill I really need to acquire. =)

We were all excited about this day trip because it'd been snowing a lot early in the week, but then it heated up by the time we got there.

• Date(s): Saturday, December 11th, 2004.
• Who: Me, Trisha, E-ming, Rick.
• The snow certainly could have been better. The groomers were alright, but in the trees it was crusty in the morning thanks to overnight freezing, but anywhere the blazing morning sun shone quickly turned to an annoying slush.
• It probably hit about 50, which once again called for a fleece in the morning, which I took off in the afternoon. Yay spring skiing in December!
• It was so annoyingly hot that I convinced E-ming to go play in the mini-park with me, and we spent all afternoon taking videos. I'll upload them or something sooner or later, but that's a lower priority than Europe pictures. ;-)
• And that was basically the day. At this rate, I'm probably not going to go back up before January.

To make up for last season's abrupt termination, it started snowing early and Kirkwood was able to open in like October this year. But I wasn't ready to go up at that point, and I barely managed to make it up for a day in mid-November.

• Date(s): Sunday, November 14th
• Who: Me, Mike, Eming, and we met Tyler at the mountain. We also ran into Binky on the mountain.
• I forgot how terrible getting up at 4:30 in the morning for snowboarding was (especially since I went to sleep at like 2 am the night before), but once I got on the mountain it was alright. It was an annoyingly warm day, so I just wore my fleece instead of my real jacket, because my jacket is way too heavy -- I need to get a shell that I can wear as a top layer over other layers...
• The snow actually wasn't too terrible for being so early season, and I got my jumping legs back pretty quickly -- I was jumping off most of the things I was jumping off of at the end of last season, with very little hesitation. It was exciting. By the end of the day, I'd managed to land a few more 180s -- landing a single 180 was the big thing I accomplished at the end of last season, so being able to pick up on day one right where I left off last season felt good.
• And uh, that's about all I remember. That's what I get for going to Europe before writing this.
• Day trip tomorrow.