No back? No problem - I have Guitar Hero II

It's been almost 3 weeks since I messed up my back at Whistler. I'm feeling a lot better right now, but I'm still not ready to go out and ride anywhere interesting. To help me through this hard time I decided to buy Guitar Hero II for XBox 360. It's as fun as I thought it would be - what a great game.

So far I've managed to beat every song on the "easy", "medium", and "hard" difficulty levels. I've started the "expert" level, but that one will take a bit more time - it's pretty technical.

When playing the songs on "hard" or "expert" you start to feel as though you're actually playing the song - which is a bit strange given you're really just holding a plastic guitar with 5 fret buttons and a pick emulator. I swear that Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box" is easier to play on a real guitar than on "Expert" in the game - I'm not sure how they pulled that off.

As far as the song list goes... I was pleasantly surprised. They seemed to have everything from Elvis to Megadeth. My favorite songs on the list include "Search and Destroy", "Sweet Child of Mine", "Monkey Wrench", and "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight". Most sorely missing from the set list were songs from AC/DC, and Metallica. Another notable song is the "Trogdor" theme which you can unlock in the store.

I have already built up a few feature requests for the Guitar Hero folks, a couple of small tweaks could make this game rock twice as hard as it already rocks.

Anyhow, I'm currently sitting in Vancouver after getting my bike back from the Marzocchi shop. As part of my suspension overhaul I had them put in a set of stiffer springs in my front fork to make it much harder to bottom out. If I had done that sooner I might not have messed up my back. I had two medium springs in there to start with, now those have been replaced with two heavy springs. The bike is feeling a lot stiffer, and it will take a much bigger hit to bottom out the suspension now.

This comes at a time where Whistler is upping the ante in the bike park. They just opened a new drop at the base of the hill which is looking pretty big. I'll be working my way up to it this summer, but I'm not making any promises :)