Jan 30, 2004

Some of these things don't go together...
If you're an Italian company making battery chargers, you better be careful about your domain name.

Jan 27, 2004

Cloudy
Darn I miss snow.

Jan 12, 2004

January 8, 2004: Whistler Day 6
Although we had decided to start out early and hit the slopes when the lifts opened at 08:00, we didn't actually wake up until 08:30, and then only with much anguish and groaning, dragging our sore limbs and stiff joints from our beds or sleeping bags, whichever applied. As had become custom, the mornings involved some showering and suiting up, mostly in silence, as soldiers to war. Our foe was no mere mortal, it was a mountain. And the silence was not from fear or dread, nor reverence of the mountain. It stemmed from an innate wisdom of the human spirit: that rising before 10:00 on a vacation was no mere task.

I suited up with pretty much the same gear I had for the past few days, a pair of old liner socks, the pair of new wool socks, an old tattered pair of jeans, old Gore-tex pants, a polyester North Face long sleeve T, a thin North Face fleece, gloves, fleece toque, coat, and goggles. In my backpack I packed an extra thick fleece (I actually never really needed to use it, it was really just there as extra padding), sunscreen, my camera, extra batteries, extra compactflash card, old Motorola Talkabouts, and some snacks.

A slight aside regarding the Talkabouts. I got them from my aunt a good 6 or 7 years ago I think, and she got them from Hong Kong or Japan. This was a couple of years before they were available in North America. Now I had assumed that they were the same as the FRS radios that Motorola sold under the Talkabout name in North America, which are compatible with a number of other FRS radios by companies like Garmin, Midland or Cobra. Apparently, this isn't true. Lancer had recently purchased a pair of Midland FRS radios, which worked fine with a North American Motrola Talkabout we had. However, it didn't work with my older radios.

It turned out however, that there's a lot of FRS users on the slopes, making it hard to find empty channels using Lancer's radios. On most channels you'd hear other users, which often got annoying pretty quick. After we switched to using the Asian radios, we didn't have any more interference from other users.

Unlike the previous day, this morning we had five heading out. Sinyee and Averal were joining us after their extended break. We stopped by for our customary McDonald's breakfast and headed for the lifts. Sinyee and Averal had to pick up rental equipment, and Asmodean was planning to join them on the easy runs. Arislan and I headed up the gondola first for a quick run, hoping to meet the others when we got down, since they were planning to do some easy runs for most of the day. We changed our plans when we saw that the Peak Express chair was open, since we had never been up that chair, and didn't want to miss our chance for what powder might be left at 10:00.

There was plenty of fresh snow on the ground at the peak, and even more blowing around. The winds were insane, and pretty much prevented us from going down the really shallow slopes as it blew upwards. We ended up just jumping off the edge since it took so long trying to get down the relatively flat paths. The two of us did a few runs, which were pretty awesome since the clouds and wind cleared up on the back side of the mountain, and the snow was still fresh since it seemed like most people didn't want to deal with the winds at the peak. It only took about an hour but pretty much tired me out, since we were going through the trees. It didn't help that I had went to the edge of a cliff I couldn't see the bottom of, so I had to dig myself out (since I had sunk in when I stopped) and climb back out in the thigh deep snow. As we rode back down to the base and waited, the other guys never showed up. We had expected them to ride down to the bottom, but they must have changed their plans as well. The sad thing was that the Talkabouts didn't help, since they both remained in my backpack.

We did a few more runs on the easier areas looking for Sinyee, Averal, and Asmodean, but never found them. We went back up to the peak in the late afternoon, but the snow had been chopped up while we were gone. As usual, we rode until 15:00, when the lifts closed, and called it a day. I was utterly exhausted and walk back to the condo didn't help much. The outdoor hottub however, was great. For the first time since we arrived it was empty when we got back, so Sinyee, Arislan and I took it over for a short while. We soaked for about 20 minutes, until it got too hot. The guys watched some inane episode of Star Trek: Voyager (yes, pretty much every episode of this series is inane), while Sinyee made dinner (shake n'bake chicken with mushrooms, peas, garlic bread and Chunky soup). Afterwards we spent another exciting evening playing poker, this time with 8 hands. Eventually, as each of us lost all our chips, we packed it in for the night. Being totally exhausted, I wasn't even awake long enough to figure out who won.

