The T3sk3y Defenestrator

Sunday morning was our last day with Jahn and Amy since they had to head south for a meeting with friends and for a midnight flight home. Instead of rushing right off to ski, we went into the village for breakfast so that we could all spend another couple of hours together. We did a little light shopping and had breakfast at the Brasserie.

Sunday morning in Whistler village

Around noon, Heather and I packed up for a last afternoon of skiing. We decided to ski Blackcomb one more day and got the reduced price half-day ticket. The day started very slowly for both of us – four straight days really took a toll on our legs. We only got a run or two in before taking a late lunch break. It seemed bad to wasted 30 minutes when we only had 3.5 hours during which to ski – but it made all the difference in the world.

Before lunch, we skiied about 3000 vertical feet. After lunch (which ended at about 3:00) we crammed in 11,000 vertical feet – and it felt good. We always managed to get to a lift just seconds before closing to get one last ride up. Our trip ended with another run from the top all the way to the bottom.

We skipped apres ski to get cleaned up quickly so that we could make it back to the village for the Fire & Ice show. In spite of getting on the wrong bus and touring the upper village, we succeeded. The Fire and Ice show is a weekly Sunday night event where they have aerial stunts along with fire twirlers and loud music. The grand finale is a big burst of fireworks over the mountain. It’s a cool show – and they are bucking to become part of the 2010 Olympic closing ceremonies.

One of the jumpers at the Fire and Ice show

After I nearly froze my wife and Beth watching the show, we shopped our way through the village and had Indian food across the street from our condo.

Total vertical feet on Sunday: about 14,000

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Saturday finally brought the brilliant blue skies to Whistler. It was glaringly bright outside and we scrambled for the sunscreen after downing our breakfast of blueberry pancakes provided by Heather and Beth.

The group voted to ride Blackcomb on Saturday since the weather was so bad on Thursday. We actually uploaded and left our shoes at Whistler base so that we could return there for Apres Ski. It was a glorious day to ski – we immediately went to the top and started skiing laps up on the glacier under ideal conditions. The locals just kept echoing what we were feeling.. “The conditions are perfect!” – “The conditions are perfect” – “The conditions are perfect”, and so forth.

Mark and Beth near the top of Blackcomb

Once again, we finished the day on the western “Seventh Heaven” slopes and made it to the very top just as they closed the lifts. We skiied from the top of Blackcomb all the way down to the base of Whistler in one long run. I’m not sure how far that is, but it’s 5000 vertical feet and it has to be several miles.

I also made a funny observation.. we ski things in “Minnesota Units”. Most ski hills here are between 300 and 350 vertical feet – so that’s how far we ski between breaks. We go down about 350 vertical feet, then stop and wait for people to catch up. Strange..

Beth and Heather at the top of the Glacier Express on Blackcomb

We went straight to the Garibaldi Lift Company (the GLC) for our Apres ski so that we could hear the Hairfarmers – the best live band in Whistler and the band that played at our wedding in 2004. Unfortunately, everybody else wanted to see them also and we weren’t able to get inside until just before the last song. That didn’t stop us from enjoying our Kokanee and nachos on the patio outdoors, though! Dinner on Saturday was at Caramba! – a woodfire pizza and pasta restaurant in Whistler.

Total vertical footage on Saturday: 20,800

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Oh baby.. my two favorite game concepts fused into one game.. Battlefield and Mechs.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Battlefield franchise since the first time I played 1942. It’s so great to play a first-person shooter with roles, goals, some strategy, vehicles, etc. I’ve also been a big mech-head – I play the miniature version of Battletech frequently. So, merging these babies together has got me all in a lather. Check it out..

Battlefield 2142 Trailer

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While I was down in Dallas, I decided to surprise my wife with a nice swimsuit photo.

I thought it turned out rather well…

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Friday morning started with a nice breakfast of eggs and Canadian Bacon (what else?) prepared by Heather and Beth. We bundled up and headed off to Whistler Mountain under mixed skies. It was alternately bright blue and driving snow, depending on where the clouds were.

The Black Tusk as viewed from Whistler on Friday

Beth and Heather joined us on the slopes today. Beth thrilled us agaiin with her “one speed fits all” approach to skiing. Green or Black Diamond – Beth doesn’t alter her speed a bit. This was probably a good thing since Heather was “taking it easy” in her “delicate state”. More on this later..

