Summary

OK.  So I didn't make it out today.  I was a bit hung over from going out to the pub the night before.  Woke up about 12, and all I really did was watch TV and go to the shops.  Also, wanted to rest up before going out for New Years.

The Evening

Me and Tim were wondering what to do for new years.  After doing some research and checking out the prices, we ended up settling for Moe Joes.  It was $50 Canadian for the tickets.  Tim phoned them up and got us two tickets.  After having a couple drinks in the house, we left at about 9.  It had been snowing all day, so waiting for the bus was a bit wet.  We arrived in good time, and waited in the queue to get in.  Only about 10 minutes.

Once we were in, I do have to say that I was really impressed with the number and quality of the women in there.  It was just like an eye candy festival!  Started drinking as much as possible, we even had some sambuca shots.  It was a good atmosphere in there, and was really cool when New Years arrived.  They were giving out free Champagne!  So, obviously we made sure that we had about 2/3 glasses each!  The evening went well.  No snog though :-(  Oh well, no worries.  By about 2am we were getting a little drunk, however Tim was a bit worse for wear, and the bouncers insisted that he leave, so we did.

Got the bus, to try and get back home.  Unfortunately, I managed to get me and Tim onto the wrong buss, and we had to ride it all the way around the loop and back to where we started, in order to get the right bus.  Eventually though, we did get home.

Summary

Visibility: Varied.  Cloudy in the morning, then patchy, then some sun, then some cloud, then some more sun, etc.
Snow: Fresh powder.  It snowed about 12cm/5in over night and in the morning.
Piste Condition: Generally good, but bumpy. Bare in some patches, lower slopes are very slushy.  Basically early season conditions.
Wind: Light
Temperature: -0 at the base to -6 at the top.
Crowding: Very busy
Lift Lines: Very busy

The day's Riding

I got the bus over to the Gondola, and one of the other house guests got on the bus too.  So, we started off the morning riding together.  As she has been here for a while, she knew some very interesting off-piste trails that we took.  For what ever reason, so far, I keep ending up on double black diamond runs?  How well, I am competent enough to be able to 'ride' these, and not just 'get down'.  There is a hell of a difference.  I really hate it when all these people (snowboarders and skiers) just 'scrape' their way down the slope, taking all of the snow down to the bottom.  We ended up riding the left side of the Whistler mountain all morning.  However, we ended up, just before lunch at the 'Harmony Express' lift.  What a bloody long line to get onto the lift.  Took us about ½ hour to get onto the lift.  So we vowed not to do that again.  Eventually lunch time cam around, and at this point we decided to part company, as she had a packed lunch, and I needed to buy mine.

After a simple cheese burger for lunch at 'The Chick Pea', I headed down some easy runs.  It is one of my goals this season to make sure that I get my switch riding down-patt.  So, I spent the entire afternoon riding as much switch as I possibly could.  I tried doing all of the excesses that I was taught when I started to learn snowboarding.  The biggest problem I have with this at the moment is that for some reason I'm just not flexing enough when riding switch.  Need to work on that.  So, I have decided that every single day, I will spend at least ½ of the day riding switch.  That should get it sorted.

On my switch riding, I ended up at the top of the 'Habitat Terrain Park', so I thought that I would go have a look.  Was I disappointed.  There were mostly rails, and only about 2 official kickers, both of which were small.  I can tell that there is a lot of possibilities as there are a lot of natural areas to build kickers, and they had about 20-30 rails stacked up ready to put out at some point.  Hopefully, when there is a lot more snow, they will build up this park.

After that disappointment I went back to the switch riding, and carried on with it.  I did a few more runs, before deciding to call an end to the day.  I headed down and ended up doing the 'Lower Dave Murry Downhill'.  No change from yesterday, as it was very slushy.

