I was barely able to walk from my car to my office this morning my legs were so damn sore. I don’t know why they hurt so much worse than they have from previous snowboarding trips, but yeh, they’re pretty ruined. On Saturday we boarded from 8am until about 4pm, so we were out there for quite a while. Even though I hadn’t been up there in 2 years, most of the skills were still there and I was feeling pretty comfortable by mid-day.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend with friends that I don’t see often enough. We stayed at a huge cabin and did lots of drinking and eating at good and weird places. It was nice to be away from the city for a couple of days, even if I did have my laptop and the internet with me the whole time.

And Happy Birthday Sanam!

we finally found the time to spend a full weekend in big bear. shali rented a huge suite at the black forest lodge, just about a mile away from the resort. unlike the last place that supposedly had a jacuzzi across the street, this place had one in the room, and we made full use of it. we all had a blast, and instead of me recapping, you can just check out mike’s pics here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=j1mh040.74pqmdb0&x=0&y=-3rt6tl

and this 4 minute video:

mike and i went up early (as in waking up at 5am early) to snow summit on sunday to do a half day. the weather was super warm, and by 11a i was regretting having worn a jacket. the snow was decent, although it was a bit slushy in some of the really sunny parts of the mountain. luckily we were outta there before it got too hot. since we turned in our tickets by 1pm, we got $19 vouchers for our next trip, which will probably be this weekend :)

check out the sweet wisdom goggles that justina hooked me up with. they’re kinda huge, but super clear, comfy, and won’t fog:

i brought my movie camera and got a bunch of footage, so i’m gonna have to make a short snowboarding video when i can find some free time:

me, taka, mike and shal made our first trip of the season up to snow summit on saturday. we got a late, lazy start and only did a half day session but it was a lot of fun. it was pretty busy when we got there, but the lines on the upper lifts were pretty quick. we all made some good progress, and this was more or less a warm up trip for the rest of the season. i can’t wait to get back up there… sick day anyone?

in the afternoon, it was so warm, we were just wearing long sleeve t-shirts:

afterwards we had dinner at paoli’s after fighting off lesbians for a parking space:

here are the photos from mike’s camera, i’ll upload the one’s from mine in a bit:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=j1mh040.1vezljwk&x=0&y=ui69gp

the snowboard that mike gave taka is almost complete. just have to clean and mount the bindings and she’ll be good to go.

just to remind you how it started off as:

mike and i were talking a couple of weeks ago about the coming snowboarding season and i was telling him how i need to get taka outfitted with some gear. he remembered that his fat ex-roomate had a snowboard that she never used, so he slept with her (or maybe he just had dinner with her, i keep forgetting) to ask if he could have it. since she was too fat to use it, she gave it to him and then he gave it to taka.

the board was a bit beat up, but the bindings were great and the board, other than superficially being ugly was in sound shape. today i decided to get to work on it. my ultimate plan is for a light pink color with embedded white flowers in the front. but first i needed to get rid of that awful red color and get down to the fiberglass before i start.

here’s the board as it started off:

i used aircraft stripper to melt off the old paint (turns out it was a repaint, which i had suspected since it looked so ugly). it’s crazy how this stuff works, you spray it on and the paint just melts off. it also has a huge warning that states: “this product contains methylene chloride which causes cancer” :) after working with it for a bit, i got down to the original graphics… ugly:

once i cleaned up all the goop, i started sanding with a 120# then up to a 220# and then a 400# before i shot my first 2 coats of sandable primer:

to be continued…

last weekend we went up to big bear to snowboard and hang out. we had a pretty large crew, and 7 of us spent the night at a pretty mediocre “hotel”, but at only $28 each, there isn’t much room to complain. we had dinner and breakfast at the village, and while the pizza at paoli’s was better than the spaghetti i had last week, the breakfast we had was pretty fucking disgusting. but with such good friends, it’d've been impossible not to have had a great time.

but only because they made me… jeep’s having a promotion where if you test drive a jeep they’ll give you a free pass to snow summit. all of my friends said they just gave them the cd pass thing, but the dumb bitch said ‘well, i’m not gonna let you get off that easy’ (she must’ve been flirting with me). anyway, the car sucked and was bouncy as shit, especially through the broke ass streets of carson. the girl showing me the car had great tits though. it very much reminded me of this commercial:

when i bought my first pair of snowboarding boots 2 years ago, i bought a pair that were not too tight fitting, because i imagined it would be more comfortable. well i’ve found that to have the correct control, the boot has to be tight and if it’s not, then to compensate i have to ratchet my bindings down really hard and that just deforms the boot, and hurts my foot.

so taka bought me some burton boots that fit nicely, and are super comfy as a belated birthday gift. i can’t wait for next weekend.

me, mike and costin went up to snow summit on sunday. the storm the night before dropped a couple inches of snow, so it was nice and fluffy. it was colder than i expected but we all had a good time. i’m getting fast :)

the rest of the pics