Mar 19

Marshmallowed. (14 days)

2nd weekend of March – took Friday off from work and drove up Thurs night; spent the weekend with the oldcal group. Originally started with 9, but we ended up with 11 heads in our spacious june lake cabin. 10 graduates, 1 undergrad.
Fun Friday spent at Mammoth, but then I caught a severe flu on Saturday night and thus my weekend ended early.

The following weekend, somehow made it back up to June just in time to catch the storm of the season.

THREE FOOT STORM TOTAL.
Saturday was amazing despite the winds and visibility going in and out. Almost too much snow.
Sunday was even better. Bluebird, pow settled, amazing turns.  I got a few slashes on the gopro on Saturday, but didn’t bother filming Sunday. Spent the day chasing fresh lines ALL DAY, and also hucked a few backflip attempts off the cat tracks… got around 2/3 on my best attempt before spearing my head into the ground. Need a bigger cat track I guess.

On top of two days of pow, we managed to land two successful sessions @ the hot springs after both riding sessions. First time to hilltop (usually crowded but it was empty at 10PM)…probably one of the hotter ‘functional’ tubs…then little hot creek on Sunday afternoon. The piping is fixed! Apparently, duck hunters that venture into the area like to sabotage the hot springs so they can shoot 360′. Asses.

14 days in. I somehow might be able to salvage my season and get 20+ days in.

Mar 2

10 Days In.

This is officially the least I have ever ridden in a season. Including my first season. It’s March and I’m only 10 days in…

On the plus side, I have a week’s worth of PTO left so I’ll be burning a few Fridays off to get 3-day weekends in. Perhaps 6 weekends in March, then maybe I can break 20 before all the snow melts away :(

At least, I’ve gotten a few really good shots lately.


@ June, rocking my comfy DC outfit that Amy hooked it up with for my bday.


We’ve spent a bunch of awesome evenings out @ the hot springs…the starry sky is AMAZING when you’re in the middle of nowhere with zero urban light pollution…shooting stars and satellites. Keep forgetting to bring the timelapse remote that Paul got me :o

Jan 30

Only…Day 4…?

As the end of January closes in…I’ve only ridden 4 days; days 3 & 4 were spent @ Bear on the Dec 25th & Jan 2nd. I haven’t ridden in 28 days, and it’s JANUARY. Not to mention 70′ outside with 80′ highs later this week.

Bizarre. I moved home thinking I would have more time and resources to commit to riding, but alas, there is no snow to ride. On the plus side, the lack of riding means I have more funds/vacationdays to use later in the season. Perhaps a trip out of the usual Bear/Mammoth?


Picked up a set of Klipsch S5i earphones. Rugged-proofed, quite comfortable so far with decent sound quality for $100. Hopefully I don’t smash them in my car door like my last pair of Sennheiser in-ears. Haven’t been able to test them on the slopes yet (obviously), but not sure if I even want to since the noise isolation might be overkill while on the mountain.

Nov 22

Day 1 & 2

A new saga begins. 2011/2012.

Sat-Nov/19

Drove up to Mammoth with Kos, leaving at 4AM or so.

Super clear blue sky all day long, but icy as shit in the afternoon once the winds picked up. Seth let us crash at his condo and led us to the hot springs down near the airport…I’ve been looking into camping near the hot springs on a snow trip, but with research I couldn’t really figure out where they were…so finally I know! Can’t wait to try doing that when it’s not so damn cold at night.

I think it was 18′F by the time the sun had gone down and we had gotten out. Drying off was scary D:

Sun-Nov/20

Woke up after a good night’s sleep to a glorious snow shower. Dropped about a foot by afternoon…so much of a contrast to the previous day.

Even though it was only shin-deep (not complaining!!), pow to start the season is always awesome :D

Apr 13

Regression

A topic I forgot to post…

A while ago at Bear, I ran into Jim, whom we have designated as the “wise-mountain sage”. I first ran into him 5 years ago since we’d always be at the top of fat kicker lines catching a breather. Back then, I was just starting to throw corked back360s with consistency and the occasional 540. He was practicing corked 720s. The year after, all I saw him do was 180s and shifty 180s. The next year, underflips. But it just all came together. I realized what unfolded. He was putting together the necessary abilities for destruction.

When I saw him most recently, he hit a line of 4 mid-sized (30~ft) kickers and hucked a rodeo540 on each and stomped clean. ALL FOUR DIFFERENT VARIANTS. Frontside, Backside, Switch Front, Switch Back. My mind was blown. I decided to upgrade his status to “wise-mountain ninja”. He then told me he just learned to throw chicane flips (kinda how I take off with my corked spins, cept he hucks it way harder and does a full front flip while rotating backside). Me? I used to only know BS 360s & 540s. Since then, I’ve learned how to 180/360 each way, but not on big jumps.

Thus, I realized that I suck. I’m learning backwards and not really progressing towards anything monstrous. Probably from all the injuries and fear of wrecking. Lost my balls. Getting old. But hey, who cares…rode pow almost all year, where wrecking is impossible :D Haven’t quite given up hope on inverts, but I’m definitely not expecting anything crazy soon.

