Waiting to ski race

Anyone who has ever ski raced knows that there is a lot of waiting around for a minute or so of extreme excitement when it's finally your turn to go. This lady waits for the the race to get underway as does the guy in the distance.

Harmony Rocket

I took a picture of my Harmony Rocket today as it was in the sunshine. Probably not the best for it. It's an H53 1 pickup probably made between 1959 and 1962. I found it in a good will type store and got it for $12 if I remember. The bridge and pickup were missing. I bought a bridge but still need the pickup. I don't know what else to say about it other than I like having it around.

Skiing and the Olympics

Sorry I've been so abscent lately. I've been skiing and of course watching the Olympics. (our US coverage of the Olympics is really lame BTW.) I thought this year it would be different but actually it still sucks. More about this later..

When I got on the mountain today I rode the bunny hill chair as usual to get to the other chairs. The ski school instructor hooked me up with a four year old girl to ride the chair with. I enjoy riding the chair with these little kids but I don't like the responsibility. There's no restraints on the chair so I put my poles infront of her and hung onto her hood/ coat from behind. Heaven forbid that a little four year old fall off of my chair... This girl was a little wiggle worm too. She was a talker too. We talked about the weather, cats dogs and also rabbits. She asked me if I had a rabbit. :) Well yes I do actually!.. How I wish I had a little kid of my own..

Here's a picture of me at the top of the ski hill taken by my friend Reinhard. He rocks a Nikon like I do.. He was rocking my Nikon in this pic actually.. He got the exposure exactly right, and that isn't easy when it's so bright out like it was today. I like this picture. You'd never know I weight almost 200 lbs.. :)

click on picture to see bigger..

And here's a good photography tip.. Make sure the horizon is level. I don't know how many people screw this up.. I see a lot of good photographers get this wrong. Honestly,..If you do nothing else in your pictures,. get the horizon level. It isn't that easy to do actually but that's why they call it the horizon,.. it's horizontal. Some cameras have lines you can impose on the screen if you don't have a good feel for it.

Some rules are good. :)

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Winter Olympic tickets

Let the games begin!,.. without me.. Well it's a long story, but I won a company vacation last year. It was money towards a vacation. So I thought I'd go to the winter olympics and watch a few ski races as it's so close to Washington State. But my winter olympic dream was soon put on ice.

I pre-registered with co-sport, and then waited and waited for months for tickets to become available to people in the states. When they did I was on the ready. I soon had two good ski racing tickets in my computer shopping cart. Women's combined and one men's race, I want to say it was GS but I can't remember now. While I had those tickets and before I checked out, I went on another computer to see about lodging. It soon became obvious that I couldn't afford lodging. What was available was totally out of reach for me even with the extra trip money I'd won. They weren't releasing hotels anywhere. What you could get was like $600 a night with 3 and 5 night minimums, and also a big lodging tax added on, not to mention I'd have to travel there and eat.

So I decided to forget going to the olympics and just go skiing instead. I'm still a little bitter about that. I guess the Olympics aren't for guys like me. I guess they've postponed the women's combined now do to rain and fog. So I wouldn't have gotten to see it anyway. I always knew that was a possiblilty.

I guess I'll be skiing in the fog myself this weekend,. Outside of the bubble..

Snowboarder picture

It was such a nice weekend for skiing and um,. in this case riding. Of course that's what snowboarders do, they ride. As a life long skier I have no problem with snowboarders. (even though one of them did paste out Samantha one time) The more I'm around them the more I like them. Some of the cutest girls on the mountain are snowboarders. I might even try it myself one day.

But only for one day... :)

Superbowl Sunday is one of the best days in the year to ski... and ride.. You heard it hear first.
(click on the picture to see it big.. go big!)

May peace prevail on earth

In fairness, here's another bumper sticker from North Idaho. I can't say for sure but I would suspect that this car belongs to an evil "liberal". Someone who would be P_'d off if you bought a gun.

Buy a gun

Easterm Washington and North Idaho is a beautiul place to live, but there are a lot small minded people who live here. The odd thing is that the people who grew up here don't think anything of it. They think it's just normal or just blow it off, but I find it really disgusting and shameful.

This is the sort of person who is likely to go to his or her work place and shoot former co-workers.. after getting fired for being such a creep.

Hate crimes are on the rise here and there's little wonder why.

Ski bum

I've been skiing a lot lately so I've gone back through some recent pictures and decided I should post one. I get used to this view looking east with Montana off in the distance.

(click on the picture to get the don's eye view)

Skiing is getting so expensive that it's kind of hard to be a ski bum anymore. That's kind of sad. I'd like to just drop out of everything and be a ski bum but I can't afford to..

Hm,.. I never thought I woudln't be able to afford to be a bum.

What kind of salad dressing do you like?

