Happy:
Went up to Cypress to snowboard yesterday with Wendy (first time in two+ years), Kedding, his girlfriend Maggie, and his other friend Alex. I got there with my Smart car as usual, putting two boards to the trunk while having one end sticking out the soft top. I went there with Wendy and Kedding with his friends, in seperate cars. It was a perfect day! Great powdery snow, occasional blue sky with comfortable warmth from the sun, snowed a bit (snow got pretty heavy for a short period of time)…etc. Got all sorts of weather condition but overall it’s great since there was fresh snow! Since Wendy and Maggie were beginners Kedding and I did the teachings at the bunny hill (flat/less difficult slope for beginners) Since I was mostly staying on the easier runs, I was able to spend huge amount of time practicing my balancing and turning.

Sad:
When I was about to leave, I noticed that my Blackberry cellphone wasn’t in my jacket’s inside pocket. I was quite freaked out and headed to lost & found to ask around, nothing was found, and I dropped my name. I thought the phone might have slipped out of my pocket (forgot to zip up the top part of the pocket) when I was snowboarding inside the tree/shrub area and got rammed into a tree (I was totally upside down). Went home feeling pretty unhappy as the phone was my work company’s property…etc.

Happy:
Today I woke up from a call. A guy called me saying that he found my phone..! I met up with him in Whiterock where he lives, and got my phone back. He said that my phone’s alarm clock was on and was playing some loud music, and that was how he spotted the phone. This is undoubtedly one of the few miracles that has ever happened to me. I’m still finding this very hard to believe. Anyway I’ll try to take better care of the phone….

Went up to Cypress Mountain again yesterday from 3pm to 7pm, with Angela. It was a perfect day, lots of snow and not too cold and I didn’t even wear face mask and goggle. The view up there was amazing, I got to see some really neat lighting effect that I’ve never seen. The shadow casted by the sun were bright blue…I’ve never seen shadows that were in blue. The snow were in this bright orange color, really neat.

Anyway I bought a Skicard that costed $70…. I wasn’t planning on getting one but…the day ticket itself already costs $59 so …might as well. With the Skicard I save about 20% each time getting a lift ticket, so I just have to come once more to make up the price difference, not bad. We basically just kept on doing runs like non-stop, went for mostly the green runs since I still sucked (well I improved a lot actually). After a few runs we headed down for some fries/pop and then resumed. I think we did about 14 runs in total, it was really bright during the first 7-8 runs and then for the last couple runs the sky was entirely dark. I did a few blue (more advance) runs towards the end, and actually it was really fun as it wasn’t as steep as I thought it would be.

I was super exhausted after all that, in fact I’m still feeling a bit tired and sore after a day. Nevertheless I just want to go again ASAP…. oh by the way, my car got stuck in the snow near Angela’s place and I had to shovel it for a while before I could get it back onto the street…the snow was really bad I saw lots of cars gotten stuck… I just wish everything melts down ASAP…

It’s really cold lately….below zero for the entire week, -8C at night yesterday…I didn’t really feel like doing anything other than watch TV / eat snack / sleep…. It’s too cold, I don’t like it.

Anyway, due to boredom I decided to go up to Cypress Mountain for snowboarding tonight… I’ve gotten full gears last year anyway so I thought I should really go up to make their worth. Friend Davinder picked me up with his Porche Cayanne Turbo…that car is really something. Anyway, we opted for the 7pm-10pm “Night Owl” timeframe which costed $36 or so, and got there around 7:15pm. It was surprisingly empty and I was really stoked that I was able to “own” the entire mountain.

But soon I realized it was just too cold - so cold that I knew it would cause damage to the exposed part of my face for sure without a face mask…so I went in a bought a $20 overpriced mask but anyway it was really comfy and it did help a LOT.

My first run was really bad, fell a couple times and twisted my left arm… but after warming up, I started to get into shape in the second run, and was totally fine (as in able to go down really quickly without having to stop) in the third run. I ended up doing 7 runs in total, which Davinder did 5 since his bindings broke apart after the first run and he had to pay $5 to get it fixed so he lost some time. Frankly speaking I was feeling only slightly tired by that time and I thought I could do at least 5-10 more runs. Davinder was stressed and hungry though so we decided to leave for some food.

It was a really good first run for the season for me, I was able to pick up my skills that I gathered last winter. Too bad my friend Boom was back to Korea otherwise I’m sure I can go up with him for at least 5-6 times this year..

