No, we did not go heli-skiing in BC...BUT we geared up for backcountry skiing. "Oh, they saved up their bonus money like responsible people", you may say...nope. Buying AT/Randonee ski gear is not much cheaper than a heli-ski trip, actually. And, well, we bought a car also. That put us over a little...
Bought a 2011 Civic EX, and it has been named Frank. I needed a car that gets better than 15 mpg for my next three years of daily shit commute through all the finest rush hour traffic that Denver has to offer to get to school. We were looking at a FIT Sport, but the Civic was nicer, same mpg, and ended up being cheaper as they needed to move it off the lot and they sold it to us for $2K under invoice. We couldn't pass up the deal. We kept both the trucks. The 4Runner has like 168,000 miles on it and the insurance on it is like $400/year at this point. We've beat the hell out of that truck and it aint worth much...so we put a new suspension on it, new tires, and decided we're running Big Iron into the ground...plus I love that truck and we need it for our mountain adventures. The Muthaship (Sequoia) is needed for family trips to fit people + dog + crap. So yes, now we are one of those idiot three-cars-for-two-adults families...
Back to the gear. I am going to pick it up from Bent Gate Mountaineering in Golden, today. We bought a few pieces of demo gear to cut costs, which for me was the binding...but here's the setup:
Dynafit TLT 5 Mountain TF-X boots we both got these boots, they were the splurge...they are unbelievable...lighter than our LaSportiva mountaineering boots! Maybe even more comforable, since they are custom fitted by the shop and actually hinge at the ankle in walk mode and the LaSportivas are very stiff...
I got Dynafit Manaslu skis. Bent Gate had a pair in my size on clearance...they weigh 6 lbs! Then I got a demo binding for them to put on there. Chad got the same boots and some K2 demo skis.
Going to tkd every day is wearing me down, but only six more weeks of this intense training before the big test. Had some major hip/gluteus medius issues early in the year from sitting on my can for all of Oct - Dec. My hip was actually catching sometimes when I walked. After over a year of being therapy-free, I had to go see Bob. What a shame. Shortly thereafter, I wrecked my back shoveling snow. Then I kicked a person in the knee sparring and badly bruised, maybe even fractured, my foot. Then I kicked someone in the elbow two weeks later in the same exact spot. Now the only good thing that came out of any of this is that I got the full treatment form Bob...which is always fun and involved him touching my butt. BONUS. :) I'm almost better now...still some stiffness in my hips, a touch of "patty-ass" but as Bob says...the way I play, and I'm probably malnourished, dehydrated, not warmed up enough, and/or drunk all the time: something is always going to hurt. So, I interpret that as: a) he wants me to make a weekly standing appointment forever for him to fix me regularly. b) he never wants me to come in again. Or, c) I need to start playing sports like a goddamn old lady to preserve my fragile body...whatever...none of that is happenin. As a concession I promise to drink more water, less beer. there. I did manage to wean myself off of the chocolate and avoided the obligatory 10 lb winter weight gain...that's been nice.
Cameron just told me he was going to count to 100: "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 14, 16, 80, 90, elevendy, 29, 28, 27, 25, 100."
Music: recently into The Epilogues, Black Keys, Rise Against, AwolNation. I have actually warmed up to Rev Theory too. Bought the Hell yeah song a while back after hearing it on the radio and thought it would be a good workout/skiing song, so now I got the new album and it's pretty good. The usual fare I guess...but glad to have some new material to cover.
~~~~OK...so I saved this as a draft for two weeks, now I"m back...~~~~~
The new Foos record owns me! Walk is my favorite, then Burning Bridges and Rope...the hard ones. Dave Grohl is totally yummy. I read in Rolling Stone that he is big into mountain biking...rock star that is also athletic? Impure thoughts....
CJ has started taekwondo again and had his blue belt test last weekend. He did so well that they gave him a student of the month award...only two kids out of about 50 people got it! I was really proud of him. He worked hard to do well, and even surprised me during his test. Here we are the happy martial arts mommy and son:
Cam had his 4th birthday last week too! He has made it another year without being locked in the dog kennel...barely...heh...I can't believe he's 4, I feel like he just showed up at this gig! He is definitely the karmic answer to "I hope you get a child just like you" for me. He and I butt heads a lot...it's going to be interesting when he gets older, indeed...but I wouldn't have it any other way. We'd be a pretty boring family without him. He's the "life of the party", for sure, whether that in a productive way or not.
So the day after I picked up our skis at Bent Gate, I took them for a spin up at Winter Park. Great on soft stuff, totally sketch on ice. These skis are so light and have a rocker tip so they ski really short. It took me a bit to get the confidence to carve on them but once I did, and I stayed off the ice, they were sweet. Poppin down moguls on the front of Mary Jane like there wasn't even any bumps there. What bumps? These are just tight turns!
