Day 111 - Snow boarding is not all fun and games

On Saturday, it was such a nice day that I decided to go snowboarding on my own while Sammy had to work......  Little did I know, he was going to have a CRAP DAY!

I dropped Sam off at work and headed over to Sunshine. The road was Icy but it's always Icy, so anyway I've got Winter tires so it's no worries. Or so I thought.....

So I've turned off the highway and I'm on my way to Sunshine Gondola doing about 60 - 40 km's. A bit of a sharp corner comes up and I should have adjusted my speed to around 20 km's per hour.

Suddenly the car starts drifting sideways and I panicked and over corrected which sent the car into a 360 spin across both lanes and slamming into the snow mound wall of the road.

( re-enactment )

( re-enactment )

After a second or two of sitting in the car thinking "what the hell just happened" I realise I'm facing the wrong way on a blind corner and my door is jammed by the wall of snow and I knew a car was coming around the corner in a few seconds as I saw it behind me earlier. 

Luckily she was doing a safe speed and saw me and pulled over. She was very nice about it and jumped in the drivers seat and spun the wheels whilst I pushed the back of the car. After a minute or two of nudging the car inch by inch and pushing to the point of exhaustion another guy pulled over and gave me the help I needed to finally push the car out. We all shook hands and said hope the day gets better. 

This experience reminds me of a story Justin and Sarah told me about of when they were living in Banff. Only they didn't have winter tires and I did. I thought these tires were like SUPER tires that never slip.... :)

So I park the car at the very end because it's a Saturday and every man and his dog is here, walk a mile to the gondola in -11 and in my snowboard boots. The gondola up to Sunshine Village is actually quite long and it's only moments before I realise snowboarding on your own is boring and I left the camera in the car, so I couldn't even take advantage of the beautiful day on the mountain top....

When I arrived I went straight to the highest peak I could find to offset the boredom, I knew every chairlift had a GREEN run so I didn't bother to research any runs. Of coarse once up the top I couldn't see anything as it was a whiteout with galling winds of 80 km's per hour. So much for the nice weather....

So with my luck I ended up accidentally doing 'Black Diamonds' all the way down, some of it on my knees . The worst part was watching a group of fricken snowboarding pro's doing massive air grabs right over me, literally.... 

So after a few BLUE runs which I was way more comfortable with, I decided to head home. I thought I might as well go to the very top of the mountain and snow board all the way back to the car park and skipping the gondola. About an hour later and I'm probably 200 metres away from the end, I'm tired, a little cocky and suddenly I'm air born, I have no idea how but I'm upside down in mid air at top speed and come crashing down on rock hard ice. I heard some thing crack which at first I thought was my spine but turns out was probably my board hitting something. 

( re-enactment )

My helmet saved my life for sure as I smacked the ground hard hip first and then my head and slid about 30 metres or so like a penguin. I just laid there for about 1 minute foggy and in agony. Two guys stopped and were talking to me but I couldn't move or respond to them. They were saying 

"Did you brake something, are you OK?" 

I just mutted 

"NO! aahhghghgh!!!!"

They then went to get a stretcher and a medic but for some reason I quickly felt alright. I got up and said

"I'm fine, seriously, I'm all good." 

I assured them I wasn't dying anymore, I must of just got winded and crawled to the side and laid in the snow trying to think of how this day could be any worse. 

I hobbled off to the car with a very bruised ego, drove home and told Sandrine of my disastrous day and collapsed on the couch. She was not impressed and suggested never snowboarding alone again. I agreed....

We did end up having a lazy day on Sunday and played with our macro lens and some matches ....

Trying to catch something that lasts a milli second is harder than you think.

 I hope you enjoyed my little rant about my shitty day boarding and our macro pics.

Off to Calgary for a convention in a few days so we'll have some city pics for ya soon.

Marc

Day 108 - The Tree Sisters in motion...

I was gonna go snow boarding today but I'm kinda buggered from setting up the Audio system at Lake Louise yesterday. 

                     

Example from Lake Louise in 2009.

As Sammy mentioned it's been snowing like crazy recently and we've kind of been stuck inside. But we have still managed to take the odd photo here and there.

I like this pic, the cool thing about living in the snow is you can easily track wild animals movements by the roads but in this case it's a guy (based on shoe size) with a car. 

Sammy and I decided to get a multi-function timer controlled remote shutter release. Basically a remote for our camera. This way we can take photos at regular intervals or super long exposures. 

I made a clip (above) of the mountains from down the street today. This was made by taking photos every 5 seconds. In my opinion it's too fast, next time I'm going to try 2 second intervals.

Short and sweet blog today. I hope you enjoyed the video.