Went to Grouse Moutain for snowboarding on Thursday night with Boom (yea my Korean friend is named “Boom” pretty awesome name imo) He brought me a ski pass so I was able to snowboard for the night for free AND also I found out something awesome. I was SHOCKED to find out that I was in fact able to stick TWO snowboards into my little Smart car! I didn’t know I was able to do that until yesterday for some reason I came up with this idea to open up the soft window at the back of the car, and slide the two snowboards into there. After sliding them all the way down only about 1/4 of the boards were sticking out, and it was totally safe when I pulled the soft rear window back down which pushed onto the board and kind of secured them in place. It was so cool! Never thought I could take 2 person and 2 snowboards on this car..:)

I was so happy and I offered to pick up Boom and take him to the mountain. I used to hate Grouse Mountain a lot since I hated lining up for the Gondola (a super huge cable-based lift that takes you to the mountain from the base, can take more than 100 people) even though it’s kinda cool to ride. Well it was pretty empty on a Thursday night so I was pretty happy. I got to practice a lot of the things that I’ve been wanting to try out since couple weeks ago when I was snowboarding at Cypress but didn’t get a chance to do since they were closing. Boom was a really good snowboarder and he taught me some basic skills and gave me some really helpful hints on balancing and turning, a very nice guy. We had a really great time there and we kept on doing the runs until the guy at the lift told us that it’s going to be the last run…lol….pretty pissed off hearing that since at that instance I was going to try out some new poses see if it’d help balancing. Anyway. I left my board at Boom’s place as he’s going to wax it for me for free!

Went to Cypress again today for snowboarding. Okay first of all I’m half dead right now due to the extreme tiredness (I can barely sit upright and my forearms are hurting a lot). WELL but I’m happy Davinder, Angela, Allison, and I went up today early in the morning (Allison went up first with her friends and then we met up around noon). The sky was SOOOOOOOOO nice today - unlimited visibility, moderate coldness, and 10cm of fresh powder snow I was shocked by the beautiful scenery I saw up on the mountain. I was able to see where all the runs are, was able to see every trees clearly and the image was so sharp. It got even prettier around noon when the sun shined on the trees. I should have brought my camera with me!

Anyway, Davinder was learning pretty quickly this time (even though he still fell down a lot and we had to sit around and wait for him from time to time). Angela and I were able to pick up some speed this time since I had FINALLY managed to do the toe-side brake. I was certainly still in learning mode but I was able to slowly carve left/right in a zig zag. While Davinder sticked to the green (beginner) runs for the whole time, I actually went down a couple different blue (more difficult) runs with Angela. These runs are certainly steeper but I found the snow to be much more powdery and soft. It was actually quite comfy to fall down on the puffy snow…lol. Allison was pretty good at it too, but then she was with her other friend most of the time. We had lunch at the usual crappy cafeteria, and I had a chicken burger and stole some of Davinder and Angela’s fries XD.

We did a couple more runs after the food. Since we stayed till pretty late tonight, before we left the sun was gone and Angela and I decided to try out one more run to get the feel of “night skiing”. It was pretty fun actually…well it’s a total different feel. It was a great day, I’m satisfied, and tired.

Went up to Mount Cypress with Angela today, Davinder was too much of a coward so he didn’t come (joking =P). I brought my own snowboard, boots, jacket and pants with me (that I spent couple hundred dollars last month on, so I better make practical use of them as much as I can) . We didn’t expect that it would be snowing that hard! I was saying that I wanted to drive my Smart car up to the mountain but looking at the condition I guess I better not even think about that until I install some nice winter tires Some cars even had to make their way back since they were sliding so much. We made it up effortlessly though.

There were more people than I’ve expected, in such severe condition. Well, at least it wasn’t as foggy as 2 weeks ago when I was on the Grouse mountain. We’ve decided to get a “ski card” so that we can save some $$$ next time we go up again. I had made up my mind to practice as much as possible on turning, so that I wouldn’t have to do that zig-zag kind of movement which always stress me out very quickly. After 5 runs we headed off for food. Longgg line up as expected, and crappy food as well. I got a “pork rib burger” with a really gross tasting energy drink…yuck (just thought that I actually was going to need some more energy). We actually did 10 runs today!! I’ve never done that many runs before, but halfway today I kind of got the hang of it so I was feeling less tiring and was able to do a couple more runs.

It was an awesome day! I actually got something out of it which is really all that I have looked for I’m feeling more confident than ever now… Hopefully I can do some night skiing sometimes this week after recovering from the tiredness!