Global Cooling and Contemplation

So much for Spring! Despite my staunch environmental viewpoints and 100% conviction behind the science of retreating glaciers, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and increased CO2 driving freaky weather - there is very little of that global warming nonsense going on in Alberta! (Apologies to Al Gore if he just happens to stumble across this page - great movie by the way!). Spring break has failed to muster any temperature warmer than minus 7 so far - not great for the eager cycling legs, but a bonus for the board, as Sunshine and Lake Louise are the main targets for this week's holiday! Sunday entailed a pleasant scurry around Sunshine with Portland Ken - see below - it hadn't snowed for a few days and we managed to find some icey patches mixed in with the good stuff for the first time this season. That loss of control skittery feel hadn't been missed, and it caused a fair few of my runs to be a little bit like Frank Spencer hurtling downhill on a tea tray! The ice also manged to grab hold of Ken's ski's and flip his ankles up in the air over his head before he knew anything about it - I thought he'd shattered his shoulder into tiny bone fragments, but these Yanks seem to bounce pretty well.

So this be Ken P. You may see that it's snowing (Sunday). The white stuff began to fall as we were out there, and didn't stop until mid morning today (Tuesday). I couldn't resist having another hack at Sunshine today, knowing full well that the "Some Mother's Do 'ave 'em" ice would be well and truly burried beneath nice fresh powder - and how it was! Most North American observers may well be scratching their Mork and Mindy corrupted noggins with all of this reference to Frank Spencer and Some Mothers do ave em - Look it up you luddites, English slapstick at its finest!

I managed to make first lifts today too and caught the sunrise peaking over Tee Pee chair - and there was absolustely nobody around! The teeny weeny piccie on the right was my lame attempt to capture empty chairs and vacant slopes - those of you with powers of magnification may be able to see this from the photo, the rest of you should just take my word for it!

It was certainly one of the finer days up in the hills, good lines and fresh tracks, today even had me inadvertently taking 6 feet drops in my stride (that'll teach me to check whats on the other side of the trees) - made for great giddy rushes and teethy grins though!

A dampener was put on the day when cruising on the last run the ski patrol were out trying to resuscitate somebody - I'm still not quite in the right mind to contemplate mortality, so it was a rather queer sensation to have the Verve's "Lucky Man" come onto my ipod as I rode past - wasn't sure if this was funny or just morbidly ironic. (They were still at the CPR 10 mins later when the helicopter arrived - all very somber, although some rubber necking Terry Fuckwits were stood around taking photos of the whole affair. Whoopy Do - a helicopter, but it's coming to pick up a corpse!!!! Maybe they'll head off to the hospital mortuary to finish their film off - great holiday snaps.)

Well, that's my depressing post of the year out of the way! Moving swiftly on.. things at home are all rather quiet - Brina is in the Soo for the week. I decided that being a batchelor for 7 days I had to find some "man" activities to pass the time (comments about being a wanker are not needed from any of you perverts!). All I could come up with was to get out the GodFather dvds - a set of movies I've never seen but have been told for years "you must see this".

It is, without doubt, a very blokish flick - and I recommend any of you who haven't seen it, to watch it - but just make sure your wife is at home because now when I turn the lights off at night and all is quiet as I'm on my lonesome, I'm just shitting myself thinking that I'm about to wake up with a horses head under the pillow - maybe I'll get Mary Poppins out on dvd tomorrow instead.
I hope you're all avoiding phobias of the Mafia,

Keep healthy and happy,

And don't take photos of dead people!

S&S.
P.S:

You know you're boarding in a vast resort when you can ride into the neighbouring province and back again.