Hot Summer Nights

This past weekend I went up to Mammoth Mountain, CA with Suzanne and Val.  It was an amazing trip - we got an insane amount of good snow to play around in.

Basically Mammoth is a bit of a drive…it takes about 7 hours to get there.  Since Suzanne had class until around 6:45 we couldn’t leave until later in the evening.  By the time everyone was at my apartment and we had the car packed it was 8:00pm.  That is a bit late to start.  On the way there we missed the turnoff to 395 and ended up staying on the 15 towards Las Vegas.  Luckily we caught ourselves in time and were able to cut back on the 58, but it still cost us almost 40 minutes!  It was kind of a bummer.  We were joking that we might have kept driving till we saw the lights of Las Vegas.  That would have been interesting.

Towards the end of the drive we hit some snow and the road was completely covered.  Add that to the fact that it was pitch black and the light reflecting off the falling snowflakes reduced visibility to about 30 ft.  We were exhausted, and I drove the last leg since it was my car and I was most familiar with driving it in bad conditions.  We had to put chains on the tires so we stopped in front of a few other cars and used the light from their headlights to help us see.  We finally rolled into the driveway of the Sierra Lodge at 5 in the morning.  Yes.  5:00 am.  It was pretty brutal.

We woke up at around 11am and snowboarded for half a day.  By then it had snowed almost a foot of fresh snow, and the conditions were amazing.  Even though we were really, really tired we were invigorated by the sheer joy of sliding down pillowy runs of fresh powder.

The next day we headed over to Chair 25 where there were lots of intermediate difficulty tree runs.  Snowboarding through the trees when there is fresh snow is such an amazing experience.  The trees force you to pick a path and dodge branches and trunks, which adds an exhilarating challenge.  The fresh powder adds a feeling of weightlessness, and you dodge and swerve the trees, sometimes ducking through a narrow keyhole of branches.

It snowed all day, and by the end there was even more snow.  Val’s friend lent her a tiny handheld video camera device.  We took some first person video of ourselves riding around, and I had a super fun time following Val and Suzanne through the trees with it.  I’ll post video when we get it all edited.

Overall this was probably the best snowboarding trip I’ve been on in terms of quality snow.  Also, we had a pretty awesome time together too - lots of funny one liners and silly moments causing uncontrollable laughter.  Looking forward to doing this again soon!

Tags: fresh pow rules, mammoth mountain, snowboarding
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So I said I’d post photos from last weekend, and I’m finally getting around to it.  I wrote  a few new posts below, so be sure to check them out too!

Val and I In A Blizzard Of Epic Proportions - Mt. Baldy, CA. This is 30 minutes outside LA. Seriously.

So last weekend Val and I went up to Mt. Baldy.  It is just north of Los Angeles, and when we got up there it was a WHITEOUT.  I mean, we couldn’t see where we were snowboarding!  Having never been there before it was even scarier because we had no idea what the surroundings were like, where the trails led, what obstacles there were, etc.  We could have snowboarded off a cliff and nobody would have known.  Actually, that’s pretty unlikely because we stayed on the marked trails, but it was still a bit sketchy.  We didn’t end up boarding for very long because I felt pretty uneasy about the situation…I think Val did too.  Plus the chair lifts kept breaking down and it was almost closing time anyway by the time we made our way up to the mountain.

Amazing Sunset Leaving Mt. Baldy

When we were leaving Mt. Baldy we witnessed the MOST beautiful sunset I’ve EVER seen.  This photo does not do it justice at all. There were so many layers of color, and the depth to the different folds of clouds is just not transmitted through this digital picture.  We rounded the corner coming down the mountain and I pretty much started screaming unintelligible words while pointing at the sky.  It was incredible.

In Line - Mt. High.

On Sunday we went to Mt. High…along with everyone else in the entire Southern California area.  Basically it took us 2 hours to drive 130 miles there…and then 4 hours to drive the remaining 5 miles because, well, it was the first good snowfall for this season and the best snow the local mountains have seen in a long time.  So, everyone had the same idea.  But we persevered, and after 6 hours in the car we arrived.  We had a blast actually.

View from Mt. High Looking West

Mt. High Sunset - Lights Came On For Night Skiing

We had another amazing sunset that night, and left after it got dark.

This weekend we’re going up north to Mammoth Mountain here in CA, which is  about a 7 hour drive.  They have the biggest snow base in the nation, and it’s forecast to snow about 30″ while we’re there.  I’m very excited!

Tags: pics from snowboarding
Posted in Stuff I've Been Doing, Travels, snowboarding | 1 Comment »

Well, I really should be doing work, but I’m having a severe crisis of concentration.  So, I guess I’ll post a little update here since I’ve been meaning to anyway.