Jan 11, 2004

January 7, 2004: Whistler Day 5
The snow that started yesterday morning had continued throughout the day and evening. Driving back to Whistler last night made the 4x4 totally worthwhile. As we woke, the snow continued. The (exceptionally) cold crisp sunny days had disappeared, this morning was cloudy and grey. Actually, more like cloudy and white. The past two days I had been using the Fire Iridium lens on my goggles. It had been mostly a vanity purchase, but it is a darker lens than the High Intensity Persimmon lens that I had before. The Fire lens was nicer to use on the sunny days, but it was really only useful for a couple of hours, since the sun sinks behind the mountain pretty early in the afternoon.

Although the first two days were much colder, today's weather felt more extreme. Arislan, Asmodean and I went up Blackcomb instead of Whistler today, since the lift pass allows access to both mountains, and we had explored most of Whistler in the previous two days. Everyone else took a break today. By the time we got to the top of Blackcomb, we were in the middle of a snowstorm with extremely high winds. Snow occaisionally swept horizontally through the air, though more often it actually went upwards from the wind. Riding up the lifts, I felt bunkered with my face covered with a fleece gaiter and my goggles. The snow rattled against my hood as I thought how surprisingly windproof my jacket was. There's a warm feeling I get sometimes, looking out the window while sitting indoors or in a car while a brutal snowstorm rages outside. I get the same kinda feeling sometimes when snowboarding, when you realize the amount of shelter you get from your coat and goggles and maybe hiding behind a snowdrift.

The best thing about deep snow is that it gives you guts to push yourself without the fear of pain. You can bomb a mogul run taking the jumps and living through the falls as you roll down the slope. Or as we did, we adventurously followed a bunch of guys who hiked up the hill after getting off the T-bar. What were they doing? We weren't sure, but probably going to jump off a mountain, and whatever it was, it was probably fun. We ended up riding down the back of the mountain on Blackcomb Glacier in near whiteout conditions, where you can't tell the sky from the ground since everything is the same shade of white, and you catch edges and flip out because you're going sideways down the mountain when you think you're actually going downhill. It was the weirdest feeling to think that I was going at speed X, watching Asmodean snowboard towards me, then later realizing he was actually just sitting in the snow, and I was really going at speed 2X towards him. It was a 10.6 km run to the chairlift, and even though it involved a good long hike at the bottom as the trail flattened out, it passed pretty quickly.

The worst thing about the deep snow is that it really tires you out. By the end of the day I was struggling to make it to the bottom, although it had been a wonderful day for riding. The powder in the morning was pretty chopped up by the late afternoon. Arislan and I had try taking the Horstman T-bar over to a section of Blackcomb which we had not ridden before. Asmodean decided not to come, since riding the T-bar on a snowboard is a pain. The T-bar looks like an inverted T. Normally two skiers would sit on the bar as it dragged them up the mountain, with their skiis on the snow. It's somewhat more difficult with the snowboard, since you ride with one foot in front of the other. It's rather difficult to get the T behind your butt while maintaining balance, so they tend to stick it behind your front leg and have it drag you. It's rather uncomfortable to say the least. Bad things can happen, as Arislan demonstrated when he lost his balance in the striong wind, but held on in persistence as he was dragged up the hill on his belly instead of on his board.

By the time the two of us made it back to the condo, Asmodean had already showered, while Lancer, Averal and Sinyee were headed out to a sleigh ride. I was far too tired to deal with sitting out in the cold anymore, so I tested out the jacuzzi in the master bedroom's washroom. I can say a hot bath is something I haven't had in a long time, and bubbly water is neat too (for about 5 minutes, then I started worrying about wrinkles - I know, I'm young, but heck I was getting wrinkles in the tub when I was 3, so it's not like I'm paranoid). The weren't quite in the same places as my sore muscles, but it did feel kinda good, even though as an adult I do feel odd sitting in a small tub of water.

