Category: General

Augh!

I need to blog more, so you all (who am I kidding, both of you) can suffer through reading about the meaningless existance I lead. I think my blogging problem stems from the fact that when I do write up an entry, it covers a week (or a month) worth of the few interesting things that happen. Maybe shorter entries to say something like “Hey, I just saw Napoleon Dynamite (trailer) for the first time at David’s. It was pretty stupid, but alas it was funny.” I’ll try, but we’ll see.

Yesterday in my conditioning class, we went outside to play flag-capture-the-flag (this is where everyone wears flags around their waist, while playing capture the flag, flag-football style). I’ve never played flag-football, nor have I ever played capture the flag without using a computer and/or guns of some sort. On one end of the field there was a parking lot, and lets say that skin doesn’t like blacktop. On the plus side, I *did* get the guy’s flag I was going for. Here’s what my knee looks like:

And the status of the UO waterski club/team is yet still unknown. I decided with my wrist still hurting (backstory: 1, 2), my legs still burning from 3 hours of running around outside yesterday, and my nice empty bank account, that I shouldn’t go spending over $100 to make one waterskiing run (6+ hour drive each way, +$35 entry fees). You know what sucks when it’s over a week until payday? This does:

Not to mention a credit card bill to pay off, and tuition moneys due soon.

Anyhow, it sounded like more people would be interested in the competition end of things for the Fall season (collegiate competition is split into spring and fall seasons). So I/we can work on getting some water time in in the mean time, and getting sponsorship from the club sports office, and the team can start competing in the fall.

And so it ends?

Could it be? Did I pull my skis out of my truck for the last time this season? Dude, it’s the middle of April, and it hardly snowed this year. The winter that barely started is coming to a definite close. Some areas have been closed a month already, the last few will be closing after next weekend.

My brother and I sent the season out packing with a bang though. I picked him up at the Seattle airport Thursday morning, and we drove up into British Columbia. It seems the closest place to the border (Apex) closed already, and none of the others do night skiing anymore. We made it to SilverStar by about 4:30pm, then turned back to town where we stayed at a Super-8. I bought a medium pizza at Little Caesars for $5 Canadian (came to about USD$4.38), and my brother got a 6pk of some frenchie beer for dinner. Flipping through the channels, I made sure to stop on MuchMusic for a few minutes (even though it was some random rap video), to spite Justin.

Awake at 7:30am I jump in the shower, grab by continental breakfast (read: toast… no fruit, no cereal, no waffles, just toast and juice or coffee), and we’re on our way back to SilverStar. Snow conditions were very icy, but I enjoyed myself, as I’m from Minnesota, and grew up skiing on icy snow. Things loosened up a bit, after finding a patch of powder for a run or 2, we decide to head to Big White at about 11:30. We had “free” tickets to both these places (plus Apex and SunPeaks), but SilverStar and Big White are under the same management or something, so we only needed the one ticket for the day. We were driving in the clouds and snow for about half the drive up there, and the snow was excellent. We skied until close.

Then we figured we could either ski for maybe 2 hours at SunPeaks on Saturday (and risk my brother missing his flight if traffic was bad or something), or ski all day somewhere in Washington. We decided to take the full day of skiing. Neither of us really making a decision, we ended up at The Summit at Snoqualmie, and skied Alpental all morning (they have like 4 sections of ski area, Alpental is across the highway, has more advanced terrain, and had more snow, yay). Then around 2ish we drove around to Summit West and dodged the people and rocks for a couple runs.

We went to a bar in Seattle and each got a brew and some munchies before I dropped my brother off at the airport. Then I had to make the decision if I wanted to ski solo today. I did drive to Crystal Mountain, and slept for several hours in the parking lot, and decided about 4am that I would rather ski that place during a good snow year with better condititions.

So here I sit. At home. With people bugging me to blog more often.

My final count on the year: 20 days skiing, 11 ski resorts (Hoodoo, Willamette, AnthonyLakes, Bogus, Bachelor, Targhee (Cat ski), Tamarack, Meadows, SilverStar, BigWhite, Snoqualmie) in 4 states and 1 province (OR, ID, WA, WY, BC). Not bad for a shitty snow year. I’m trying to find my count from last year to compare, but this blog doesn’t go back that far. Stay tuned. [edit (9:23pm): Last year I only got 16 days of skiing at 6 ski areas in 4 states. I quote from my final skiing entry of last season, on April 1 2004: “Not too shabby considering my season pass was in a diffeent state, and I’m a college student without a lot of money.”] Also, it looks like I may be participating in the alpine leg of a Pole-Pedal-Paddle competition next month, I sure am looking forward to it if I am indeed competing.

Aside from all that skiing stuff, I’m pulling together a waterski club sport team this year at UO. Woohoo!!

Some links:
No more cookies for Cookie Monster
Master of Penguins?
Ye search mecha?
Cheap ink.

Spring break gone mild!

Some people go to Mexico for spring break, I got teeth pulled and did manual labor. I did get one day of skiing in though, at Tamarack Resort in Idaho.

Friday of finals week I was having a hard time figuring out what to do for spring break, as Bogus Basin decided to close for the season. I realized I really couldn’t think of anything else to do, and I had the appointment for my teeth already anyways, so I went anyways. I spent my days prepping walls for stone and paint, painting walls, tearing out carpet, making trips to Home Depot, among other things. Last Tuesday I got both my wisdom teeth pulled, one was impacted the other wasn’t. They knocked me out cold with IV and gas. Spent most of the rest of Tuesday and most of Wednesday recouperating, and took off Thursday to go skiing at Tamarack. Then Saturday night I offered to cook dinner in exchange for the free food and bed for the past week.

Sunday was Easter brunch with extended family (people like to send leftovers with the starving college student, so now I don’t have to grocery shop for a while, w00t!), a short nap, and the long drive back home.