J5’s Blog

I was up at the house again this weekend. I managed to get the Internet service working up there but beyond that I didn’t have any time to touch a computer. The snow was great and I even took some kickers and was able to tune my balance in the air. I even went off a small mogul and managed a 180. I still don’t have enough leg and core strength to throw in some grabs but I am working on it. Nothing hard core mind you, just some moves to make skiing a bit more challenging.

There were eleven of us up there this time which was awesome. Everyone is really cool and inevitably every time I go up there is someone I haven’t met yet. There hasn’t been anyone I have met yet who I dislike so this bodes well for the rest of the season.

I brought up my Subaru this time around and what a difference all wheel drive makes. If I hadn’t mentioned it, I ended up buying a Subaru Legacy Sedan about a week ago. It really is an investment in safety even though I wanted to wait about a year until I bought a new car. When we were moving cars around in the driveway some of the front wheel drive vehicles need to get up some speed when backing out of the driveway or they would just spin their wheels at the top. With AWD it just felt like I was on dry pavement. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking AWD is some sort of magic pill though. You still need respect for the road condition but it does make me feel a lot safer to know I have it when I need it.

Now I just have to figure out how I am going to get both my cars down to NY for the holiday break. I selling my old car to my parents since they want a more fuel efficient car for short drives (my mom has a van) and my brother is also getting his license fairly soon. I have a plan. We shall see if it pans out.

It started snowing late Friday night as I was on my drive up to Vermont for the weekend. I have to say, after my accident last year, I was pretty white knuckled the whole way up. I even missed the house because for some reason the driveway wasn’t plowed and it is a bit set back from the road. After turning around a few times and spinning my wheels I decided it is time to invest in a more snow-worthy car. I’m going to look at Subaru’s this week. Everything else worked out fine and I could easily get out of the driveway during the day when the snow was softer.

I ended up being the first person at the house which was a good thing because when Stacy showed up she had forgotten her key. It ended up being just me and four other people at the house. I am guessing nobody thought there would be good snow this early in the season. Considering the time of year, the skiing was excellent. I pretty much killed myself on Saturday and ended up retiring to the house at about 2:00 .

When everybody got back a couple of us grabbed some beers and headed for the hot tub. There is nothing quite like skiing all day then putting on a bathing suit and running through the snow to get to a tub of oh so hot water. About half way through our soak we jumped out, made snow angles and jumped back in on a dare.

We all went out to the Pickle Barrel for some late night fun but we mostly all just conked out around 11:30 and went home. I am hoping that I get used to the physical exertion of skiing fast or there will be a lot of those early nighters.

Sunday saw just three of us going up to the mountain where we only stayed for two hours. That is what is nice about having the house. I don’t feel like I have to push myself to get my monies worth. If I feel like relaxing I can go back to the house at any time I want, or I can wake up early and ski the whole day and not worry if I will be too tired to drive back down to Massachusetts. It all works out pretty well.

Just as we were leaving who do I see walk past the car but Kristian Høgsberg and David Zeuthen. It was David’s first time skiing so I will have to find out how he did tomorrow at work. I would have stayed and skied with them but I was dead tired and just wanted to pack up and get back down to Boston.

There is nothing like driving up a long windy road with a babbling brook flowing along side. It was an amazing drive up rt-4 to get to Killington this Saturday. I wasn’t going to go up since there was no snow but I wanted to get things done and see the house so I ended up waiting until Saturday afternoon to make the drive. I’m glad I left in the daytime because the scenery is something to behold. Too bad I found out my camera had no charge or I would have stopped to take pictures.

I was just going to go up, get my season pass and then come right back down but a couple other people made it up for the weekend so I decided to hang out with them. If it was any indication on how good the season is going to be I’m going to have a blast. Even without the snow we all had a really good time and I made some new friends who I am looking forward to ski with this winter. I can say it is one of the best recreational decisions I have made and I highly recommend it to people even if they are not expert skiers or snowboarders. Our house is supposedly a good mix of beginners to experts.

