When the hell will winter end?

I for one don’t care. While the first part of this winter really sucked (Snowboarding wise), the last half has really picked up some steam. It’s been dumping in the mountains, and the snow keeps piling up. So I keep heading up.

Last weekend Tawn and I got up early and met Danno at Steven’s Pass ski resort. Actually, he met us, since he over slept a little. Normally we’d all drive up in one car, but he had to be back to work on Monday and Tawn and I decided we were going to go snowshoeing and stay the night in a NSF (National Forest Service) ranger cabin for a few days. We had never done this before and it sounded pretty cool.

Snowboarding on Sunday was great. As you can plainly see by this awesome action photo of me flying through the air on my board:

Tawn couldn’t go cause she tweaked her back at work a few weeks earlier. So she went snowshoeing instead. Sunday afternoon, instead of heading back to Seattle and home, we headed east and down in to the little town of Leavenworth, Wa. (Towns website) As you’ll gather from their website, it’s a cheesy little tourist town that models it’self after a little German Alpine village.

A few days before Tawn had found this site: www.recreation.gov and further in she found this Ranger cabin  and we reserved a night to stay there.

We woke up Monday morning and started heading towards the cabin. It was only 50 some miles way to drive so we got there about 11am. Parked at the trailhead and unloaded the packs and snowshoes from the Jeep. The trail to the cabin was actual pretty well packed down. So we did not even need to put on the snowshoes, even though the snow was probably 2-3 feet deep.

The hike to the cabin was only 2.5 miles and we got there in about an hour or a little more. Here are a few pictures of the outside of the little cabin:

And of course a few pictures of the inside for balance and closure….if you need that sort of thing:

As you can see we had to hang our packs up off the floor as there were a couple very industrious mice that lived in the cabin. They worked there little ass off all night trying to get into everything. Tawn kept throwing boots at them during the night as they rattled around in the kitchen trying to get into the pots on the stove.

That little stove may not look like much, but we got a little over zealous in the loading of the firewood and got the tempature in the cabin up to 90 degrees F. We had to go outside and stand in the snow to cool off and open the windows a few times. :)

We mostly sat around, read some books or took a few hikes, oh and tawn found a small piece of an old sleeping pad or something under one of the bunks, so she decided to climb up the hill behind the cabin and slide down on her new found ‘booger’. And as luck would have it, I had the camera with me, and turned on:

On tuesday we were going to do some more hiking and try to find a few Geocaches that were in the area, but when we woke up. It had snowed 6 inches over night and was still dumping. So we decided to just cook some breakfast and head out. We did not want to get stuck on the East side of the Pass if they closed it due to avalance danger.

This is a picture of Tawn getting ready to leave, wearing her Snoopy hat that she has had since she was 5 years old. Her head is still the same size!! WTF :)

And one last shot of Tawn, Me and the cabin……Thanks cabin!

My hat is not that old and my head size is steadily increasing in size….! WTF indeed.

Posted in Adventures, CB, snowboarding, Tawn, videos | Leave a comment

What have we been up to?

When we last heard from the crew, Tawn was doing some under water work on the boat. That was back in October. What the hell have be been up to since then? Lets see….

Tawn had to work on Thanksgiving this year…I however did not. So me and my buddy Dan drove up to Canada to Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort for 4 days or so of early season snowboarding.

We got a pretty late start out of town on Wednesday, the day before T-day. So we got a room in downtown Vancouver for the night. Roamed around downtown and sampled some of Vancouver’s finest beer….and rum…and scotch….and…….

Woke up close to 11 am turkey day and headed toward Whistler. Which in case you did not know is going to be the site of the 2010 Winter Olymipics! meh….whatever…the olympic suck. But, it is a very scenic hour drive from Vancouver to Whistler Village however.

We hungout for three days and snowboarded and of course participated in much apres ski. The snow was not exactly awesome but it was the first trip of the year, so you can’t really complain.

I can however complain about this:

That was the only picture taken on the whole trip. It’s seemed funny at the time. Now it’s creepy. That is my buddy Dan.

The following weekend me and tawn sailed the boat over to Blake Island. We had not been to the island for almost a year and due to some annoying mechanical issue, had not had the boat away from the dock in over two months.

We built a couple bon fires on the beach and did some hiking around the island. And the sail back home was sweet. Rainy and cold but fun.

There were a few more weekends snowboarding, then on Xmas. We had a bunch of our friends that were orphans and had no family to spend xmas with over to the boat. We all just hung out, watched movies and ate a crap load of turkey and noodles. It was a fun time.

