GO!!!!!!

So it's all go now! Winter's on!! Hurray!!!

But... the only snag with the big dumps we've had this past week, is the accompanying temperature, which has plummeted to proper brass monkey level - ie: you'll really freeze your brass monkies off (monkey for some of us) if you spend more than 0.5 seconds outside dashing to your car (it's a full on expedition for us to go and check the mail at the moment). -it's minus 30 as I write this late Sunday morning.

Winter had been holding back for November, and even allowed me to get one last kick of the mountain bike in K - Country (however, the mountain bike has clearly had enough for this season, as on this final ride it decided to spit its dummy out and give up.....)

Fortunately, the rear mech decided to wrap itself around my cassette whilst breaking the chain at the top of the first greulling climb, so that I could freewheel most of the way back to the parking lot. That'll teach me to be greedy and try to get one last hit of the trails. Since then however, the snow has really flown and so there's nowt by skis and boards to be hitting the trails now! So I'm resigned to the wind trainer and rollers for a good while (but having hooked up with the Speed Theory bike Team, am getting hellish workouts with them on Mondays and Wednesdays - which is awesome! and should have me in good shape for the next race season - when I'll be hitting the asphalt to race as well as the dirt).

This Saturday was going to see a first stint into the backcountry up on the Icefields Parkway - although neither I or Brad fancied running the gauntlet of the natural avalanches which are falling as easy as French speedos on a nudist beach, or the thought of minus 45 degree windchill - as much as I love the boarding, I also value keeping my extremities too!
Even shovelling the driveway created an agonizing surge of the good old screaming barfies;

As usual the photo doesn't quite sell the story as it should, but I wasn't going to hang around getting a good photo of the bloody driveway and the snow - a 2 second dash to the edge of the garage was all I could muster before I began to weep and had to run back inside.

Mrs. W. is nearly set for the holidays - they break up on Wednesday, so she's been getting all the kids into the festive season and when your lesson plan looks like this...

then no wonder Brina's having a good time teaching this year - although I think maybe she had to eat all the gingerbread men in order to grade them!!!

We're off to Panorama next weekend for a few days ski-ing/boarding, and with all this new snow it should be great! I missed posting something last week, but my OCD compels me to meet the 52 posts a year mark, so no doubt I'll have some more inane prattling on posted up here pretty soon - as time is running short for 2008.

Crank up the heat,

S&S.