Power outage at Crystal

Wow did Crystal suck this weekend.

First of all, it snowed a ton this week, but it rained all Thursday and Friday meaning the weekend was a big letdown everywhere. Stevens declared they'd open, then downgraded to 'maybe' status... Now they're closed with no light in sight. Snoqualmie remains closed and Baker lost a lot of base.

Crystal was open, but I'm not sure it should have been. We woke up early and made it to the hill by 9am. There were rocks on the main runs, there was a massive wind storm, and any snow on the hill was hard as ice. If you could find the wind loaded side of certain slopes you could find a few turns, but dodging the rocks was still difficult.

During lunch in the new lodge on the top of the Forest Queen Express the power went out. We dismissed it as 'well, maybe they just haven't figured out how much power they need to run this new place', but it was worse. On our next run, halfway up the lift the power went out for the lift. After sitting up there for 10 mins a patroller came by to each chair explaining that things would be down for a bit but should be up in 10 more mins... 30 minutes later we hadn't moved. Given we were in a wind storm it was actually pretty cold. After a few more minutes the lift started moving and we were able to get out.

In short when we got to the bottom of the hill we noticed all the power for Crystal was out (wind knocked some trees over some power lines etc...). We got some coupons for $20 off our next lift ticket, and headed out of there. On the way back home I saw a road block with wires down on the road. Further on I saw a light explode with the sparks carrying across the street in the wind which was kinda interesting.

Anyhow, I won't be skiing until after Christmas, so hopefully we have better snow by then.

Vancouver, V-ball and Deck the Hall Ball

Took a quick trip to vancouver this past weekend. Left Saturday at around 4pm and started the ride back at 3pm the next morning (which put me in Seattle early enough to make my 6:30pm v-ball match).

The volleyball was less than sub par. We played a team that was so bad I felt embarassed for them. Their reaction time was such that they couldn't put their hands over their heads fast enough to protect them from a spike coming their way... Turns out there were a few gonna go their way, so after knocking one of them twice in a row I decided to tone it down a bit.

Later on in the week we played our first playoff game at our wednesday league. We were a player short, but somehow we managed to pull through. Next week is going to be much more painful as the team we play is stacked.

Last night I went to the Deck the Hall Ball which was pretty fun, but not as good as in '99 when the foo fighters, beck, bush, run DMC, staind, and 311 rocked the place to the floor. This time around there was snow patrol, franz ferdinand, modest mouse, the killers, keane, and the shins. We expected modest mouse to be the star of the show, but I think the killers rocked the hardest, kean and franz ferdinand rocked pretty hard too.

This week it snowed a TON in the mountains, but unfortunately it's raining there now, so instead of hitting baker all weekend I think we might just take a one day run up to crystal.

Anyhow, I think I'm going to head out of here.

Whistler opens

Spent last weekend in Whistler and Vancouver. I went up to Vancouver Tuesday night and headed up to Whistler with Glade.

It rained on us so much that we were laughing at ourselves for being there the entire time. The lifties were squeegeeing the chairs instead of dusting the snow off with brooms which is the norm. Blackcomb was the only mountain open on Wednesday, and Jersey Cream was the more interesting of the two lifts in operation. It rained almost to the top of Jersey Cream but at the very top it was snowing and at times pelting us with ice pellets.

On the positive side the lift lines were really short, and we were able to make 9 minute intervals and got in over 15 runs in the day which is a lot given the length of our lunch break.

We found a place to stay with a the dad (or was it uncle?) of a friend of Glade's friend dad... Anyhow, not someone I knew, but he was really a good guy. The first question he asked me was 'are you good?' I didn't quite know how to reply, so I said 'I can usually make it to the bottom of the hill' and he pressed 'don't give me that crap, how good are you?'... Luckily Glade saved me from having to come up with something that wasn't crap :) You should have seen the look on Hanz's face when he found out I snowboarded and didn't tele ski...

Anyhow, we met up with Adrian and Jim later that night, slept and did Whistler the next day. It was much better to make the story short, but not good enough to warrant coming back for more given the lift lines were only going to get worse. So we headed back to Vancouver.

Met up with a couple of Wawa folk in Vancouver (Marcel, Joanne, Cheryl) as well as a few from Waterloo (Amanda and Andrea). I hit the Massive Change exhibit in Vancouver and did some x-mas shopping.

Hmm.... what else...
Did the usual stanley park stuff etc... Bought Rear View Mirror which is actually a great combination of Pearl Jam songs from Alive to Yellow Ledbetter.

Still nothing for mom or dad though.