that’s whacked

what a weekend

Thursday, Mar 1. 2007  –  Category: Outdoors, Travel

i still miss that utah snow

erik: you threw an awesome bachelor party. it was everything i thought it’d be…. 3 days of kick-ass powder. it was great to just be able to ride hard non-stop and then crash in the hot tub and chow down afterwards.

thanks again everyone for coming – i had a blast…. the riding was great, the snow was amazing, the food was heavenly (from the goat cheese ravioli…mmmm…droool…. even to the corn dogs), the drink was plentiful, and the company was brilliant.

even if i did “crap my pants”

cheers, steve da pimp

(thanks for taking the photos dan!)

heaven

Monday, Feb 26. 2007  –  Category: Outdoors, Travel

i’m not religious… but i do believe in heaven.

not only do i believe in it…. i was just there.

heaven (or at least something akin to it) is flying down a double-black on your brand new snowboard crashing through fresh untracked fluffy light powder…. and then doing it again…. and again….. and again. repeat for 3 days straight… toss in a great dinner, great friends, and a ridiculous amount of eggs, corn dogs, beer, and a bottle of Laphroig – and you have the recipe for an awesome bachelor party.

epicness

Thursday, Feb 22. 2007  –  Category: Outdoors, Travel

between MLK day, all the jurassic (home directory server) outages on tuesday & wednesday, and me leaving soon for a weekend of epic awesomeness in the snow at Park City, this has got to be one of my shortest work-weeks ever.

… for which i do feel guilty …

but i can’t help but be psyched for this weekend. i haven’t seen some of these guys in a while, and i’m looking forward to 3 days of boarding in the powder. i’ve only been up to tahoe twice so far this year in our winter-of-crappiness we’ve been having, so i’m feeling totally ill-prepared for this weekend. but oh well… i’ve got my asthma inhaler and a crapload of ibuprofen – i should be set, right?

(utterly) inflexible

Wednesday, Oct 11. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

i’m about as flexible as a lamp post.

that was my observation today during my first yoga class. i’ve decided to try yoga in my ongoing effort to ensure i don’t bonk heavily while attempting to summit/board Mt. Shasta next year.

“focus on your triangle, the space in between your hands… focus!” the instructor says calmly and clearly as we are all in the downward dog pose.

ugh. all i can focus on is the sweat dripping off my forehead down to the ground… into the space in between my hands. oddly enough, it was a strangely effective thing to focus on.

needless to say, an hour of yoga kicked my ass. it felt pretty good though, and i’m hopeful it will at least help drive some of the kinks out of my lower back.

i’ve been reading more accident reports and trip reports of Shasta. i tell myself its in the interest of being fully prepared for all things that may happen, but in reality my mindset is more along the lines of “whatever you do… don’t do something so utterly embarrassing and stupid you end up as an event in these accident reports”… like the girl who held her ice axe upside down, dripped, and ended up giving herself a tracheotomy. ugh.

/me is still wearing his snowboard boots around the house

new snowboard boots!

Tuesday, Oct 10. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

i stopped by our local Any Mountain store on Monday and found a pair of boots being cleared out: 2006 Salomon Maori’s. they had one pair left in an 8.5. on a whim i picked them up and they were amazingly light. way lighter and comfier than my old pair of Burton boots i’ve been riding around on for the past 5 years.

that, and they were on sale for $90.

score!

so i picked ‘em up. but just to make sure they’re comfy enough, i’ve been wearing them whenever i get a chance and walking around in them to make sure they feel okay…. which is why i cooked dinner, walked the dogs around the block, and am now blogging in my snowboard boots.

let me just say…. you definitely get some strange looks from the neighbours when you tromp by walking your dogs in shorts, a t-shirt, and snowboard boots.

these are definitely a pair i can hike up shasta in though, so woot!

symmetrical blisters

Tuesday, Oct 10. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

This past weekend, I finally got back out to the rocks and got in some great climbing. We went to meetup with some friends in Bishop to climb at Owen’s River Gorge. Friday kind of sucked, it turns out they closed the Tioga pass through, and we definitely didn’t want to drive up to Reno and back down to Bishop, so we figured we’d just head up to Yosemite to our hotel, and come back on Saturday. Friday evening got a little exciting when Isis ate 11 oz’s of chocolate chips and came down with some mild chocolate toxicity. After a fun sidetrip to the pet emergency room, they pumped her full of IV fluids and told us she’d be fine. So we headed up to the hotel with our beagles in tow to spend the night.