I just got back from an amazing snowboarding trip to Whistler, Canada.  Whistler is actually technically Whistler Blackcomb.  It’s a ski resort with two mountains (both huge).  Whistler is a mountain, and Blackcomb is a glacier.  Both have incredible terrain and ski runs.  If you started at the top, I believe it would take you about a half hour - 40 minutes to make it all the way to the bottom.  I guess if you were really fast you could do it in less time, but for normal people it takes a LONG time to get all the way down!  Usually you don’t do that though, you just go to one section of the mountain and stay there for a bit.

I went with my friends Val and Lori, and we stayed at Barb’s apartment.  Barb is our friend who moved from San Diego to Whistler this past summer.  She let us stay at her apartment for free, which was awesome!  It was close quarters but we had fun cooking dinners and breakfasts, and having chocolate fondue.

We went for New Year’s, and on New Year’s day we got a foot of fresh powder.  It was snowing nonstop for three days!

My favorite session on the mountain was when Barb took us to the alpine area called 7th Heaven.  It starts above the treeline and then opens up into a sloping meadow of open runs and copses of trees.   We went through a few stands of trees which was challenging.  Tree riding means trying to find a path between the trunks and navigating the powder in between.  Often there are already gouges in the snow from others going through the trees, so that adds to the difficulty.  We went through a few narrow keyholes where it was basically only as wide as my board and tree trunks were whizzing by inches from my head.  (Yes, I do wear a helmet)

At The Entrance To The Whistler Olympic Park (L to R: Myself, Barb, Lori, and Val)

The Winter Olympics are going to take place in Vancouver and Whistler this year, so we got to take in all the improvements and construction going in to the preparation for the games.  Unfortunately we couldn’t really see the Whistler Olympic park because they had shut it down for security measures.  It’s kind of sad that the world is like that now, but such is life I guess.

L to R, Me, Lori, Val - Riding the lift

Winter Wonderland on Blackcomb

I can’t wait to go back!  I had a great time.

The only problem I had during the trip is that Lori unfortunately got a cold the night before we left, and both Barb and I caught it.  So I’m sick yet again!!  Fortunately it wasn’t bad enough to stop me from snowboarding.  It was just annoying that my nose was running all the time.

Actually, I felt *great* when I was on the hill, in terms of my body.  I didn’t even get that sore!  Last year when I went to Whistler I got so incredibly sore that I couldn’t move.  I don’t know if it’s because we were doing shorter days or what, but my legs felt pretty strong the whole time.  Maybe my snowboarding technique is just better so that I put less strain on my muscles.  Who knows!

Hopefully we’ll take a few more boarding trips this Winter.  Val is talking about going to Mammoth, and it sounds really fun.  It’s about 6-7 hours north of San Diego, so it’s a bit of a drive, but I was looking at their website and the mountain looks huge.

I was telling my friends that after officially learning the basics of how to snowboard over the course of 3 trips to Vermont during High School, I pretty much perfected my snowboarding technique on the most dinky little hills in Michigan.  Mt. Brighton was only about 20 minutes away from the U of M, so it was a great place to go just to work on technique and get my kicks for an afternoon.  The only thing is - Mt. Brighton is a converted landfill (aka garbage dump).  It is TINY.  The hill itself is only like 230ft. high!  Let’s just say that it has made me truly appreciate going to a real mountain :)  I mean, Whistler makes Brighton look like a speck of dust.

Tiny Mt. Brighton

Tags: fresh pow, powder, snow is fun, snowboarding, whistler blackcomb
Posted in Stuff I've Been Doing, Travels | 6 Comments »

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and I can’t believe it went so fast.  It seems like yesterday that I was having Thanksgiving dinner!

I spent Christmas in Michigan with the family, and it was great.  Getting there and back, however, was a different story.  Delta lost my luggage on the way there, and then rescheduled my returning flight for the next day at 6am.  I officially hate Delta!

It was ridiculous.  When contacting the Delta/Northwest baggage hotline they said they could send an email to the Detroit Metro baggage office to see about the status of my bag.  They said, quote, “we can’t actually call them because we don’t have their phone number.”

Wait, what?  The baggage hotline for  a major airline can’t look up the number for an airport’s baggage office?  Are you kidding me?

Adding insult to injury, they are now charging $20 to check a bag.  Thanks, I just gave you $20 to lose my bag.

Then on the way back it was quite an adventure.  First, the nosecone of the plane was scratched and they had to replace it.  Then, taxiing to the runway we hit a pothole.  The captain got on the intercom and basically told us “That pothole you felt back there was nothing, everything is fine.”