The Evening

After getting down the slopes and getting all the gear off, I decided to use the Hot Tub.  Man, that hot tub is excellent.  Yes it is outdoors, but when you are in it, and the water is 100 degrees, it's really relaxing.  I think that this is therefore going to be my daily routine.  Get off the slopes and then use the hot tub.  Hmmmm.  Think that I am going to take the rest of the evening easy.

After such a long trip to get to Whistler, I wasn't in any hurry to get up on the first day.  Besides, I had to go and get my season pass.  So, I got on all of my snowboarding gear and walked on down (10-15 minutes) to the 'guest services' building to buy my pass.  Enquired about getting the pass.  However, it turned out that I needed to have photo ID on me in order to get the pass.  Well, the only photo ID I have is my passport, and I didn't think to take that with me on the slopes.  So, unless I wanted to walk all the way back home, then back to the pass office, I had no other choice but to buy a 1 day pass which I did.  $79 bucks...For a 1 day pass!  What a rip off.

Anyway, did the day's riding (more in another blob posting) and went home.  Picked up the passport and headed back down to the pass office.  Everything is going OK, until they try to process the payment.  Refused...  Tried again, and the message says that my Bank has refused the transaction?  Now I know I have the money in there!  The pass office suggested that I call the credit card company to find out what was wrong.  Unfortunately, I left the phone back at the house.

So walked all the way back home, picked up my phone and called the credit card company.  All the problem was, was that they wanted to make sure that it was me using the card and not some pikey!  So, got that cleared up, and walked back again to the pass office, where I got my season pass sorted.

So, hopefully that is my bad luck streak out of the way.

OK, so the first day got off to a slow start.  What with all the travelling and the pub the day/night before, so I didn't start up the slopes until 10am.

Summary

Visibility: Very poor - Low cloud.  There was a cloud line about 1/3 the way up the mountain, and also a cloud line covering the top 1/3.
Snow: Tracked powder.  I do have to say that the snow here is very light.
Piste Condition: Generally good, but bumpy. Bare in some patches, lower slopes are very slushy.  Basically early season conditions.
Wind: Variable.  From none to light.
Temperature: -2 at the base to -8 at the top.
Crowding: Very busy
Lift Lines: Very busy

The day's Riding

The first thing you get to witness is the lines for the lift.  There was quite a long line, and even the 'singles' line was busy.  Took about 10 minutes to get onto the 'Creekside Gondola'.  I decided to head up to the top straight away, so got off that lift and took the 'Big Red Express'.  Up here there was little or now visibility, so I headed over to 'The Peak' lift to the top of Whistler Mountain.  Unfortunately, there still was no visibility.  So, what I did was follow this Ski School around the mountain top, and ended up at the top of a double black diamond run (West Cirque).  Not exactly what I wanted to do for my first run of the season!  After getting down that, which I must admit was very steep, but actually good fun, I headed back to the Peak chair and went up again, and instead took the left side.  No surprise how again there was no visibility that I ended up on another double black diamond, 'The Couloire'.  Again this was very steep, but this wasn't so enjoyable.  Getting down near the bottom again, I couldn't see how to get on over to another lift as the T-bars, 'T-Bars', were closed.  So I headed back up again up the Peak lift.  This time determined not to go down another double black diamond.  So, I managed to get around the top and join the blue run 'The Saddle'.  Surprisingly going around the top of the peak was very flat!  Keeping my speed up, I got around and down the run.  Before getting to the bottom I could see some people going past the Peak lift, so I followed them and I managed to get onto the 'Old Man' run, and down onto the 'Franz's Chair'.

By now, I thought that the 'snow legs' would have started to come back, but they were a bit slow in coming.  I think it was because there was really poor visibility, and because there was quite a lot of snow it was really quite bumpy.

I decided to stay on  the Creekside side of the mountain.  I have to say that that I really got the impression that there was a lot of mountain to ride.  However, the resort really needs a lot more snow as there was a lot of rocks and bare patches showing through.  I did a lot of the runs down and around the 'Orange Chair', 'Big Red Express' and the 'Franz's Chair'.  Then had lunch at the Mid-station restaurant called 'Raven's Nest'.  Just had a chicken burger, which was nothing special but OK.  I also started to feel really thirsty, so I drank two bottles of Powerade.  I do like Powerade and Gatorade drinks.  Really drank a lot of them when I lived in LA.

