Solo turns

Merry Holidays all! Hope everyone got what they wanted for Xmas?

To respond to the previous comment from Paul, yes, I love Jazz. I am pretty picky about music, but varied. To quote the Treepeople (...sang seething with sarcasm), "Let me tell you who my favorite band is so you know who I am." So, if you were to look at my ipod, it's a mix of early late 70's-80's - ? punk/alternative (NoMeansNo, Victims Family, DK, Circle Jerks, Dog Faced Hermans, Buzzcocks, Fugazi, Treepeople and BTS, Clash, Ramones, Minutemen, Minor Threat, Stiff Little Fingers, Mission of Burma, Leatherface, etc.), to rock (Rush, Van Halen, Iggy & the Stooges, Porcupine Tree), to surf-esque tunes (Mr. Dale, Ventures, Link Wray, Man or Astroman), to some more random stuff my Belgian friend Stefaan has sent me from Japan and other places over the pond (Deep Turtle, Korekyojin, Yoshida Tatsuya, Koenjiyakkei, Ruins, etc.), and new additions of "crescendo-core" that I've gotten into lately (Mogwai, Kinski, Tortoise, Explosion in the Sky, Mono, etc.), and finally lots of classic old jazz (Miles, Sonny Rollins, Brubeck, Duke, Coltrane, Ornette, Art Blakey, etc.), oh, and John Zorn who has a bit of everything above depending on the release. You'll notice some blatanly obvious exceptions: rap and hip hop and reggae. Enough said (sorry, I just don't like those genres). Electronic I can stand sometimes but don't have any. Ska is also missing but I actually like some ska (Operation Ivy's first was a nice punk/ska album). So there it is...there's who I am.

So onto something completely different...SNOW. Ski season is here, the cross bike has been hung up for the year, the Hunter single is now the 1x8 fender'd mountain commuter, and the 69er sits in the corner waiting for next spring. All but the Hunter gets a rest this time of year. The futzing has switched from the bikes to waxing and scraping skis. Lately it's been green, Start Green wax, to be exact...which means it's freakin COLD. Squeaky loud snow. The skateskis are quick enough, but the downhill skis aren't in these temps.

Blisters are mostly healed up from last weekend's tour so I headed out to the Backdoor Spring for the first time of this year to check on coverage and condition of the snowpack. 2 below at the "Trailhead" and some serious wind were the weather conditions. But that's why i went here - below treeline with lots of trees for shelter and high potential for wind deposited snow! There's enough snow to ski in the northeast trees, but it's punching to the ground with only a little bit of consolidation in the middle. At least 4" of facets on the ground layer with a pretty poorly consolidated 2-3 feet above. It's just been too cold and not enough snow to get a lower TG here. So what you may be asking?! I say they were two runs of pretty good turns on the AT skis with breakable crust in opportune (random) places. I'm glad i had 'em as i would've been going over the bars on the teles today. Tomorrow is another day out in the BC hopefully with a good crew. Cheers, as winter is finally here!