So we were very excited to try out the skis for their intended purpose - spring mountaineering...Chad took the day off and we went up to Quandary this past Friday. He hasn't done Quandary and the skiing is mellow with no real avy danger to speak of, so we were all in and psyched! We resigned to the fact that we were heading out on new gear and that there was inevitably going to be some difficulty at some point, so we should just take it easy and have fun. I think we started around 9am, which was fine because we neeeded the temp up to warm up the snow a little bit. However, we noticed that the wind was picking up above as we left the parking lot...The skinning through the trees was totally fun. Snowshoes just became obsolete. The mountain had 4-5" of snow on it from the night before, and I cut trail the entire time and wasn't even sweatin' it. The boots were very comfortable. I felt good for a minute when we got about a mile in and there were a few ladies out on snowshoes who were not experienced in winter navigation and were turning back because they couldn't find the trail and were lost. We had a little chat with them stating that no I didn't bring a map or GPS...you just need to go up and you can't go wrong here as long as you follow that rule...at first I could tell they thought we were a little nuts, but what do you expect the trail to be visible under 4 feet of snow?! So we left and weren't sure what they were going to do, but saw that they were following our tracks after a while. Finally, we were the people who knew what we were doing and not the 'tards...only took 10 years. Chad and I agreed that you have to pay your 'tard dues out in the mountains, and we've paid up by now...So anyway, we were having a great time for about an hour and we got to tree line. We took a little break behind some of the last big evergreens and ate a bit and put on our ski helmets and goggles...by now the wind was howling down the ridge and we knew that this was our last respite before we made a go of it. So we then entered the effing Jet stream. We made it up the first tier of the ridge getting blasted in the face the entire time. The thing we ended up being unprepared for was the temperature. It was a nice sunny warm day, but with the wind it was actually very cold and our hands and faces were feeling it. We had another mile or so to the top in the exposed, I'm guessing 50-60mph, wind and we knew we weren't going to make it. So, we called it and with our hands being cold plus the wind we struggled a bit to wrangle our skins and lock our boots/skis into ski mode and headed down. This portion of the ski down alternated between wind drifts and complete rock hard wind slab and I was having trouble staying upright on my skis. Chad fell once and his ski popped off. But once we got back into tree line it was very fun. Then I fell once when I hit a surprise ice slab in the middle of a nice pillowy meadow and tweeked my wrist/thumb but it wasn't that bad. I quickly gained the understanding that you can't just rip it down here in the trees...you don't know what the hell you're sliding over or if it's sufficiently covered. We generally followed our tracks from coming up and got back down to the base in about 15 minutes...the joy of having skis was solidified at that point. Then we went to the Dillon Dam Brewery for some celebration. We felt like it was a good first day out, I mean, we couldn't expect to make it under those conditions...I have some video but can't find my wire to download now so that will have to wait. We're going to try to go again soon.
I broke down and got my hair streaked. It's pretty cool to me and Chad, but it was mellow for a first time so nobody is noticing - I'm still deciding if that's good or bad. It just looks like I"ve spent time in the sun. But that's an improvement over the doo-doo flat brown I had. At least the doo-doo has a little flair now. Now the seal is broken. Next is dental work, liposuction and a boob job. Naw, that's only if we move to southern California then I can be on the Real Housewives. No - in fact, sometimes I hate the boobs I even have. THey just cause problems for sports. I think I was meant to be a dude. Here's the theory: my parents have actually never had sex...my conception was mythologically immaculate and by Zeus. I was supposed to be the reincarnation of Perseus. But Athena found out and was ticked that Zeus was messing with a mortal, so when the Y sperm was about to get in, Athena called in a hit and her super X sperm ate that Y sperm right before it got in. So really, that explains a lot, see? As for my sister...well, she was adopted from Russia. That's what I've always told her anyways. (and yes, I recently watched Clash of the Titans)
Medical school starts in 7 weeks and I received the schedule for the summer yesterday. Holy shit. I have 5 hours per day of anatomy - split into a 1 hour lecture and 4 hour cadaver lab. Then there's another 2 hr class in the morning...alternating between subjects - exercise science and histology. SEVEN hours solid of class per day with a 1 hr lunch, and sometimes there is meetings scheduled for lunch hour. WELL, my plan of treating this like a full time job just went out the window. Looks like it's tax/audit busy season for the entire summer...I'm probably looking at 60-70 hr weeks. sweet. However, the pressure to be a rock star is off, I mean, I'm in the club now, so I can get a few Bs here and there. Perfection is not the plan...survival is the plan...
We're going to Siesta Key, Florida again the second week of May. We realized it's the only possible week to go on a family vacation while it's nice and warm in Florida this entire summer. We had such a great time last summer that we didn't want to experiment with a new place. Excited to get my tan on. I'm currently disgustingly pale.
We went to see The Epilogues about a month ago, and saw Bad Religion with Rise Against on Saturday. Both shows were totally awesome, and I got to get all sluttied up so that's always fun. I had a really low cut and tight zipper-up-the-front top on and super skinny jeans with heels and when I got to security they were patting people down. I walked up to the dude and put my arms out and said..."I don't really have space to pack heat tonight" and he got a big smile on his face and said "I can see that" and ran his hand down my spine and sent me thru. That was funny. The Fillmore only had Miller Light, MGD, Fat Tire and Dales for beers. I don't really like Dale's and Fat Tire has run it's course for me, so I was stuck with MGD all night. Talk about a hangover and I didn't even drink that much. Then the next day I had to go to church in the morning and black belt test practice for two hours. That was enjoyable.
So that about covers it for now. I've been skiing a lot in the waning weeks of ski season, just doing the minimum to get by in physics, and working out feverishly for the black belt test.
You're one adventurous family, I'd tell you that, hehe. Good choice on the new car, by the way. The Civic is nice and reliable. I used to drive one long time ago--the hatchback. It was later modified into a topless sports car but I don't want it anymore. The price is also a bargain, I think you got it for a steal. Congratulations.
Posted by: Chad Parmenter | June 21, 2011 at 08:21 AM
Congratulations on that student month award! Your kid deserves it. Hmm...Who among those Desperate Housewives you like the most? Eva Longoria's liposuction was a success, thanks to that she'll never have to worry about a redo again. When do you plan to have your liposuction?
Posted by: Geoffrey Lelia | December 30, 2011 at 09:05 AM