After lunch I headed back up the 'Big Red Express', and did a few more runs in the same area, but always going a different way down.  By now, I was really starting to get tired, so rather than push it or risk injury I thought that I would head down.  It was about 2pm by now, and the lifts close at 3pm anyway.

From what I could see on the piste map, there were really on two ways down to Creekside from where I was, unless I took the gondola.  But who wants to take the gondola down off a mountain, when you are there to snowboard?  So, I decided to push it and go for the black run, 'Lower Dave Murray Downhill'.  It started out quite nice, and quite quiet too.  This became all to apparent why, shortly after starting however.  The conditions of the snow lower down was really slushy, bare and had been topped up with the snow cannons.  Because of this the going was really heavy, and as I was getting tired this wasn't so good.  I could feel my thighs burning and my knees.  Got down to the bottom, where I started the day, and that was the end of the riding for the day.

The Evening

After getting my seasons pass sorted (see previous posts), and some shopping I headed back to the house and decided to have a quiet night in.  So, simply watched some 'Simpsons' and some 'Malcolm in the Middle'.  Then the film 'Shallow Hall' came on.  But typical North American TV, it was edited down to remove bad language, some of the film was even cut out, all to make sure that it was to fit into the time scheduled and to allow them to show adverts every 10 minutes.  Had an early night, and posted some of my blogs.  I want to try my best to try and keep the blog as up to date as possible.

So, look out for some more from me

The long travel to Whistler started at 04:00 GMT, when I got up.  Thankfully the water pressure had returned and I could have a shower.  I had arranged the day before for a black cab to come and pick me up and 05:15 to take me to Birmingham Snow Hill train station.  I had everything down stairs and ready to go.  The taxi arrived on time and I actually managed to get to the station, and get my ticket, and actually make an earlier train than I was planning to get.  A full 45 minutes early.  Result.

So, I arrived at Marlebone station in London, hopped on the tube and went to Paddington station to catch the Heathrow express.  Timing seemed to be going well today, as the express was already there and waiting, and departed just after I had got on.

Made my way to Terminal three, and expected to join a long, long check in line.  What a difference going with a decent airline makes.  There were no lines at the check-in desks for Air Canada.  So I was all checked in in less than 5 minutes.  Brilliant.

Went on straight through security, and made my way to TGI Fridays to have breakfast, which was really good.  Had the full breakfast, coffee and orange juice.  Decided to buy some duty free booze.  In all of my travelling, I think that this was the first time I have bought duty free booze!  So, bought a 1l bottle of vodka.

A couple of hours later my flight was called and I boarded the air craft.  The movies they had on were terrible.  First was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I saw months ago.  Then came Pleasantville, which I saw years ago.  The third film, was one I hadn't seen, mostly because it is actually rubbish, the Fantastic 4.  Thankfully, for entertainment I had my PSP with me, and I played Everybody's Golf for practically the entire flight.

Vancouver airport is really nice.  Getting through customs was quick and easy, and locating the Perimiter bus desk was extremely straight forward.  To get from Vancouver to Whistler I used the Perimiter bus service. http://www.perimeterbus.com/  Once we got out of the City, I fell asleep for an hour.  The first time since getting up.  Then suddenly the announcement came over the tannoy, that we were in Whistler.  Cool.  Only trouble is, was that it was dark and couldn't see anything.  I got dropped off at the 'Gateway Loop', where I got a taxi to take me to the place that I'll be calling home for the next few months.

Finally arrived at my destination, a full 24 hours after getting up in the morning.  Threw my stuff in my room, and went to the Pub, where I got some food and stayed until 3am Pacific Time.  Which was by this time 31 hours after getting up in the morning.  Boy was I tired.