The next big trip was in Feburary. Me, Tawn, Dan flew down to Sayulita Mexico to meet up with Scotty and Angie. We had rented a condo on the beach and spent 4-5 days hanging out, and learning…sorta…to surf. That was an awesome trip. We will be going back next winter.

After a few missed flights and a days detour down to San Diego to visit very quickly with Tawns Aunt Jane, Uncle Tom,  Aunt and Cousins Jilly & Brian and there kidsWe flew into Puerto Vallarta, then grabbed a cab to Sayulita. I was the last one to arrive. Tawn got on a flight 2 hours before I did. So by the time I got there, they were all waiting for me on the balcony. It got more than a little drunk out that night. Surfing the next day was a bit rough, but fun as hell. The water was like 78 degrees. Much, much warmer than it is back home in Seattle, even in the middle of the summer.

Unfortunatly as we were packing for the trip down, I decided that the batteries on the camara were charged up enough. They however were not.  So the only pictures we have are the few that Scotty took.

The first part of March found us back up in Whistler BC for another Snowboarding weekend with Danno, his brother Reid and a couple of his buddies from Tennessee.

Which brings us up to date. Boring quick and not too many laughs….I must be losing my touch. I’ll try better next time.

CB…

Posted in CB, Palarran, snowboarding, Weekend trips | 3 Comments

Oops, been awhile since I posted anything. (CB)

Ok, snowboarding season is over. Good thing too, since I sorta tweaked my left knee a little bit the last time we went up. The upside of this for you, the readers of this lame little website is you no longer have to watch stupid video of me or Tawn snowboarding like this anymore:

The downside, you now have to look at picture of me and tawn doing boating stuff.

Let’s see, what have we been up to since that last video was taken? Hrmmm, lets see. I think that video was taken up at Crystal Mountain around the first of March. So that would mean that the weekend or two after that would have been the 8th annual St. Paddy’s Day Pub Crawl/Death March.

That if the name does’nt clue you in, is an annual event that takes place on….St. Paddy’s day. Where starting at 10am we hit one bar an hour for 12 hours on a planned out walking route through downtown Seattle. It is hell on earth but fun as hell!! :)

I took a look through the pictures from this night…..Not alot worth posting in there. :) But there was this one, that I really like:

Tawn & CB riding the S.L.U.T

This was taken about 3/4 of the way through the crawl. Apparent by the fact that Tawn is swinging from the hand rails on the S.L.U.T. (South Lake Union Trolley). And sadly the odd folks in the background are friends of ours. Not so much Ti & Luke, but I’m not sure what the hell Eric is up to back there??

Other than that, we took a few weekend boat trips….hang on a sec and let me see if I can dig up a picture or two…………

Ahh here we go. Later in March we took off at night right after work and sailed over to Blake Island and met up with our very good friends Scott and Angie on Ghost as well as a few other friends. I’ve written about Blake Island before. It is a small island which the entire thing is a State Park. The only way to get there, obviously is by boat. So it is very chill and relaxed and rustic, even though it is only 8 miles from Downtown Seattle:

Seattle Skyline at night

We took a few other trips, but to be honest, nothing very exciting or noteworth. And what few pictures we did take, are sort crappy.

Oh and I almost forgot. As if we did’nt have enough boats or spend too much time sailing, we bought a little 10 foot sailing dinghy. Mostly for goofing around on in and around the marina, check it out:

New Dink

That last picture is mostly for Tawn’s dad, so he can get an idea of what the boat looks like.

Other than a few scuba diving trips, and unfortunatly work, that is about all we have been up to. I’ll try to update the site more often.

Posted in Adventures, CB, Palarran, snowboarding, Tawn, Weekend trips | 1 Comment

In case you haven’t noticed, we do a lot more snowboarding than sailing in the wintertime. And here in the PNW we have been getting dumped on snow wise. Almost everyday has been powder days. Yesterday was no exception. Tawn was sick as hell and had to stay home. So up to the mountain (Crystal Mountain) I went.

While I was up there I decided to see if I could film while I was snowboarding. Turns out I could, it also turns out I cannot do it very well. It’s alot harder than you would think to hold a small camera reletively still while sliding down the side of a mountain at 30 miles an hour and dodging trees at the same time.

Actually, it did’nt turn out to bad for a first attempt. Don’t make fun of the way I’m talking…it was cold as hell and my lips were frozen. Or maybe that’s the way I always sound and just never realized it.

Posted in Adventures, CB, snowboarding | Leave a comment