The hotel was great… really cozy cute inn, and it turns out the innkeepers have a beagle as well. In the morning we slept in, woke up late, had a great breakfast buffet, and packed up to head home. We called Yosemite on a whim, and…damn… it turns out they opened the pass.

After an hour of debate (we were worried about heading over and then having them close the pass and being stuck in the eastern Sierras), we decided to go for it and headed out to Owens River Gorge.

I had a great time climbing, doing some fun sport 5.9 and 5.10a routes, and ripping symmetrical blisters on both hands. Very strange.

After that, we camped out at Millpond Campsite. Camping with dogs is a lot of fun. We had 11 people and 4 dogs running around, and the dogs had a great time. Sleeping at night was probably a little cold for the dogs…given that I was woken up in the middle of the night by Isis burrowing in between our heads, and later on Char-siu crawled on top of me and slept on me. Next time we’ll have to bring more blankets than we did to keep them warmer.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend… I’ve definitely missed climbing and camping, and it’s nice to know I haven’t completely regressed in my climbing ability.

gear up!

Monday, Sep 25. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

so i got my crampons. (i should probably figure out how to use ‘em at some point this winter)

i got a pack, which i think is probably too small (@ 2000 cubic inches), so i’ll probably have to return it. depends how much crap i need to stuff in there.

and after reading all the trip reports and accident reports (thanks jesse), i’m convinced i’m bringing an ice axe. time to go buy more gear.

(this whole trip is really just a way for me to legitimise buying more gear really)

hotlum-wintun ridge ascent & descent

Thursday, Jul 27. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

the ascent is in blue, the descent is the red line.

…. it’s gonna rock

exhausted…

Tuesday, Jul 25. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

so it looks like this weekend’s exertions gave me some mild heat exhaustion. i spent a good part of yesterday and almost all of last night alternating between shivering with chills, sweating with a fever, and having waves of nausea.

so clearly a few lessons to be learned here. i need to hydrate more. i brought two litres of water on our hike, but soon found myself drinking more than i had predicted. i probably should have worn a wider hat instead of the bandana i opted for… a hat would have provided greater shade and facial coverage.

oh well… noted for next time i suppose.

meanwhile, if you come by my office and find me passed out on the chair, i’m not slacking – i just feel sick. (as opposed to other days, when i may indeed be slacking )

sweatiest….weekend….. evah.

Monday, Jul 24. 2006  –  Category: Outdoors

staying up till 3am friday drinking scotch is probably not the best way to start training for Shasta. despite that, jesse and i set out saturday for our first training hike in our long arduous goal of getting ourselves in shape to haul ourselves up to the top of Shasta.

in all our infinite wisdom, we decided to train for hiking up Shasta by hiking a day hike (11 mile loop trail) in the blistering heat at Big Basin.

cause… you know… hiking in 100 degree weather is totally indicative of what we’ll be doing at Shasta.

after the best Jamba Juice smoothie ever, we finished up our training by devouring tapas and sangria before heading home to knock back some Henry Weinhardts Irish Pale Ale (i’m normally not a fan of Pale Ales, but this one was pretty good) and watching the 19th stage of the Tour de France.

<random tangential rant about the Tour de France> first: to the American announcer, it’s Tour “de” France, as in “de” rhymes with “the”. Not Tour DAY France. second: i’m sorry – but watching time trials at 1am has got to be one of the most boring things on TV. i’ve been assured that the regular stages are better and more exciting, but watching a time trial on TV is stunningly wickedly amazingly fantastically BORING. </random tangential rant>

we followed that up by watching Superman on Sunday morning and then running around in the afternoon for another exhausting sweaty 1.5 hours of ultimate.

today i feel …. broken. my hips hurt. my knees hurt. my fingertips hurt (yeah i don’t know why those hurt). ugh. i think i may take the week off of frisbee to let my body heal.