"What kind of salad dressing do you like?" I asked a woman I met online, "if that isn't to personal.." I added. "What kind of salad dressing do you like in men?.. I'm attracted to women who like Italian salad dressing for instance.. but a woman who likes roquefort,.. Well that's totally hot!"

I told her I might use this line on my blog. Her computer isn't working so I thought I'd sneak it in.

US Figure Skating Championship photos

I went to Ice Dancing at the US Figure Skating Championships today. This time I took a better camera. It's still a difficult thing to take pictures of. The ice is bright and yet you have to use high ISO speeds and fast shutter speeds and they don't want you to use flash, not that it woudln't help anyway. You need a lens that gathers a lot of light wich I don't have so the pictures turn out noisy but they tell my story. Anway I loved this girls hair.

Here they are dancing. They ended up 2nd in Juniors.

There was one couple who were dressed up like Holocaust inmates or perhaps Jews during the Nazi occupation. I just finished a book written by a woman my mom knows who is a Holocaust surviver of Dachau. She was living in Kiev Ukraine as an 8 year old when the Nazis invaded. She and her mom were deported to a camp in Poland and then on to Dachau where she barely survived. The book was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. These outfits seemed a little odd to me in this context having just read that book, but this pair was really good. They danced to the theme from Schindler's List.

Here is one final spin to end this post with. If you ever get a chance to see figure skating in person don't pass up the chance. It's really worth it.

Dog photo contest

So we've entered this picture of Jake the dog (my header dog) in a dog photo contest at Jake's master's bank. You could win dog treats and stuff. I've taken a lot of pictures, but I've never entered any in a photo contest.. So how cool would it be if the first "contest" I enter a photo in wins dog treats!.. :) That would be perfect for my resume...

Well ok,.. it's not exactly a very high level photo contest, but you gotta start somewhere right?.. And if I don't win anything, I can say, I entered a dog picture in a bank dog photo contest and didn't win anything. And that's almost as good as winning dog treats!

US Figure Skating Championships

I got tickets again to the US Figure Skating Championships through our company which treated us. It's really great. Today I saw the pairs short program and tomorrow I'm going to see the Pairs Final. I like the pairs because you get to see both men and women, and I like seeing those lifts and throws.

It was hard for me to get good results with the little camera, so I might take my regular camera tomorrow. Anyway it it's great to watch. I think just about anyone would enjoy it. There are still tickets left so if you are near Spokane you should take it in.

That doggie in the window

Notice the doggie in the window. Good boy.. Good boy.. He's a good ski dog...

Rocking out

I took the day off today and went skiing. I called in to my dentist and had them move up my cleaning a day to Wednesday as I knew Thursday was going to be a clear, calm and sunny.

It was the best day skiing for me this year as the snow is now deep enough, groomed and no crowds so I could go as fast as I wanted all day with nobody in the way. All of my other days so far have been snow, fog, and you name it. But today was perfect. I'm really getting back in the groove again now and feeling the center of the skis. I was rocking out with my new MP3 player.

Click on the picture to see it bigger.

Spaces

Where am I today I wish that I knew,
Cause looking around there's no sign of you.
I don't remember one jump or one leap,
Just quiet steps away from your lead.

Nickel Creek, Reasons Why

So now it works!

Ice fishing

Who says ice fishing isn't a form of self-expression like fly fishing?.. This guy reminds me of a conductor I once had in orchestra, and that's pretty much the same view I had from the back of the second violin section too.

I think it takes a special person to really get into ice fishing. My dad used to be into it and would drag me out of a warm bed in the morning and in the winter to stand out on a frozen lake. I always froze to death.

And what did he do with the fish we caught?.. He froze them..

***
On the subject of self-expression, blogger isn't letting me make this text look the way I want (like I used to be able to.) It's adding spaces where I don't want and I can't seem to remove them. That really sucks for song lyrics.. I'm sure it's me not understanding the code, but as a result I just won't write what I want.

It reminds me of how bad Word got. If I don't put in a space, then I don't want a space. When it comes to text, I just want it to look like how I type it. Is that too much to ask?

I'm surprised they're letting me use more than one period.... I'm ranting.... I'm really not crazy about rant blogs. Honestly. I don't want to be that blogger.

outside of the bubble

What do you want for Christmas?.. You don't have to get me anything mom, I already have everything I want.. Well if you don't tell me something soon you'll get something you don't want. Well alright then,. get me an MP3 player. What does it do? she asked. Well it records music and stuff.

It also trys to record all of my pictures every time I copy music to it despite my efforts to turn that feature off. That's really a pain. I'd be happy to have one that didn't bother with pictures, or at least let you turn it off. What am I going to do with a thing like this that has my pictures on it?

Welcome to the modern world, a co-worker said..

the Stockmans Bar

The Stockmans Bar in Missoula Montana. Licquor up front, and Poker in the rear. That's a little crude for bicyclelog, but some things just rise above.

Bitterroot Valley picture

A picture from the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. A little peace on Earth I guess you could say.