Ski Season 2009 Condensed!

Emily and I got a lot of great days in this year. It certainly wasn't the snow we had last year that allowed me to front flip a 30+ foot cliff but it was enough for me to finally land a 40+ one straight to flat without hurting myself (the cliff in the photo of two kids looking over the top of it) as well as stomping my first 360 off a cliff band. Emily upped her game considerably learning how to jump turn and even huck a small ledge on the Upper Bowl (she is wearing the red jacket in the photo below). I would often use her as a prop in photos jumping over her head (thankfully she trusted me - look for her in the photos underneath me). The first time I jumped her (the photo of her under me below) I sailed far further than I had planned (50+ ft) and almost landed myself in a tree! I skied most of the season with Chris Holm who absolutely has amazed me with his skiing ability only having started last year. He's hucking significant ledges at SkiBowl and has been a great friend in taking shots of me hucking my own carcass.

Two weeks ago the skiing community lost one of it's hero's with the death of Shane McConkey. He has been my favorite skier for about 10 years now progressing the sport beyond what was thought possible. He basically invented ski base jumping (how he died) and revolutionized the ski industry with the first reverse side-cut spatula ski. His K2 Pontoon ski is the best selling powder ski in history winning awards for several years now. I hope to pick up a pair for next season. It sucked hearing that he died filming for MSP in Italy. He was a local in Lake Tahoe and a Squaw native. I was fortunate enough to meet him briefly at a donut shop in Tahoe while skiing there on vacation in 2005. He was a great guy and near the age of 40 he gave me hope all the time that I could still do amazing things on skis despite almost being 30. He will be missed.

So, rather than post weekly the best shots from the season I've condensed the best ones of the season into this lengthy post. Enjoy!

Black Butte Ranch & Hoodoo with Doug

Emily and I finally got to ski with my buddy Doug from Watershed Sciences. We went up to Hoodoo with him and stayed two nights at his family's house at Black Butte Ranch (the house is friggin' amazing). We spent Friday night watching the 80's ski movie Hot Dog which seemed to me an equal mixture of naked women and skiing. Emily found it amusing. It was demo day at Hoodoo on Saturday so Emily was able to try a pair of fat twin tips and I was able to try a pair of reverse camber Line EP Pro's that I've been looking at. Emily loved her fat skis and since then has decided to completely revamp her ski setup with an AT setup and fat skis. The Lines I tried were super fat (twice as fat as my current powder boards) but the reverse camber in the tails washed out easily in the wet powder of the rainy day and I think I ended up twisting my knee from it. I definitely want a pair of powder boards but I'm thinking more along the line of the Pontoons which don't have much reverse camber in the tails. It rained part of the day and after being soaked for several hours we all left the resort and headed to the Sisters to pick up some local beef for BBQ'n back at Black Butte Ranch. Doug knows how to cook meat better than anyone I've ever met so I picked up two big sirloins for just myself as well as two others for Doug and Emily. We literally ate so much food my stomach felt like it was going to burst. It was so relaxing chillin' in his hot tub and watching ski movies all night after a long wet day of skiing. I definitely would love to head back there sometime with him to make use of the house again, perhaps even for some golf or hiking in the summer time.

Corvallis Wine Walk

It was pouring rain today in the mountains so Emily and I decided to stay in town and go to the Wine Walk with Kevin and Jason Killian. During this yearly event wineries come to town and give out tastings at tables set up within all the local businesses. This is such a great idea because it brings people town and money to local businesses that need it in this terrible economy. You bring your own wine glass and the tastings are about a buck each which is even better then the Newport Wine festival. We walked around town from about 5 to 7 which wasn't nearly long enough to try the 30+ vendors that were there. Afterwards we all met up with heather and her friends at the sushi restaurant for dinner. Although it poured rain heavily the entire time it was refreshing to see how cool Corvallis can be once again. I think it made Emily love this town and part of the country even more. :)

Our Shit's Banana's Party

I never seem to have the time to hang out with anyone from Ruby's after work so when Nikki, Courtney and Britney threw a party a few blocks up from us on a Friday after I got out early we decided to go check it out. It was super casual and Emily and I didn't stay long but we had a good time while we were there. We even convinced Lund to crack an egg into his beer before chugging it down! Lauren passed out on a chair pretty quickly and Erik stopped by after he got out of work. Emily and I took off around 1am because we had to get up early for skiing the next day

Seafood and Wine Festival in Newport

After dragging our asses out of bed hungover after Hodak's party last night Emily and I drove to Newport with Kevin and Alexa. Kevin and Alexa are our new housemates (other side of our duplex). Alexa works at Watershed Sciences with me and Kevin is her awesome boyfriend. On a really weird "It's a small world" side note Alexa's cousin Evan Dewhirst was pretty much my best friend and roomate for 2 years at Bowdoin College. Alexa and Kevin are from Florida and now we are all in Oregon. So that connects 3 corners of the country (Maine, Florida, and Oregon). Kevin even wears a pop-top ring that Evan designed and marketed after college. What a coincidence!