Apr 12

day 34 – roasted

My face is really sunburned. Not my worst goggle-tan, but it’s bad. Day 33 was knee-high pow at some points @ june, although J1 was really icy/crusty underneath. Day 34 was ultra blue-bird slightly slushy but not really sticky funnn.

Got back really late, near 2AM, then had to drive to VICTORVILLE for work (this whole week), waking up @ 5:30AM. And I slept like crap, probably got a good hour in. So tired.

So tired I don’t remember what I had plotted out for the day 34 post. So, I go to sleep now, luckily I’m reporting in at 10AM, but for a longer (10hr?) shift.

I wish last weekend would repeat itself endlessly.

Mar 28

Walls of Snow

Something like 9 feet dropped in the span of a week @ Mammoth. Unfortunately due to it being almost April, it was a tad warm so the powder was wet and sticky…typical heavy sierra snow I guess. This picture was shot on the morning of day 31. Usually I’m nearing 40 days by April….definitely behind my usual amount, but this year has been QUALITY. So much powder riding, I barely have a goggle-tan. Usually I look like a monkey by this time of the year.

I really need to start jotting things down or taking notes. I always have things written out in my head, especially during my car/train rides, then by the time I get around to typing, everything is gone.

Mar 13

Mellow~

Taking it really easy this weekend. I actually woke up to go snowboarding on Saturday, but my car battery was 100% dead and I couldn’t jump it with my half-charged Wagan unit. Had to call AAA and after a string of bad luck in the morning, decided I would rather run errands.

What a good call. I went for a drive to find this local window tint place I had called, but got lost and found a cheap mexican guy to remove my tint for $20. He did a quick and clean job, and also let me know that pledge is a great lubricant for keeping rubber healthy…something with the oils. Interesting.

Drove back home to Irvine (how strange it feels now), and got into IPD @ 12:58 not knowing they closed at 1PM. The cop who was signing off on the tint violation told me I was lucky, since they usually charge $8 but since they had closed up, he didn’t want to bother turning everything back on.

Played games all evening, more or less. I had an interesting morning today, confused by daylight savings. But now I’m playing Dragon Age 2, and damn it looks good.

Except, WTF NO TACTICAL OVERLAY. I knew this was coming months in advance, and had friends even tell me it’s not that bad, but honestly after about 15 minutes of combat I’m hating the new perspective. Also, what’s up with the limited character creation options? It’s like ME2 all over again…a sequel, with LESS options (ME2 had shit for new weapons). WHAT? FAIL.

However, the in-game GUI is pretty sick, and the skill tree / character menu looks really sleek. I like. For now, I guess I will go back to playing and hopefully I forget about the lack of a tactical overlay, or someone hacks up a plugin/mod.

Mar 10

Little dogs…

WHY is it always the little dogs that attack me when I’m skateboarding to work?

The big ass dogs that I would be afraid of being bitten by, are always pretty friendly…one lady’s big lab once ran up to me when I was skating and I thought he was gonna chomp my ass, but all he did was sniff my leg and wag his tail… just last weekend at Mammoth, some guy left his albino something dog in his truck bed…friendliest dog ever, didn’t even bark at strangers and loved being petted.

I had a chihuahua  bite my skateboard earlier this week. And today I almost got bitten by two ferocious little fuckers of unknown breed…the owner was yanking on their leash telling them to shutup to no avail.

If you’re gonna walk your dog in high-traffic pedestrian areas, please teach them how to socialize first. Some owners just don’t realize how terribly trained their dogs are. A dogs behavior is purely a reflection of their owner. If the dog is dumb, then the owner is to blame. Srsly.

Mar 8

Day 27/28 – Chunky Dory

Rode Mammoth on Sat, June on Sun… amazing fun on both days! Saturday we hiked around the outpost with a HUGE group and scored some stale powder. 6 of us broke off from the group and sessioned a mini-kicker…while the rest of the group apparently hiked over the wrong side of the ridge and ended up needing to hike back. FUK DAT SHIT YO. Then it snowed a few inches on Sunday giving us ankle-deep wind stashes. Not bad :)

It’s barely March but it feels like the season is winding down pretty quickly…probably get a few days in @ Bear, then back to Mammoth/June at the end of the month. Between the rising gas prices and my deteriorating knees, I don’t feel too compelled to ride 50+ days a season again. But who are we kidding, it’s the damn video games I want to play on the weekends.  LoL ! (pun intended for the select few who can understand).

Dragon Age 2Shogun 2 this month.
Battlefield 3 in the near future. Can’t wait. I need to upgrade my PC soon.

So my buddy Naks sent me some PSP CFW (custom firmware) and I am now back in action with 6.35pro-B. What’s that mean for you non-techies? Back to homebrew! (kinda equivalent to jailbreaking your iPhone). I haven’t had my psp ‘unlocked’ since I upgraded my firmware from 1.0 to 2.0 to play GTA…5 years ago? So I now have more things to do on the train to pass time…

Things like spending an hour+, blasting through 15 levels of Persona3, then dying to a random low level monster and losing all my progress. FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU.
F7U12, count it.

(fkn RSS feed to facebook is still borked)