But it wasn’t.  Apparently as we were taxiing around some passengers heard a strange vibration noise from the right engine.  Then the stewardess heard it.  So they stopped the plane and had to get everything looked at.  When we taxied back to the gate and the pilot and mechanics came to the cabin to investigate I kind of knew we weren’t taking off that night.  I didn’t want to fly on that plane anyway - as all this was going down one of the flight attendants said to the other attendant that she would “rather just get off this plane.”  When the FLIGHT ATTENDANT says that, you know you have a bit to worry about.

So we had to go back to the airport, wait on line for an hour, get a hotel voucher for $13 (which was useless because everything was closed), board a shuttle for the hotel, and get 3 hours of sleep before waking up at 3am to make the shuttle for the newly rescheduled 6am flight.  PLUS, adding even more insult to injury, they didn’t let us have access to our checked baggage.  ANOTHER night without any clothes and toiletries.  After we boarded our rescheduled flight we had to wait 2 hours on the runway because they forgot to stock our plane with any beverages or food.  Didn’t much matter to me because they only give any worthwhile food to first class anyway.

In sum:  I hate Delta.  They gave us a $100 voucher for future use with their airline.  Thanks but no thanks.  In another few months all that $100 is going to be good for is checking a bag.

Well, enough about that.

I’m currently up in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, for a weeklong snowboarding trip with my friends Lori, Barb, and Val.  We are staying at Barb’s fantastic apartment for free.  New powder is expected for New Year’s Day.  I’m so excited!

I will update hopefully with some more news about the trip.

I’ve gotta say, even though it’s nice to travel, I will be so happy to finally get home after this trip and get back into a regular routine and schedule.  I just want to relax, and for me it’s hard to do that when I’m traveling - especially sports traveling like surf trips and snowboard trips, where people want to make the most of their time and you can’t always make your own schedule.

Tags: delta sucks, snowboarding, travel, whistler
Posted in Stuff I've Been Doing, Travels | No Comments »

Beacon's Beach Sunset

Well I arrived back in Encinitas on Tuesday.  It’s been a whirlwind of unpacking and getting myself back into the mode of being here.  It was kind of hard for me to leave home and get on that plane to come here.  People couldn’t understand why I wasn’t ecstatic to be leaving for CA, but the truth is that it has always been very hard for me to make big changes like that, especially total changes of scenery.  I hate leaving people.  It was extremely hard to leave CA and come to NY in the summer, even though I’m glad now that I did.  My plan is to do summer in NY again next year, and I’m sure it will be very difficult to leave.  Only one person really understood where I was coming from, and I was glad to have her empathy.

Anyway, enough about my moping around.  It’s really nice to be leaving the NY weather and getting some sun here in CA.  The palm trees never cease to amaze me, and I’ve already seen a few dolphins out in the lineup at Grandview.

I surfed for a few hours today and the waves were beautiful, clear, and blue.  They weren’t big, but that’s ok.  I had some fun rides.  I rode my Merrick Flyer because during my last session I somehow collided with some donkey and the nose of his board punched a hole in the bottom of mine.  Now it has to dry out before I can take it to Ding King for repair.  When that happened yesterday it took all my willpower not to get REALLY mad.  I mean, I was pretty upset, but I could tell that I was about to spiral down into being really angry and in a bad mood.  I mean, that can happen when your pristine, new board gets a hole put in it.

I’m getting ready for Halloween.  I’m going to be a flapper.  Let me tell you - the scariest thing you can do this Halloween is to go to Party City the day before Halloween.  It is like a ZOO, with kids running around throwing plastic scythes, begging their parent’s for candy, and shrieking like banshees.

Meanwhile, it was interesting to be checked out by a banana at the supermarket and have my purchases bagged by a bottle of ketchup.

And in case you were curious, those aren’t my groceries on the belt.  I don’t normally buy 5 bottles of wine and a box of cheerios.

Well that’s it for now.  I really want to turn this more into a photo blog, so look for that in the near future!

Tags: Back in California, Leaving Home
Posted in Random Thoughts, Travels | No Comments »

I’m kinda getting the travel bug again.  As if it’s not enough that I’m going to be spending the Winter in San Diego!  The thing is, I get a little depressed when making changes - such as picking up and leaving.  I’m going back to California on the 27th, and while I’m really excited about that I’m also sad to be leaving here.  I mean, it’s kinda silly in a way because it’s just going to be getting colder, greyer, and more boring here as we stretch into the colder months.  But still, that’s just the way I am.  I’ve always been that way.

Anyway, my method of coping with the slight depression is to make plans and goals for things that I really want to do.  Right now that means I’m thinking of some places I want to travel to.

One of my big goals is to surf the Mentawai’s in Indonesia.  So recently I’ve been reading and browsing the Kandui surf resort website, drooling over the pictures and videos.

