White Stuff

An illustration of us in all that snow.

Finally! It's been tough to be a snowboarder in Oregon. Opening weekend was apparently this epic day filled with light, fluffy, bottomless powder. I say apparently because I didn't go. I'm not sure why. I guess I didn't really believe it was going to be good. But I was sure we would see more snow soon. But I was wrong. That marked the beginning of a dry spell that seemed to last For----ever. The last couple weeks of Thanksgiving were dry. The entirety of December was dry. The mountain alternated between frozen ice block, slushy spring-like conditions, and rain. All the while the snow pack was whittling away and all the rocks and trees and grass (yes, grass) were showing through. Tragic times. January is usually known to be a dry month, but with an entire month of nothing preceding it, I really couldn't believe it. But now, finally, a storm has rolled in and we're seeing feet of snow stacking up. Sam and I drove up together, experiencing a rather harrowing ride, but once we were there we met up with Carin, Jocelyn, and Huy and saw nothing but powdery goodness all day. There wasn't a crappy run on the mountain. So fun.

Whiteout!

After a particularly dry January, it feels especially good to get these epic snowstorms up at the mountain. Meadows has received 24 inches in the past 24 hours. Jeeeeeez. It has been so good up there. Here's a shot of Eva (in red) and I (in green) at the top of Heather Chair. This was after a magical run through Jack's Woods. I probably turned five times total, threw some powder around, and generally felt really glad to be alive. The best thing? The storm isn't over.

Peepshow

I went to see the new Videograss film and failed miserably. Living Room Theater is small and the shows kept filling to capacity and I was distracted by friends and clean air outside and bottles of wine and highball glass theft. Snowboarder types were filling the streets and lurking hard. There was a lot of neon and plaid and general dirtbaggery which was only more pronounced once the party moved down to Beauty Bar for the official after-party (which by the way, was sweet. I heard Beauty Bar was the new Tube and therefore decided to avoid it like the plague. Someone totally misrepresented it. I'm using my complimentary nail file right now.) I also met the Peepshow girls and they are awesome and have a new film coming out, fingers crossed on a Portland debut in a large, official venue. I will totally be there (if it happens).

Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow from peepshow on Vimeo.

What to do when you're in Japan ni

Night Bus: If you snowboard and you're there in winter you should totally do this. Seriously. Snowboarding in Japan is so much fun. I actually thought I was over snowboarding after a couple winters in Colorado and then I went out there and found renewed love and faith in the powers of snowboarding. The mountains are great and perhaps due to the fact that nobody rides trees out there, you feel like you are an explorer. When you duck a rope you don't have tracks to follow, you just have to go for it and hope you end up back at a chair.
The Night Bus leaves from Shinjuku Station around 10 p.m. You get on this totally crowded bus and it drives through the night. The bus will be really, really warm. Painfully so. You may drink heavily in the hopes of passing out. If you do fall asleep you will wake suddenly to realize you are sweating profusely and drooling. You won't fit in the seat. Japanese people have the uncanny ability to sleep anywhere (you will see this on trains all the time. They fall completely asleep sitting up and then manage to wake right before their stop). They will all be sleeping peacefully. The bus will stop randomly at travel centers with enormous restrooms, snacks, local delicacies, and an all-night ramen shop. Everyone will eat ramen in five minutes and get back on the bus. You will arrive at your destination around 6 a.m. You will get off the bus and someone will hand you your boardbag and unfortunately you will feel like someone beat you with a bar of soap in a sock. You will then go to the lodge and put on your snowboarding gear. If you are a girl you will watch all the girls put a lot of makeup on. I don't know what you will watch if you're a boy. Probably lots of dynamic stretching. You will then go out and snowboard all day. Duck ropes. It's the best part. Explore. No one ducks ropes so sometimes you will find something awesome and sometimes you will end up in a ravine and have to negotiate a series of dams. Don't drop your board in the water. You may have to hike around a large reservoir. That's okay too. Eat a huge Japanese lunch. Go out after lunch and find the park. It may be middling but it will still be fun. Take some family photos. Hike something in-bounds. Ride the last chair and run down to lodge, change, buy a couple chu-hi for the ride home and get on the bus. Nap. Arrive in Shinjuku just before last train and catch your train home.

Savage Beast

You think you know a person . . . . and then you go snowboarding with him. Meadows got 16 inches on Friday and we got a carload together to head up early on Saturday. Kyle Carnes drove (it's pronounced Carns but in my head I pronounce it with a spanish accent) and Carin and Huy came along, and we got a pretty early start considering I overslept and Carin locked her keys (and her skis) in her car.

