On Driving nearly 5000km, 6 days on a school bus, Going from 10 below to 30 above in 2 days and life in general...

Well as the title might indicate, i spent a few days (10 precisely) on a mission trip with the church, which was essentially this:

• Pile 84 kids onto two school buses for 3 days
• Surf in a small town called Carpintiria for a day
• Go to a massive Rollercoaster park
• Do 3 days work at the Dream Center in Los Angeles, including painting, cleaning up streets, handing out food to poor families and the homeless.
• Get back on said school buses
• Return to kelowna over 2.5 days

The whole thing was amazing fun, i made loads of new friends, had my first experience of church: bible belt style prosperity extravaganza (it was lame), met some really cool kids who im never going to see again, walked down hollywood boulevard and i could go on...

The whole trip was really challenging, sat on horrendously uncomfy seats with no leg room for 12-15 hours a day is definately, as they/we say over here, a bonding experience. Throw in over 40 of us having some illness that saw us throwing up all over the toilet seat before having to use it very quickly shortly afterwards.

I really cant be bothered to write more, i honestly dont know why but that is the case.

I discovered this really cool country group called Rascal Flatts, which everyone over here listens to. Me... country music... they said it would never happen.

Guess i really am going native!

On Riding Park, Fun Fridays and Playing Call of Duty Four

Well, since my last update i have been a busy bee, hanging out with friends and playing call of duty four at PCBang, a gaming internet cafe. I'm actually quite good, and consider the perfect day to be a day of shred up at BW before heading down for a couple of hours of CoD4 with the guys :)

The tuesday's snowboarding with Matt the day after my last update was fantastic, we did some general shredding on the new snow, hitting a fair few black runs before heading over to the park where we discovered the pipe had opened!! Matt was somewhat nervous, as he had never ridden pipe before. First time down i showed him how it was done, second time down he was better than me! *sobs*

I was actually dissapointed with the quality of the pipe, the walls were uneven and soft, with the left wall being much higher and rougher than the right wall. More recently the pipe has got even worse, as after the last snowfall the careless basher left a 6 inch ledge near the bottom of the left wall when clearing it out. Grrrr....

Matt on the pipe:


We then hit the rails in the small section and i managed to do every rail in the section without sketching, something that i was very pleased of, as its a major milestone of improvement in my riding technique :) With that out of the way, we moved onto some larger rails, including a handrail that is rather hard...

Since then i have tried picnic benches, quarterpipes, and large graded jumps :)

Me on some (very) easy rails: (dont know what i was trying with the 90 degree turns off them...)


On friday last week a bunch of us interns went riding, pushing it really hard for the entire day. I popped my first perfect 180 off a jump, while the others attempted 360s and backflips off the same jump. Having been thoroughly shown how to do jumps, it was mine and matt's turn to show the others how to do rails, including the aforementioned tricky handrail. I tried a large box rail that was designed so you can actually do some sweet tricks coming off it as you get so much air (smooth indy grab for moi!). Unfortunately noone got any photos of that one :(


Adam does a boardpress


The crazy brit!


Jordan grabs some Serious Air


Nate taps a large rail


Matt out-does jordan on the large air...


Yours truly taps a handrail!

Youth this week consisted of gaming at pc bang for the older group (net score for the evening: 200 kills 40 deaths for me :) ) and making a massive pile of cargo pallets and cardboard, soaking it in 10 litres of gas and throwing a match for younger youth. That was quite the fire :)

Thursday was spent riding at a relaxed pace, trying the odd rail, mainly just working on keeping that back straight and riding in switch, both of which i noticed improvement on :)

Yesterday (friday) i went up to biggy with Brandon, one of the youth leaders. We were shredding all day, me on his 132cm forum park board, which is actually a kid's snowboard, but works fantastically for park stuff. I found rails to feel far more solid on this thing than my rome snowboard, and i can pop four 180's in a row without thinking about it. Tail/Nose presses are far easier, and i can use them to pivot into other tricks now. When Brandon announced that he was wanting to sell it, i bought it off him for 50 bucks, an absolute bargain that makes park far easier and funner!

The only problem with the board is that when turning hard it cant hold, and is useless for carving, meaning my other board still owns when it comes to shredding the hill :)


As you can probably see from the above photos, i waxed both boards last night :)

On Hip Hop, Leather Seats and Automatic Transmission

Well in the (just over a) week since i last updated, many things have happened, mostly good, but some bad.

Firstly the setup began for rush, the challenge of turning a farm/estate and a riding school into a harvest like venue for 1200 (potentially 2000) kids was a massive undertaking starting on tuesday. We started with a bare scaffold, added cloth to make it into a stage, brought in 1300 chairs, set up half of them, brought in bleachers and benches, set up two gazebos, and went home. Wednesday and thursday saw more of the same, with the added excitement of setting up lights, speakers and the desks to run both. Friday 4pm saw 90% of stuff ready to go, giving us some respite to grab some food and test before 6, when the youth started to arrive. Sure enough, half an hour late at 2130 the evenings events kicked off, with over 1700 youth packed into this riding school tent thingy...