The waves range from user-friendly to advanced.  I was looking at the different waves and it’s not like you have to surf deadly double overhead grinders into dry reef.  Some of the waves just look like perfect, head high peelers in crystal clear blue water.

I’d love to go to Bali too.  Last night I was talking to Katherine, and I had no idea she did so much traveling in that part of the world.  She traveled and surfed in the early 90’s when she was my age, and she did it alone.  She went to Australia and Bali and the Indonesian islands a bunch of times.  I was so stoked to be talking to her, and it was so weird because I had just been thinking up all these crazy ideas about doing some traveling on my own.

I mean, I really would love to travel with friends, but life doesn’t always allow people to simply take off for two weeks and blow money on a surf trip.  So, if I can’t latch on to some trips with people this year, then I might consider taking a trip on my own at some point.  Maybe not Bali right away, but somewhere.  Caribbean, Costa Rica, wherever.  I also want to work on my surfing a bit more.  I’ve made a lot of progress the past half year, so I’m stoked on that.  If I’m going to these places I want to be able to surf and know that I know what I’m doing if I want to take on more challenging waves.

The thought of traveling right now is appealing because I want to live life and do as much as I can before I potentially settle down with a family or whatever.  And there’s no rush for that.  I really want to have a family, but right now I’m free as a bird and I want to take advantage.  Plus, when you get older it’s harder to surf hard without fearing injury too much.  That’s just a fact of life as you get older.

I want to take risks and have stories to tell.  I don’t want to just live my life in a safe little bubble.  Some of the people I respect most are those who get out there and experience the world.  People who have crazy stories and misadventures in the far corners of the world.  My favorite story to tell people now is about our trip to Mexico and how we had to search in the countryside to find the Ranch, this out of the way surf spot.  It was 4 girls in the rental car, 4 boards stacked on the car, and our directions led us to this dirt road in the middle of the woods.  I was freaking out, thinking of all sorts of scary scenarios - like getting killed by drug lords and nobody knowing for days.  Anyway, the directions said “take the fork that looks more traveled.”  So, every time we got to a fork we would sit there scratching our heads.  “Which one looks more traveled??”  Finally we made it out and into a clearing overlooking an absolutely beautiful point break in the middle of unspoiled wilderness.   I mean, it is one of the experiences I will remember my entire life.

Anyway, that’s my plan so far.  Nothing’s set in stone.  I want to get to CA first and then see where I want to go from there.  Gotta get back into surfing shape anyway since I have barely been surfing more than a handfull of times in the past month.

Tags: bali, living life, taking risks, travel, where I want to go
Posted in Random Thoughts, Surfing, Travels | No Comments »

I haven’t really been updating this thing…so here’s a quick and dirty update…

Went up to Whistler with Bid (aka Alicia Bidwell) and her friends.  I could NOT believe how beautiful British Columbia is, and Vancouver, and the drive up on the Sea To Sky highway (coolest name for a road ever).  And then the mountain itself…the view from the peak was incredible.  We were above the clouds and the treeline, and it felt like I was on another planet.  Truly an experience I will never forget.

Sometimes I’m kinda glad I didn’t travel much up until about a year ago.  I think I’m appreciating the variety of the world so much more, and I don’t take it for granted.

The surf here has not been too great.   Very small and weak, and it’s frustrating.  Had a few fun sessions on Quadzilla, and last night some dolphins swam VERY close to me, I’m talking like 8 feet away.  It really startled me!  They were also surfing.  I love how dolphins play around.  They ride waves just like surfers.  Last night was a surprise session…almost too many fun waist high waves and only me and a couple other people.  Then it kinda turned off and got crowded.  Them’s the breaks.

I don’t know how the Californians do it…afternoon sessions are torture because you’re looking straight west at the sun.  On Long Island we’re facing primarily South/Southeast, so we don’t really have that problem.

I surfed Swami’s yesterday, and I’m over it.  Yeah, wasn’t the best day there since the waves were weak and small, but on a shortboard it’s just an exercise in frustration.  Too many people in such a small area.  I’ll take a beachbreak any day.

Two weeks ago I spent a few days visiting with Betty and Evelyn in Santa Barbara.  We surfed the iconic Rincon, and the talent level there is unbelievable.  Kelly Slater was there, and I was in the lineup 5 feet away from him.  I didn’t talk to him, but it was neat to share the lineup with such a living legend.  He has the most beautiful green eyes…you have to see them in person.

I’m going to Oahu on March 19th!  I am sooooo stoked.  I want to surf, but I’m a little worried because I keep hearing all about how much power is in the waves in Hawaii, and how it’s a whole different surfing animal altogether.  However, we’ll be visiting with Cat, and hopefully she can point me to an easier spot.

Posted in Random Thoughts, Surfing, Travels | No Comments »