The ladies at the start of the 2010 Olympic Women’s Downhill course

It turned out to be a fabulous day of skiing, though all of our legs were paying the price. The weather continued to improve as the day went on and we finished under bright blue skies again. We were close to the last people down the hill since we were able to catch one of the last lifts up at the end of the day.

Apres ski was spent at Black’s Pub drinking Kokanee and having chicken tenders with fries. We regrouped later that evening after getting cleaned up to have stir fry at the Mongolie Grill

Total vertical footage on Friday: 17,800

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I’m back from a very much needed vacation to Whistler, BC where I got in four glorious days of skiing. I sort of hate the fact that it took me until mid-March before getting on the skis for real this year, but better late than never, right? I think I may have been a little burned out on skiing last year since I only got out three days the entire year. After basically taking last year off, I was very ready to do some serious schussing.

It was a fantastic trip – there was nearly a foot of new snow followed by three glorious blue sky days. Even the locals were raving about how it was the best conditions in years. As an example, the lower 1500′ of the mountain is usually slop and muck and is very difficult to ski down. This trip, it was good skiing all the way down to the village.

I’ll have several posts over the next couple of days telling the tale of our trip.

Day 1 & 2 – Minneapolis to Whistler

Heather and I flew to Seattle last Wednesday evening with our friends Amy and Jahn Dyvik. Heather’s friend Beth (who lives in Seattle) joined us on the trip as well, but she had class on Thursday and wasn’t able to come up until Thursday night. Heather waited to give Beth some company on the drive up – so we dropped off Heather in Seattle and I went north with Jahn and Amy.

Mark on Blackcomb Mountain on Thursday afternoon

Thursday was all the best and all the worst Whistler had to offer. It snowed nearly a foot between Wednesday and Thursday. When conditions are like that, it means that visibility is near zero. It was the greatest snow – and we couldn’t see our ski tips. Things went rough until the Dyviks decided to buy goggles over lunch. This helped – but it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we were able to cut loose. Suddenly, things cleared up and we rampaged for the last hour in the bright sunlight.

The Dyviks on 7th Heaven Thursday afternoon

After some Apres Ski at Merlins and a quick shower, we went to dinner at Earl’s and had their yummy mango margaritas. Heather and Beth finally arrived at about 11 PM Thursday evening after a two hour unplanned detour through Vancouver. They got some wrong directions and made a wrong turn that took them an hour in the wrong direction.

Thursday vertical footage total: 15,200

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Well, at the moment, I’m sitting in room 812 of the Dallas Hyatt Reunion hotel.

I’ve been in Dallas all week at Texas Instruments’ Developers Conference (DevCon). TI signal processing is used very heavily in digital media devices – so just about everyone here is somehow involved with digital video, audio, photography, or communication. I’ve seen so many great looking and great sounding audio/video devices. It sure looks like the next generation of home theater and portable toys are going to be awesome.

Now, I’m just wrapping up a few last minute things before heading to the airport to try to jump an early flight home. I really hope it goes better than the trip to Dallas on Monday. We ended up arriving three hours late after TWO broken airplanes. The first one had an undisclosed problem that made it unsuitable for flight. We were unloaded and moved to a different plane where we sat for another hour while they fixed a second undisclosed problem.

The day got a lot better when Scott and I had dinner at Texas de Brazil – a Churrascaria, or Brazilian steakhouse. They bring you a veritable torrent of meat on skewers. You have a little “Si” or “No Gracias” indicator that says whether you want meat or not. I think they were delivering about 20 different meats. I’ve been to a few before, but this was the best I’ve ever been to. My birthday dinner on Tuesday was great too – Scott and I went for TexMex and enjoyed some Fajitas and Margaritas. Last night was spent at Dave & Busters – the coin-op entertainment center. I’ve got a great picture from there of my early days that I’ll have to scan and post when I get home.

Fortunately we’re coming home before the pending NWA pilot strike!

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Sorry for the brief outage this morning. As it turns out, I’m a complete boob when it comes to domain name management. No, I didn’t forget to renew – it’s even better than that. I deliberately ignored the renewal notice because I didn’t think it applied to me. See, I changed registrars early in the t3sk3y.com era.. and apparently missed a key step. Therefore, the original registrar shut down the domain when the year ran out.

The interesting part of that is..

T3SK3Y.COM is 1 year old!!

It’s been a fun year.. and there has been a nice steady growth in readership. Thanks everyone for stopping by for a visit!

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