Okay, enough of that. I got out enough of the bath, and the other guys had enough of their sleigh ride. They gave us a call and we met up at a restaurant called the Crabshack, which was advertised on TV. Now I realize I can be snobbish about food sometimes, and one of those snobbish things I tend to do is look down on a) restaurant chains and b) restaurants advertised on TV. In this case, I should have been more snobbish, because I felt totally ripped off by snobbish level prices with quite non-snobbish food. The oysters weren't cheap, but okay at $2.50 a pop, since they had a decent variety of good oysters. At $30 for a salmon filet though (admittedly wild sockeye rather than the recently publicly maligned farmed variety), I expected enough to make me full. And the Chocolate Decadent dessert was ok, but nothing close to decadent.

After dinner, Lancer, Arislan, Averal and Sinyee went to a creperie near the condo for dessert, while I found an internet cafe where I uploaded the previous blogs. It was another movie night as we watched Equilibrium before passing out.

Jan 7, 2004

January 6, 2004: Whistler Day 4

We took a break from riding today, expecting this to be the last clear day before the snow blew in. The estimate was wrong, and upon waking at 10:00 we found that it was already snowing, but we decided to head to Vancouver anyways. Relgar and Marilyn had anniversary plans for today, so the other six of us made plans for cheap dim sum and cheap sushi.

The word plans should be used with grain of salt, since it amounted to cheap dim sum and cheap sushi. It took us almost two hours to make it to Richmond, where we suspected we could find dim sum, along the way we started out with a game of 20 questions, which soon lead to another game, and yet another.

We ended up driving up and down No. 3 Rd. until we saw Kingford Seafood Restaurant, which looked like it had potential for dim sum. We ended up having good dim sum, although we missed out on the cheap. It was one of those fancy restaurants with good chinese food, where you check off your dim sum choices instead of carting food around. Although there wasn't too much in terms of selection, everything we ordered was very well done. Averal picked up the tab to a very satisfying lunch, although I was on the edge of narcolepsy while driving around aimlessly afterwards.

Since it was around 15:30 at the end of lunch, and the Vancouver Aquarium closed at 17:30, we decided against it (at $16, it wasn't quite worth it for the two hours). Instead we went to the local Buddhist temple that was featured as a tourist attraction (with free admission too!). After wandering around for a while we went to look for bubble tea for Sinyee. We went to the Yaohan Centre a bit further north on No. 3 Rd. We wandered around there for a while too, picking up bubble tea and some snacks from the japanese supermarket.

Arislan, a karoake junkie in disguise, proposed that we go find some chinese karaoke place. Not knowing where to go, we agreed to give him a shot if he found a place. He asked the bubble tea store server. She gave us enough information to find Karaoke Box, where we went and got kicked out since it was closing for a staff party at 18:00 (we got there about 20 minutes before that).

We found another karaoke place nearby, where certain events happened that cannot be discussed here. Videos do exist however.

After a karaoke session that was quite painful yet somehow fun without the aid of any alcohol, we moved on back to No. 3 Rd. (it seems like we spent the whole day in that one segment of Richmond) to Daimaru Japanese Restaurant. They had a $16 all you can eat sushi thing after 21:00. We were in somewhat of a "rush", since the snow had been coming down all day, and we wanted to leave for Whistler at a reasonable hour, fearing that perhaps if we left too late, the road might close.

We ended up with 6 sushi boat dinners and way too much food at quite a good price. After being completely stuffed, and having reasonably accomplished our original mission, we headed back up to Whistler. The two hour drive was filled with additional 20 questions. In the end we had things like Mickey Mouse, speech, a pomegranate, sunglasses, windshield wipers, Norwalk virus, and much more. We ended up at home just before 01:00, and crashed pretty soon after, looking forward to the full day of fresh snow on Blackcomb on Wednesday.

