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.