All we had to do all evening was act as a mix of security, host and worker, set off fireworks in the box and drive a sweet guy called riley armstrong around.



Saturday saw me paintballing, go karting and laser tagging, all of which were very fun. The most entertaining of the 3 activities was hard to decide, while paintballing saw me only die once in half an hour's game, lasertag was conducted with weapons that had red dot sights, a far greater challenge requiring serious accuracy :) Saturday evening was spent listening to Fresh IE, a canadian hip hop artist, who is so good that i bought his latest album (yes, i now own a rap album)


Sunday saw the final event in the morning,

and then a hurried tidy away after running riley to the airport. It took 40 of us 3 hours and 6 of us one day to dismantle 5 days setup effort!

Monday was spent - as mentioned above - tidying away...

The really good news is that i bought a new car, a 97 Legacy Outback Limited, the top end variant of the first car! This one comes in white, with alloy wheels, heated leather seats, electric windows and central locking...

As we say over here: "Ooohhhhh Yeaaahhhhhh!!!" Unfortunately it is an AT vehicle, meaning i have been getting used to driving with one foot and one hand :P


Just a joke dad, when drifti-sorry, driving, i use both hands :) Its a very laid back experience, just letting the car do all the work for you when it comes to gears. And stamping your foot to the floor makes the most amazing sound and (a small lag later) a massive burst of acceleration as the car drops 2 gears and flies!

Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after getting this car i was pulled over by a policeman for drifing around a corner in the middle of nowhere in the snow. He decided to land me with two offenses - "failure to keep right" and "speed relating to conditions", resulting in a total fine of 276 bucks. I do however get 50 bucks off this if i pay within 30 days.

I have been informed since then that cops in BC have quotas of arrests and tickets that they must meet each year, and that meeting these targets gets them potentially up to 10 grand in bonus pay. I am by this system as it simply means that every month one night will see hundreds of cops out on the streets of Kelowna just looking for the slightest thing to catch people out on. Whatever happened to the lovely country i thought i was staying in?

However, i am going snowboarding tomorrow, so all is well :)

Loves,

Dave

Have some random pics of burgers and sunsets

On Hot Waxing

Well, as the title my indicate i decided it was time to give my board a bit of a service, in the form of a new surface. So droll...

I bought Ptex and Wax, removed the bindings and set to work...

The first thing to do is scrub the board down with alcohol, this removes any dirt left. Then i filled the the deep cuts (like this one)

With P-tex, a brand polythene designed for boards. The next stage was to take the large block of "Big Bertha" snowboarding wax:


and melt it all over the board, before ironing it in like so:

And then scraping the excess off, leaving me with a horrifyingly fast snowboard, which is hardly a bad thing.

Cleanup is fun too:


For old times sake i found this world industries board:


And took this photo of the top of the cliff (the easy side, these runs are single diamonds, and the pic doesnt really do them justice)


On friday i headed up to the slopes alone, and spent the day just crusing, 180ing into switch and attempting to reverse the process, attempting backside 180s, and hitting rails and some medium/large jumps! Yes, it is official, i have moved up a size in jumps in the park!

My aim over the next two weeks is to get a grasp of the rails in the beginner section, so that i can slide down them all in one go, before trying out a medium classed handrail (thats a rail 1.5 inches wide) in the new section of the park. I have also found that rotating on rails to prevent fall off is coming naturally, something i am rather proud of :)

Next update should contain some decent park vids!!

Loves!!

Dave

On Rippin' It Hardcore

Well the last few days have seen some serious advances in my boarding skill. Friday saw me riding with Jeff - a local sponsored rider who is insane - and a friend of his - equally insane - through tree runs for the entire day.

Well, i say the entire day but i mean late morning to mid afternoon, the early morning being spent fixing someone's broken hot water pump up at BW, a fun little electrical engineering challenge :)

The riding was intense, and saw me jumping off everything that i could possibly grab some air off, boardsliding a small log and dropping some pretty scary drops, rollers and berms. I also took the opportunity to practise popping out 180 spins in the air, something which is actually surprisingly easy :)

Jeff ready to rock and ruin:


Jeff pulling a handplant:


Getting air:




Tim and I


Friday night we relaxed at Jon & Tanya's, spent some time with the dogs (Pablo is at least four inches longer than he was when i arrived here)


And played with Kai's nerf pistol (something that - as most of you will know - has massive appeal to me, i mean, look at it!!)


Saturday saw me up on the slopes again with a friend from YG and her family. The astute amongst you will note that the saturday in question was in fact Valentines Day, and i was in fact invited up by her as "something to do on valentines day". The people of this country have no grasp of the rules! What happened to the guy being the one doing the asking for numbers/out/email address and being the one who calls? Mental...