So, all in all, it wasn't too bad of a trip.  Just very long!

The 27th of December was the day that I flew back from Scotland after spending Christmas there with the family.  It was actually a very good Christmas.  Anyway, I got everything packed, arrived in good time at the airport.  I somehow managed to get onto the aircraft first,and therefore got nicely settled, before take off.  The flight was quick and un-eventful.  I even managed to get off the flight first, and my baggage was one of the first bags to come out as well.  Even the train and bus ride home went well.  So, all good.

They say that bad luck comes in three's well, this is where it started.

I got to the front door and went to my bag to look for the keys.  Not where I put them.  So I pull everything apart to look for them.  Still not there.  Then the horror of realising that I had left them in Scotland dawned on me!  Quick call to my Mum confirmed that I had left the keys!  So, what was I going to do?  Tried the buzzer, no answer.  I tried calling the flat mates, none of them were in and were all away for Christmas.  So, a major panic ensued.  I was due to fly out to Canada tomorrow, but couldn't get in to pick up my gear or tickets.  More frantic telephone calls ensued.  About an hour later (standing outside, in the cold and snow), I managed to get in contact with the Landlord, who just happened to be in Birmingham and he would let me in.  Hurrah!  Canada is still on.  So about an hour later he arrives and I get in.  Thank goodness.

So, I was getting everything ready, and what with all of the travelling from Scotland and the waiting outside for a couple hours, I thought that I'd have a shower.  Bad luck strikes again.  Occasionally, there is not enough water pressure and the shower doesn't work.  Well, this was one of those occasions!

So, two bit's of bad luck already, where is number 3?  Come in number three, your time is up!

Well, there is only two days left before I head off to Whistler.  Can't wait.  New underwear please!

Just been looking at the snow reports.  A really healthy 17 inches of snow in the last 7 days!  Fantastic!  Have a look for your self here: http://www.tourismwhistler.com/www/weather/snow_report.asp

Santa has been good to me, just in time to make the most of the Canadian winter.  Got loads of thermal socks, gloves and scarves from Santa/The family.  All really good!  So, there will be some more re-packing tomorrow, in preperation of the flight on Wednesday!

So today, I have had my first chance to wear my new Burton 2/1 System jacket.  Blinking nora, does it keep me warm!  I do have to say, that this is the warmest I have felt for quite some time.  I'm finding the jacket to be a good fit too, even though it is a little 'puffy', but that's because I do need the room for when I am in Canada in sub-zero temperatures, and therefore need to have extra layers on under neath.  But I do have to say, that I really like this jacket!  I find it to be really quite lite.  The earphones holder's are really good too.  I no longer have to keep fumbling around trying to get some extra cable, or for it to be looping out all over the place.

I must be going blind or something!  Anyway, enought about my habbits...

The company that I am going snowboarding with in Whister is a company called http://www.24-7snow.com  The resident 'manager' of the house is a guy called Will.  He has just created his own Blog, about what he is getting up-to in Whistler.  It already sound's like he and Tim (one of the residents already out there) are having a great time in the pipe!  Just hope that it's still as good when I get there!

You can find Will's Blog here: http://www.iframe.co.uk/whereswilly/default.asp?m=w

I have had this Burton Bio-lite snowboarding jacket for a very, very long time now.  It's done me proud, but it is very worn and doesn't repell watter any more.  I can't get an exact replacement, so the hunt for a new jacket started some months ago.

The first real look into getting a new jacket actually started last winter in Morzine. I was in this rather wicked shop, and almost bought a jacket there.  I did however decide against it, as it was probably not going to get much action in the remainder of the season.  So  let it slide.

Then my usual Summer at Les Deux Alpes came along, and there as it's in August, everything get's wet anyway, I decided still to not do anything about a new jacket.