I'm about a day behind with this log stuff. Hopefully next day I'll have some pictures to upload too.

January 5, 2004: Whistler Day 3

Having basically gotten into the swing of things, day 3 started off much smoother. The wake-up sequence was similar, but some of the guys had picked up breakfast material from IGA the previous day, the rest of us grabbed McDonald's take out. I was pretty much set to hit the slopes - I already had my lift ticket via the Express Card, and my board was all set up. While the other guys went to get their stuff, I picked up a pair of thermal socks since I ended day 2 with numb toes. Everyone else was still pretty quick, since some guys already had their rental boards or lift tickets.

It was around 10:00 when we got up to the top. Lancer, Arislan, Asmodean, and myself were planning to take the Harmony Express lift that we missed out on the previous day. It was closed when we had arrived, forcing us to take a flat catwalk around the mountain. We planned to try it again this morning, but getting there required a short walk up the hill to the start of the GS run from the gondola station. Instead we opted to ride down green run to a nearby lift that would take us to GS run. The GS run would eventually take us to the Harmony Express.

Somehow, on that green run, the first run of the day, Lancer managed to fall badly. We thought he sprained his ankle and called the ski patrol, who arrived quite promptly, and quickly packaged him up in a sled and skied him down the mountain. When we found him at home at the end of the day, it turned out that he had actually fractured his ankle somehow.

We eventually made it to the Harmony express, and tried the backside of the mountain and across the Symphony Bowl, which actually turned out to be more work than expected, dealing with some flat areas of powder and long catwalks. Sometime around 13:30 we made it back up to the top lodge to find Sinyee and Averal for lunch. Unlike the Tahoe resorts, they served poutine up here, which seems to make a pretty good riding lunch. We didn't end up finding Relgar and Marilyn, although we were all supposed to meet up. Since lifts close at 15:00, we were rode a little more after lunch before calling it quits and riding to the bottom (which is a pretty decent ride in itself).

After some bumming back in the condo (and watching Kung Pao, which positively sucked, so I took a nice nap), Relgar and Marilyn cooked up frozen lasagna, corn, and scallopped spuds for dinner, washed down with hot chocolate (why hadn't anyone else thought of that)? The rest of the evening consisted mainly of poker and bumming around. Lancer was out pretty early after taking some Tylenol 3 for his leg.
January 4, 2004: Whistler Day 2

The second day started earlier than the first. At 06:30, the phone rang. It was the baggage guy. He had the goods. We had our appreciation, which you could simultaneously call a subdued sense of anger, or a sense of relief. Of course, being 06:30, we picked up our bags and went back go bed. It didn't quite sink in that the timing was more or less perfect until we got up at 08:30 and proceeded with the snowboarding plan.

The morning was rather busy. It consisted of a group breakfast at McDonald's, a shopping trip for food at IGA, finding the lost Express Card voucher which I had replaced, redeeming it (rather easily with less hassles than we expected for being California residents), and procuring rental gear for those who didn't own any snowboard gear. By the time we all took the gondola up together, it was close to 11:00.

We made it down about a quarter of a run together before splitting into skill level based groups. It was a bad day for beginners. Apparently there's been very little snow since Christmas. Although what's there has stayed around in the sub -20°C weather, it's been well packed by the Christmas crowd. Any fall made itself well known. For me, it was pretty good. The wide, steep, groomed greens were plenty of fun. I found I picked things up pretty quickly and did much better than I did at Squaw a month ago. I managed to stay with Asmodean and Lancer through the majority of the day. There were generally no crowds or lift lines, since most sane riders were detered by the insanely cold temperatures. It was cold enough for my finger to freeze painfully after less than a minute without my glove, cold enough for my pinky toes to go numb in my boots, and cold enough for the slight fog in my goggles (which normally goes away in a matter of seconds) to freeze and make me curse paying exhorbitant amounts for goggles that still suffered fogging (although they normally work well in more decent temperatures). It got to most of us by the end of the day and we were all relieved to be packing it in around 15:30 (lifts close at 15:00).