We get to Meadows and it is sunny and beautiful and and we start putting on our boots and all that business and I notice Kyle is just standing there, still wearing his jeans and his Topsiders with no socks and he doesn't look ready at all. "Kyle," I say, "What are you doing? You ready?" He proceeds to pull on some rain pants. Like, your average probably not even Gore-Tex black rain pants, the kind you might wear on a brief hike when it's not actually raining and maybe just a little misty. Over his jeans. I am blown away. And then it just gets more hesh. Does he have a jacket? No. A windbreaker? No. Kyle Carnage rocks the sweatshirt. He gets hot, he says. He wears a sweatshirt with leather work gloves and amber lens goggles from '92. His bindings appear to be prehistoric prototypes and he informs us that his board is some brand that we've never heard of that definitely is not producing boards anymore. It was amazing. The topper? One of his friends carved his stomp-pad into a somewhat inappropriate word. And the remnants are still there. It turns out Kyle Carnes is totally extreme. Watching him put on his gear in the HRM lot was one of my favorite moments of my favorite day of the 2009/2010 season. We even did a family photo.

Just Like Kristi Yamaguchi

Okay. So just to round out the CO saga. Lots of snowboarding. Obviously. My friend Elizabeth works for the local radio station KSMT and apparently she even has a radio show on saturday afernoons and mentioned yours truly by name. The gist of it was: Rachel is visiting and I spent my first year in Breck living with her in a one-bedroom apartment. And we're still friends. Yes it was a miracle.
But the radio station has something called The Medallion and they allow this to be used by their employees or their employee's friends (me). This is a large silver medal that you can wear around your neck and it provides access to all resorts in the area. So I got to run around all week with a medal around my neck (just like Kristi Yamaguchi who apparently has been spotted in Breck dancing in Salt Creek and other unsavory places) and snowboard everywhere including my favorite mountain Beaver Creek (awesome terrain, Elk Glades, escalators, hot cookies at closing time)Thanks Ebee.
But after all the no-show missing person debacles, I was not on the top of Elizabeth's Most Organized Person list. There was talk of my need to redeem myself. But she made me french toast and we picked up Billy Grow and went to Keystone and then (this is just ridiculous) we got on the lift, like first run of the day and it was gorgeous and so sunny and we were really excited and then I dropped one of my gloves off the chair. Like a total rookie. Not redeeming. Fortunately I dropped it in the first 100 yards and we could see it from the lift but then I had to duck a rope to go get it, and people were heckling me from the lift for trying to get some pathetic pow turns. But I got the glove back. And if I didn't exactly redeem myself, it at least brought me back to neutral.

Egg on my Pants

I am house-sitting right now. This involves hanging out with a large gray cat with no teeth who likes to talk to me and appears to be eating an insane amount of food (I'm worried that he is eating so much because he doesn't know how to deal with abandonment and they told me to feed him when he wanted to be fed and if he keels over from overeating I'm going to feel really bad).

I went snowboarding this weekend. It was good, best conditions yet. Which doesn't mean that much considering I haven't been able to go on any of the great days this season. Because I have a job. And knees that are giving out. But anyway, I always stop at Mountain Moka in Sandy and get a coffee refill and usually a bagel or a breakfast sandwich and the girls are always caffeinated and chipper and foundationed and I have a frequent customer card that I have almost filled, but instead we went to that gas station which has the burrito shop inside. I got a breakfast burrito and it got all over me and my hands and my face and my pants and my car. It was a battle. I was wrestling with this burrito for a good portion of the drive and was probably one ill-timed bite from an accident. And while it was tasty, it seems wrong to keep finding little bits of egg in the creases of your clothing as you move forward with your day.

Dedicated to Dead Batteries

I finally went snowboarding. Due to faulty knees and an ill-timed injury I haven't been able to go up, but yesterday I finally got it together and it was so much fun. As it always is. It was really a pretty half-hearted attempt, stood around the house brushing my teeth and drinking coffee and gossiping with Charissa while Huy put the racks on my car, hadn't waxed my board, almost forgot my pass, milled around the Fred Meyer in Sandy for awhile, finding this gem in the process:


But finally got up to Meadows and it turns out I can still turn both ways and do really dumb shifties if necessary. And when we were leaving (we left really early because my knee started to hurt and it wasn't exactly an epic day and when it comes down to it, we just aren't very serious) and we got in the car and by the way---I don't have a stereo in my car, only a gaping hole in the dash where the stereo should be, and I get around this issue by listening to my ipod through headphones or else, more often, just singing poorly and loudly to myself---but Huy gave me this wonderful tiny speaker set that can be plugged into an ipod so we had music all the way up to the mountain and we got in the car and I pulled out of the parking lot and 'Shoop' came on and we were both like, yes! and it played for twenty seconds and then my ipod died.