By now we were getting towards this winter, and various decisions, specifically related to work, had me thinking about quitting work and doing a season.  Whilst the final decision had not been made at that point, the Ski & Snowboard show in London was on, and me and MDO went along to it with another good friend Ian.  Here we met some other snow-buddies that we met in Les Deux Alpes that summer.  I spent ages looking at jackets, checking their specification, how they were made, what faclities they had (or in the main did not have), and just what they were like.  Again, still no real decision.  I had narrowed the choice down to a couple but was still not 100% sold.

S, along came my decision to quit work, and with it my decision to commit to doing a season, but where!  Well, it ended up that I was going (as you can see from previous blog's) to Whistler in Canada.  Well, this kind of sealed it for a new Jacket. There is no way that the old bio-lite could handle a Canadian winter.  So a new jacket had to be found!

Whilst drifting through the pittiful snowboarding shops in central Birmingham (really is appaling, given that it is the second largest city in the UK), I went to Snow + Rock and a couple others.  Still no joy.  Then loe and behold, a couple weeks later I went again, and they had these new Burton 2/1 jackets in stock!  Where did these apear from?  I asked some of the guy's who work there, and he said that Burton had only just shipped them the week before, and they weren't at the Ski & Snowboard show!

Without really realising it (honest) in the week or so before leaving work, I was surfing the Internet to try and get the best price for the Burton 2/1 System jacket (the straight 2/1 isn't as good).  So no surprise then when from work as a leaving present they gave me a voucher for Snow + Rock.  Result (Thanks guys, it is good for me!)!!!

So, today, I went and made the final size check.  Checked all the stitching and seals, and then handed over the voucher and some additional *bling* to pay for it (not cheap these jackets you know!).

So, I am not the proud owner of a Burton 2/1 System Jacket!  Can't wait to try it out!

To view the Burton 2/1 System Jacket, click here!

It has only just occured to my but the British Library provides FREE Internet access. Using it now! For what ever reason, it does however appear that their access and computers are a bit patchy! Some are SunRay computers with Netscape, some are regular PC's with FireForx, and some are completley unknown. Aw, who cares as long as I have access So, I can now pick up my email every couple of days or so. Excelent!

I got from work as a leaving present some very good and timley Vouchers for Snow + Rock.

I say timley, because I have for a while been meaning to replace my Burton Bio-light, which has done me proud and lasted a very, very long time.

So, I've been looking at getting another Jacket. At the recent Ski & Snowboard exhibition in London that I went to, I tried out loads of jackets. Some good, some not so good at all! However, nothing really grabbed me. That was until about a month later I went into my local Snow + Rock and saw the 'Burton 2/1 System.'

I do have to say, that I think it has everything that I need! Plus, with having a very good timed leaving present, in the form of a voucher for Snow + Rock, it could be a better sign!

Done seem to be hearing much from 24-7snow.com latley, must be because they are enjoying them selves so much, especially given that there has been another 11 inches + in the last 7 days!...Can't wait until I get out there!

As I've quit my job, today is my last day!  The big problem with that, is that I will no longer have direct Internet access until I get over to Whistler!  *arg*

So, what am I to do?  Well, I have a couple options.

1. Try and snoop an un-secure Wireless network, around where I live (havent found any!)
2. Go round to my mates house Chad & Peter and use their Internet access every so often (will have to see what they say!)
3. Go to an Internet Cafe!

I think that option 2 looks the best!  Real trouble is that when I go to Scotland, the week before heading out to Whistler, I really will not have any internet access! :-(

In Internet Explorer, there is a restriction that limits the number of simultaneous downloads to two downloads, plus on queued download.  This is a real pain!  The following allows you to change this setting to me as many as you like.  I recommend 7, through personal experience.

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe). 
2. Locate the following key in the registry:
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings  
3. On the Edit menu, point to New click DWORD Value, and then add the following registry values:
• Value name: MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
• Value data: 7
• Base: Decimal
•  
• Value Name: MaxConnectionsPerServer
• Value data: 7
• Base: Decimal
4. Quit Registry Editor.