Since most of us missed lunch, we had a relatively early dinner. I'd like to say we cooked, but in reality we cheated. Budget dinner day started with a trip to IGA and consisted of two IGA rotisserie chickens ($6.99 each), two boxes of Uncle Ben's wild rice with flavourings, three cans of Chunky soup, a bag of frozen vegetables, and a loaf of toss-in-the-oven garlic bread. About half an hour later, a fairly sumptuous feast, from cans and boxes no less, was served for under $50 by myself and Sinyee.

Dinner was followed up by a Battlestar Galactica marathon, with the DivX video, residing on Arislan's notebook, was played using my notebook (which had TV out and was connected to the living room TV), over ad hoc 802.11b. Cool use of wireless I think, and props to Arislan for setting it up. A skipped out on a good chunk of it to search for a 7-11 (for long distance phone cards). In the process I managed to deposit cheques from November's Tafelmusik concert at the TD, and picked up a gingerbread latte from Starbucks. I was surprised to see that there were actually more shops than I first thought there were, but it was really too cold to check them all out.

We finished the evening with a Japanese DVD titled "Suicide Club". I'll spoil it for you here: the ending was meaningless. It's one of those films where you watch, and at the end you say "what the hell was that all about?". I don't care how artsy you are or you think you are, it still falls in that category of film. I tell you this now to save you a good 2 hours of your life.

Although of no particular importance, other than journalistic integrity, the evening ended with everyone sleeping, and me hiding out in the bathroom to chronicle the events. I think I'll take a shower now and go to sleep. Maybe I'll find some cybercafe tomorrow and post this.
January 3, 2004: Whistler Day 1

Arislan checked his PDA around 16:30, and alerted us that our Whistler trip was on the schedule. It was a little late, considering that the day started off at 08:30 when I loaded my board bag and suitcase in my trunk and got two friends to help pick up the other three travellers in San Jose and head out to SFO, to catch a 10:50 flight to YVR that was delayed until 11:00.

11:00 dragged onto 12:00 before we actually took off. We arrived almost an hour late, after 14:00, and while waiting through the snaking non-resident line, Arislan called Relgar, who had arrived at 09:00 and had been waiting in the airport for the past 5 hours. Lancer and Asmodean who were supposed to arrive earlier than us, were delayed in Ottawa for two hours. They had struggled to find replacements for missed connections, and it was still some time before they were to arrive.

Crossing customs took some time, but was a breeze. Picking up luggage wasn't too difficult either, considering we only needed to carry two pieces less than we started out with. It just took us some time to figure it out. Arislan and I were missing our board bags. We had sat in front of the oversized baggage claim for a good half hour, somehow hoping that the door would open and out would slide two more snowboards. As it opened, a baggage handler tossed out two carry-on sized bags, and nothing more. Apprently size doesn't really matter to be considered oversized.

We filed a lost baggage claim, rather frustrated and wondering whether we'd hit the slopes the next morning as planned, and whether it would be worth the cost of the extra rental. Somewhere deep inside, we wondered, like little Joey looking for his lost Whiskers, whether we would ever see our boards again. But since worrying doesn't work like the Pet Semetary, we put our fruitless search aside and pursued a realizable prey.

We found Relgar with, um, Marilyn, on the Departures level between the Domestic and International terminals. They were holed up by an A/C socket, contented with Heroes of Might and Magic III, as was pretty much expected for this couple. Luckily for us, they were extraodinarily patient, and somehow were still in a rather upbeat mood to meet us. After a brief period of chatting, Arislan called Asmodean and figured he had already arrived. We found him waiting for baggage in the Domestic baggage claim. He was also under uncertain circumstances, since he had quickly transfered onto a connecting flight (not his original connecting flight) after arriving in Toronto. We had no clue whether his baggage made it onto the plane.