It really is about the social aspect of meeting people who are into the same activities, be it going down the slopes or dancing at the club. We all went to dinner at the Wobbly Barn, which was excellent if a bit on the expensive side, and then went upstairs to hear some cover band from Connecticut. We got comped from dinner so it was free. The band was decent but nothing special. They kind of lost us when they started playing some of their own songs which didn’t have the energy of their covers.

We then went to the Pickle Barrel which is the other bar and the one we all have season passes to. That place rocked. They had a band on called Go Go Gadget which just blew me away. They took the covers they did and just owned them and they did everything from Brittney Spears to Bell Biv Devoe to the Black Crows. I mean some songs I cringe at when I hear them on the radio they actually made sound good. It was an all around mixture of Funk, Rock, Rap and Pop and was loads of fun to dance to, which we did in abundance.

I was all a great time and I am looking forward to next weekend. Hopefully there will be some snow but if not it should still be fun.

Met with some of the people whome I will be sharing the ski palace with. We had the kick off party tonight where we got some more info and were able to get to know each other. I am really excited as they are all a bunch of great people and so far it looks like it was a good choice. There is still a group of people from NY and I think one person from PA that had their own kick off party. As it is Killington was open last weekend though they closed for the week. Tomorrow we start the first round of picking our weekends and then on Friday we will have the second round. The cool thing is that the picks are just to garuntee a bed for that weekend. If someone is willing to sleep on the floor or lug up an air mattress they are more than welcome to go up on their off weekends. I might just take advantage of that.

It has been decided and I will be skiing at the Val Thorens resort in France around the New Years. Ski in Europe - Scratch that one off the TODO list.

With the weather being really bad and me having acute bronchitis all I can say is thank you for dextromethorphan.

So as I sit doing relatively nothing, bored out of my mind, I am lifted by the fact that Loveland in Colorado is opened for skiing. My adopted mountain for the season Killington, the first to open on the east coast, will do so next month around the 12th. The season is almost upon us.

On top of all that I got news from my good friend Helena that she and her friends are looking at resorts in northern Italy for a trip around January. I haven’t seen her in five years since I went to visit her in Brussels after I had finished up school in London. I’m a bit worried that my skiing skills won’t hold water to her friends. I’m pretty good but we are talking about a bunch of people who took a week of vacation to learn kite surfing and then went out and bought the equipment so they could do it at home. These are hard core extreme sports enthusiasts. They are even going out and getting data on the resorts for the past 12 years and figuring out if Italy will have good snow by January. If not they plan on finding a resort more up north. I’m debating on if I should buy an inexpensive pair of twin tip ski’s as I am unsure if my 99cm skiboards will hold up. Luckly the Boston Globe SnowSports Expo will be happening on November 17th.

D-Bus

I’m looking to get a bunch of patches in next week and do a release. Along with this release I will post a schedule on how much time I think it will take to get to 1.0. Look to see the 0.90 release happening after this next release.

I just got back from talking to a bunch of cool people who put together a ski house every winter. They pretty much convinced me to buy a share so every other weekend this winter I am going to be MIA.

I might wake up and decide I don’t want to spend the money but the people all seemed like a fun group so I think that is unlikely. I’ve been saying I want to meet more people in the Boston area but with work being 40 minutes away and the hours I keep it has been harder.

The cool thing about a ski house is everyone there has at least one common interest and that is plowing down a mountain of snow at high velocity on planks of wood and fiberglass. WIth an average age of 29 at this perticular house and only 8 minutes from Killington it is right up my ally.

I took the skibus up last winter almost every weekend which was great but not as social as I would like. Also waking up at 4 in the morning and only having a day to ski pretty much killed the rest of the weekend. I would get to work on Mondays not feeling like I had the time to recharge my batteries. With the ski house I don’t have to rush and can decide I don’t want to ski on Sundays and take it easy. They are also going to have Internet so I can hack during downtimes.

Ok, so now I am just trying to convince myself it is worth it. I can’t think of anything that would stop me.