Marc

Day 107 - Getting Cold in the Rockies

We haven't been taking any photos lately as it has been very cold and snowing!  Not that we are complaining, we finally had the chance to go snowboarding at Sunshine on Monday which was the best snow we've ever experienced!  I even learnt to get off the chairlift without falling over, which I was quite excited about!  Shame I couldn't repeat my performance a second time, but I guess practice makes perfect! I did manage to take turns but apparently I am a mixture or natural and goofy.... strange.

Sunshine is HUGE!  You have to take this gondola for ages (20 - 30 mins) to get to the top, which we loved as we were out of the wind and snow.  We went down the same green run 3 times, each time I was getting better, until the end when I wiped out and majorly bruised my back side ;-(  The funniest part is that Marc stacked it on a different run at the exact same time as me. He went down a more dangerous run which was narrow with big dips, he had to keep jumping constantly all the way down... CRAZY!

Marc had to work at the Lake Louise Ski Resort today, setting up for the Downhill Skiing World Championships.  He was so jealous that he couldn't go snowboarding as it was a beautiful day just after a huge dump overnight which actually closed the road from Lake Louise to Jasper.  They had over 55 cms in 48 hours, Marc said he actually saw people stuck in powder up over their knees!

Here are some photos from today, courtesy of Lake Louise Website:

View of the Chateau from the top of the ski hill.  Such a beautiful view!!!

Marc and I also went to the movies on Sunday and enjoyed a night in Banff, which was nice.  The temperatures have reached -21 last week.  Breathing in these temps hurts, so had to cover my face when walking to work.  Today wasn't as bad, only -6 this morning, but the side walk was very slushy on my way to work.

So that's all we have to report for now.  I'm working for the next few days and the snow is awesome so Marc might be going snowboarding on his own tomorrow, NOT FAIR!

Take care everyone!

Oh and here are some more pics of the dump we had the last day or so.

AWESOME

Day 100 - Woohoo

So I just did a recount on how many days we've been in Canada and realised that TODAY IS THE 100th DAY IN CANADA!!!

Marc and I have been doing alot of driving in the past 2 days, both of which were very early days.  We got to see a gorgeous sun rise yesterday as the sun doesn't come up till 8 am.  Here are some photos we got from the drive to Calgary, these were all taken from a moving vehicle, but I couldn't resist taking some shots, it was so NICE!

This is my favourite.  It is so Canada with the wire fence along the road....

Marc wanted me to take a photo of the sun behind this bridge, he thought it looked cool, he was right:

As the sun got higher, I took a few pictures on the other side of the highway, showing the nice morning sun light hitting the farms along the way..

This is the city of Calgary.  We hate going into the city, we always get lost and there are road works everywhere!! Man, we really are small town folks now!! The city did look awesome in this light though!

Yep you know you're in a city when you see one of these towers rising up high ...  It's crazy, do all cities have some secret contract that they must have a tower as part of their architecture ??

So that was yesterday.  We spent the morning helping my boss set up for a 4 day exhibition.  In 2 weeks, we gotta set up the same booth at another exhibition, so I was taking notes!!!

TODAY - on the 100th Day in Canada we experienced the scariest driving experience yet.. driving in a snow storm, on slippery icy roads, in the dark... It was CRAZY!  Lucky we had winter tyres! It was so cold that the condensation on the inside of the windows FROZZZZZZZEE!!  On the inside!!!  Anyway, I think pictures will give you a better understanding...

 Couldn't see a thing being other cars, let alone trucks!!

When we got to Golden, we couldn't believe how much snow there was everywhere....

 We stopped by the bakery for a cup of hot tea and I also got a BEAR CLAW... YUM!!!

Marc took an photo of me eating but it was over exposed, he still liked the arty look to it so here it is
(unedited except small exposure adjustment and cropped) 

This was too weird, we saw this sign on the way home and just a few meters behind it was our first BIGHORN SHEEP!

We were so happy to see him, we turned the car around and went back to get more photos.  Not a very safe thing to do in the middle of a windy and snowy road...but we got some cool pics!

How cool are these horns!!! They almost compromise his vision at certain angles...

Female bighorne sheep (as you see on the right below) also get horns but only tiny little ones.. so cute!

Check out this snow plower, blowing snow off the road.  We were stuck behind a few of these today and although I am happy they clean up the roads, it certainly got our car dirty and cold!

Here is a photo that will give you a good idea of the crapy conditions Marc had to drive through... he did a great job!

So there you go, sunny one day and snowing the next!  Our adventure continues, even though we don't have as many updates as we use to, sorry about that!  Sunshine (the ski resort closest to us) has now opened, so we'll be checking that out some time soon... well when I feel brave enough to give snowboarding another try..

Sammy ;-)