The original plan called for purchasing vouchers for "Express Cards", which are basically discount cards for lift tickets, at Sport Chek, and making our way up to Whistler. Since we hadn't had lunch, the four of us from San Jose grabbed airport Harvey's (over $7 for a Big Harv combo, sheesh) before heading over to Alamo. We had reserved an SUV with a ski rack, and we expected a Chevy Blazer. Instead we got a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was a pleasant surprise, but it didn't have a ski rack, which made it dubious. Sure, we didn't really NEED it anymore since our boards were missing, but one would tend to err on the side of hopefullness. It's as if the ski rack would magically make our boards appear in Whistler.

They were out of ski racks, so they offered us the Big Mother SUV. It was a Ford Explorer XLT (or something like that). I have a suspicion it's the one that got the recall for rolling over, so I've been driving it rather slowly on the Sea to Sky Highway. Anyways, it's one of those big monster things with three rows of seats and allows you to look down on any other car you drive past. Yes, we got the king of the roadmobile, but I'm sure our gas bill will be all the prettier with it. I was rather glad we did have a 4x4, since it was surprising that there was snow on the ground all over Vancouver, which is generally unexpected.

It took us about half an hour to get to the Park Royal Mall in North Vancouver. It was pretty easy to find, and didn't take us long to secure our Express Cards, although we were somewhat worried by the fact that they were only valid for BC and Washington state residents. By this time we were alerted that Lancer had arrived, and Asmodean had actually got his baggage, and that they were headed out of the airport.

By the time we left the mall it was past 17:30. The next hour and a half passed relatively quickly, we were eager to see the crew back together, although it really was a pity that Billy/Corgan couldn't make it. As old folk tend to do, we reminisced on the old days in the Loo, although good wouldn't necessarily be a good adjective, as the 'incident' in the Albert St. bathroom reminded us. It was around 19:00 when we got to the Twin Peaks lodge in Whistler.

We were pleased to see that the location was pretty good. Although a little further from the main village square, it was still walkable. Even better was that amenities such as a grocery, Starbuck's, McDonald's and TD Canada Trust were in the plaza literally across the street. Check-in was straightford. Our unit met most expectations.

There's a small kitchen attached to a dining area for 6 and a small living room with a pullout sofa. The decoration is a bit dated but still comfortable. The gas fireplace in the living room caused much jumping for joy by Sinyee. The king sized bed in the master bedroom was subjected to much jumping for joy, or something of the like, by Arislan. There were two bathrooms, one off the living room, and another in the roomy master bedroom. There is one other decent sized bedroom with a queen sized bed.

Shortly after arriving, and deciding that Relgar and Marilyn would get the smaller bedroom, Asmodean and Lancer would get the living room, and the rest would split the master bedroom, the second car arrived. I went down and got them a parking pass and brought them in. Although I had seen Relgar earlier in the year, it's been a while since I've seen Lancer. He looks mostly the same, although the double chin seems bigger at times.

After a good deal of settling in and bumming around, we decided to head to Whistler Village, and more specifically the Old Spaghetti Factory, for dinner. By this time it was close to 21:00. The walk seemed long in the cold night air. It was not quite the cold-crisp-evening-air, more like the cold-your-nostrils-are-freezing-shut-with-each-breath-air. Eventually after some wandering, we did manage to find the restaurant. Dinner was generally around $9-$10 for pasta with some type of meat sauce, soup or salad, and tea and ice cream. Clam chowder or Caesar salad warranted an extra $1.50, and a Peller Estates Merlot for the table added around $17 to the tab. Arislan, the toaster of the evening and good times in general, treated the crew as a post Christmas present.

After struggling back to the condo and realizing on the way that the grocery was already closed, we found a hint of good news as calling the baggage claim service indicated that our bags were being delivered. Since the front desk was closed for the night, we left a note, scrounged together with a paper towel and a pen, pasted by the office door with hair gel, with our apartment phone number, hoping beyond all hope that somehow we might be able to see our long lost boards once again.

Jan 3, 2004

Bipolar disorder
Sometimes it seems like places can suffer from schizophrenia. Take churches for example. Some days they celebrate weddings, other days the mourn funerals. Or the San Francisco International Airport. Yesterday it represented suffering and loss, today it's the portal to new adventures. Go figure.