USAV Volleyball Tourney

Saturday:
Played a USAV volleyball tourney all day Saturday. I wish that the team would have told me it was in Tacoma... and at 8:30am... Then I may have not been so keen on going. Anyhow, it was fun, we played like crap, and lost big time, but some of the people we played against are going to the USAV nationals at the AA level, so I don't feel so bad.

Evan's birthday party was also Saturday. It's amazing the damage you can do when you've consumed 20+ drinks...

Sunday:
Had breakfast with the birthday crew and headed to green lake for some rollerblading and to toss the football around.
Reffed v-ball at the Eastside Catholic High School, and then played a couple of games to finish off that league at around 3rd place I believe. Then I went over to Marcel and Amanda's, met up with Cheryl, had dinner, shot the crap and went home.

Monday:
Left work early 1:30 or so, and hiked the Rattlesnake Lake Ledge trail since it was such a beautiful day (and Cheryl took Monday/Tuesday off since it was her birthday). Rattlesnake Lake Ledge is probably one of the best View/Effort ratios in close proximity to Seattle. Since we would otherwise have hit the crappy Seattle traffic, we went golfing at the Cascade Golf Course. I rented clubs and bought balls/tees etc. Hit a few good balls, but I believe I still ended up well over par...
Later that night we grabbed dinner at the Palisade which was really good. You'd be amazed how easy it is to spend over $160+ on a meal for two there (that is if you come from Wawa). It was really good food. King crab, king salmon and steaks all made the bill.

Tuesday:
Went to Westport, WA to go see the whales. We actually saw a couple of Gray Whales on our charter, so that was pretty interesting. They came about 30ft from the boat. Drove back in time to play at my Tyee Tuesday league, but I did have to skip out on guitar lessons. Ah well.

Steven's Pass and new shoes...

Went boarding at Steven's Pass on Saturday. That was pretty good although I knocked the wind out of myself while racing down the hill backwards.

Saturday night I watched School of Rock. It was better than the previews made it look, but I was hoping for more. Jack Black is a funny guy regardless.

Sunday I sat out in the sun for a while, went to Green Lake and bought some new runners at Super Jock and Jill.

Later on Sunday I played in a volleyball tourney at Seattle Pacific University for their winter league. It was a good time, and we won the tourney so now I have another t-shirt.

More Amped...

Ok, so I beat that photoshoot level and the last pro. Now it's on to the legends. I've got two in the bag already, but the rest seem pretty difficult.

Nothing exciting planned for the weekend. I spent the last three weekends in Whistler/Vancouver, so this is a bit of a change.

Time to go home and start the weekend.

#1 in Amped

I finally rank #1 in Amped2 (not for X-Box live, just the game). That took a while and I still need to beat that last photoshoot level so I can get to the last pro and the amped board.

Two legends have been taken down, but there are many to go. Those suckers are not easy to beat.

Went to Vancouver this past weekend.

Friday:
Went to Milestone's for a bellini before going to sleep.

Saturday:
Went to the Vancouver Aquatics Centre and did a few laps followed by some diving. Bought a few pairs of pants on Robson (got a pretty good deal too) and had a lasagna dinner as well.

Sunday:
Woke up at 6am to go cat skiing up near whistler. Cheryl and I got stuck in the garage for a bit, but we eventually got out. Met up with Glade/Jen/Jim/Adrian near the Tim Horton's in Squamish and made it to the lodge on time. It had snowed 71 cm over the past 24 hours, so there was no shortage of snow.

Main thing I learned: Don't go cat or heli skiing without booking the whole cat or helicopter. If you jump on with another group you will be held back. People who are good always book the whole cat, so the people who join are typically beginner/intermediate. Our cat had 5 people we didn't know, 4 of them were not good and as a result we didn't get as many runs as we could have.

Anyhow, I made it back home around 1am which made it a long day but it was a good time.

Well, just yesterday I booked myself a catskiing trip up near whistler. Hopefully we get good weather...

Bought some really nice oranges this weekend. Not that interesting, but I did learn that it's possible to create a really nice drink with 1 orange, 7 or so big strawberries, some peach schnapps and rum (or even vodka). Tastes much like a strawberry daiquiri. The cool thing about it was that I didn't need to explicitly add any juice.

Went to a party at Evan's Saturday night. It was pretty chill compared to normal. Not that many people were there, but it was a good time regardless.

Golden gardens was good, but volleyball wasn't because the team we were playing didn't have all their players. Ah well.

Watched an interesting movie last night: All Quiet on the Western Front. Although it was released in 1930 the film surprisingly kept my attention the whole way through. Anyone who knows my short attention span knows that just that is enough of an accolade. I'd suggest seeing this one.

Whistler - Sunday 22nd of Feb.
It was hard to roll out of bed at 6:30, but I somehow managed. The ride to Whistler was pretty good although there were no less than 3 speed traps on the way. Whistler itself had received a ton of snow early in the week, but unfortunately was dry both Friday and Saturday. I imagine that was the reason the hill was fairly empty and the lift lines were relatively short.

Jen, Ryan, Cheryl and I cruised the blues on Blackcomb before meeting up with Jen and Glade (yes, another Jen). At that point we decided to head up Whistler and hang out in the Flute/Oboe/Piccolo areas of the Whistler backcountry since there lay some steep North facing slopes. While up there we saw the remnants of a pretty big slide. Glade had skied under that slide area Saturday morning (we later found out it fell Saturday afternoon and took a skier with it who was standing 15ft from the cornice - that skier had to be dug up and heli-evacuated). Anyhow, we continued past that area and got in some very respectable turns. Enough to merit the 30 min walk.

At the base we were discussing our turns when I found out that one of Jen's friends was killed in an avalanche last year. Later on in the conversation I found out that she was killed in the same slide as Craig Kelly (who was my snowboarding idol as a kid). Apparently she got to go heli skiing on a day's notice for free because someone had to cancel. Very sad. The freakiest part of this was that just this Friday I had just posted a Craig Kelly memorial in my office... What a co-incidence...

At the end of the day we met back up with Ryan/Jen and Cheryl and they made a mean pasta dish which was oh so good. It was really good to see them. We don't see enough Wawa folk around here. Hopefully Ryan can send me his pics.

Vancouver - Saturday 21st of Feb
Well, I drove to Vancouver late Friday night to meet Jen and Ryan who flew up from Ontario to check out the mountains.

By the time I arrived in Vancouver everyone was asleep, so it wasn't until the morning that I had a chance to say hi. Saturday we went to the Granville Island Market for breakfast. I wasn't impressed, but that's probably because I had some weird noodle sandwich and a melon smoothie. We then hiked around the 8.5k Stanley Park Seawall loop which was very scenic. Afterwards we went over to Lynn Canyon on the north shore to check out a suspension bridge you don't have to pay for. If you'd like to pay to stand on a suspension bridge you can visit the Capilano bridge. After this we went to Grouse Mountain and took the Skyride up to the top. For those of you who are thinking about doing this... Consider booking a reservation for dinner as you get to ride up for free instead of having to pay $25 each. Also, in the Spring, Summer and Fall you can just hike up.

I'll talk about Sunday in another post because this is getting long :)