We rode hard once again, (Me, Joelene and her brother Joshua) and were immensely surprised to discover we are all at the same level of skill, resulting in some fantastic times had off piste, in the park and elsewhere. After they left i stayed on, as Laurie & Sarah had been at a wedding, the reception of which involved snow tubing at BW, meaning i could hang out all evening. I had some food to eat, hung out for a while and then headed up the hill at 6pm to do some jumps in the park and watch the Rail Jam Competition. Videos are on facebook!



On this day this video was also taken of me:


So all in all, its been a good week! ICBC payed out more than i paid for my car, meaning by writing my car off i have made 466 bucks :)

And we have been blowing up microwaves and stuff at youth:

That is the remains of a 2L coke bottle after it has been used for a dry ice bomb :)

And i took this photo of a squirrel!

On DDB's - A Miscellany of items

There's a lot to report since my last blog entry, so i might s well start in order:

I received news on Monday that my car was in fact a write off. This was a great shame, as it was a fantastic car. So without further ado i set to looking for new cars.

Tuesday saw the youth team searching for parts for a "teddy cannon" We found them in 4 inch diameter PVC pipe, which we promptly bought, along with an end cap and some teddies:

Down the barrel of the beast

When fired on Wednesday night (redneck night at youth - trailer parties, root bear, sunflower seed spitting contests, fireworks in cars, teddy catapulting from the top of cars) this device produced enough kick to star a car windscreen and severely dent the roof. Its also worth mentioning the accompanying noise of enough dry ice to make 10 litres of gas rupturing a coke bottle sounded not dissimilar to a target rifle, and had the similar effect of leaving the ears ringing.

The bear took over 15 seconds to return to earth, and landed minus a head.

Small groups on thursday saw us hurling dry ice bombs and having a fork lift truck pallet bonfire in the middle of nowhere :)

Some of the youth with me. Well, one ginger one anyway...

Friday saw my first bus trip up to BW (written off car remember?) and the first day i spent carving virgin powder. Although it was very windy, with visibilty touching 100m in places the quality of the snow on the black runs was unreal, especially as i was first down some of them. I then headed over to a really tight mogul run underneath a chairlift, a run which i did 4 times, getting faster and more confident at riding moguls each time. For those not in the know, these are moguls:
Mogul Research


That research really is fascinating, just discovered it!

I then took a few runs to have a go at my switch riding (which is slowly improving) before heading to telus park, where i discovered a spine obstacle had been constructed. Having hit one of the beginner jumps (which had far more pop than the last time i hit it, resulting in a scary amount of air) I tried the spine. It was fun, and i look forward to mastering some basic moves off it (going up the kicker, rolling clockwise as i look down the hill and landing on the vert of the spine, carving back down it - effectively dropping into a half pipe)

I took these pics when i got back to black mountain bus stop:



Today i headed up to BW again, but for a much shorter half day (muscles were dead after yesterday) However i took advantage of the perfect conditions (1 cm of new snow overnight on yesterdays fall, sunshine, no wind) to try something new. My first DDB, or Double Diamond Black run. Words cannot convey just how terrifying sliding towards a lip is to discover that the slope you will be riding drops the first 100 vertical metres in a total of less than 25 horizontal metres. I could literally sit down on the slope by digging my board into a large lump of snow and leaning backwards 6 inches - at which point my backside rested on the slope. But to quote the skier who went down ahead of me:

"Dude, that first turn is f*cking terrifying, after that it gets easier each turn you put in"

Indeed, willing myself to turn downhill and feel myself practically accelerate in freefall was unbelievably exhilarating. In fact, the second turn was even better. And the third. Before i knew what was happening i had reached the bottom of "The cliff" as it is called. Screw the wall of death, The cliff was actually terrifying!

Thighs burning, i met up with Jon n Tanya for lunch, before heading back home to have a few drinks and watch heroes on t'internet (season two is finished, season 3 is started now, soon ill have caught up with the actual broadcasts!!). Riding back down to the car park was a very laid back affair, wearing a long sleeved tshirt, wrist guards and casually drinking coke as i rode:


Its a board bums life....

On getting into the study to write this (5 hours ago) i discovered Mr Beetle (over an inch long from carapace tip to tail), who now resides on the porch step in 20 below plus windchill. He's probably dead by now...

On High Speed Loss of Control

Well, it happened last year and its happpened again. I lost control at high speed.

Last year it was my arm, this year its my car :(

Yes, Alice is broken :(

I had had a very happy day at the BW (had hit a few of the medium sized Rails and Boxes) when i was going a bit too fast around a corner and lost control. a few skids and over-corrections later and i hit the side of a pickup truck, tearing the front of Alice to shreds...

Hopefully it isnt a write off, and thank the lord i got Collision insurance!