Alexa drove us to the coast in her Fit (The Fit is Go!). It was

a rough ride of corners for me and I almost felt like puking several times! At the wine festival it cost us 5$ to get in and we got a wine glass to use for tasting. Each tasting was 1$ to 2$ and there were booths of seafood as well (although the oyster shooters weren't that big). We each dropped about 40 bucks tasting wine and then

another 10-20 in yummy seafood. It was costly but we all had a great time. One of the best wineries was Naked Winery with wine names such as Penetration Cabernet... which was actually really good. That booth was getting a lot of attention at the show. I'd bet there were over 60

different wineries at the show and we had time to only visit a small percentage of them. Kevin and Alexa bought a couple bottles but Emily and I returned empty handed.

Before we returned home we stopped by Agate beach to walk around the rocks and check out the critters as well as the beautiful Pacific. It was a very relaxing day and when we returned home we got to dog sit McKenzie for the evening who we always enjoy seeing.

Hodak comes home!

This weekend Hodak returned to Corvallis in usual fashion... with a keg party at our place. I cancelled a planned trip to Mt. Hoodoo with Doug so that Emily and I could throw Hodak a reunion kegger at our place with her favorite beer PBR that Anna picked up for the party. I bought some wood for the stove to keep us all warm and John Stevenson brought over a flip cup table. The party started around 8pm and wasn't over until about 3am when I pulled out the bed for Hodak who had long since passed out earlier on the couch next to Jed. Emily and I had gone out and bought a big blue tarp to throw up over our patio in case of rain and we are glad we did as it started to pour late that evening. Everyone was kept dry under the tarp except for Levi and John who decided to shotgun beers shirtless in the rain! On our 52" tv I took the time to put a slideshow up of the best photos from the "Hodak Days" in Corvallis which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. Hodak had to catch her flight the next morning. Emily and I found a note thanking us and telling us how messed up she was for her flight home... ha, typical Hodak fashion. I miss Hodak a lot. She was the life of the party here and everyone misses her. I was super happy that Emily and I were able to throw a really fun party for her.

Mouse!

Finally caught one of the two cute little mice we have in our last night. I plugged up it's little escape hole into the wall and then lunged for it twisting my knee. I caught it underneath our microwave safe container which has holes so it could breathe. In the morning I forgot to move my truck so Emily had to wake me up. I showed her the mouse quickly and then picked it up and put it on the table by slipping my OSU program pages underneath the bowl and scooping the critter up. I then went back to sleep.

2 hours later when I woke up I found that the mouse had chewed my program to pieces and made a little nest for itself in the bowl with my program schedule I had taken time to put together... whoops... payback from the mouse I guess. I then tried to dump it into my nalgene and it launched out at me instead forcing me to dive after it once again. Finally, I got the little squeeker into a friggin' nalgene and walked it down 25th street to deposit into an old couch behind one of the frats... I thought it was funny but now I worry more about the mouse getting a disease from the frats rather than vice versa!

Stairway Denied @ Platinum

Tonight Stairway Denied (Zeplin cover band) played a reunion concert at Platinum. I usually hate going to Platinum but Emily had never been there before so we thought we would check it out and look for my buddy Erik Galvan (he bartends with me at Ruby's and also at Platinum). We never found Erik but we bumped into Matt Schwartzcopf instead and headed over to the Peacock to finish out the night. We got a cab home. It was a fun night!

New Years at SkiBowl

This year Hartz got a cabin up in Rhodendron, OR just a few miles west of Ski Bowl where we all went for New Years. He got the cabin for several days but Emily and I could only make it for New Years Eve because of our work schedules. Emily and I drove up early in the day and after skiing great snow all afternoon we were exhausted by the time all of our friends started showing up to ski during the evening hours under the lights. Emily pushed herself hard and learned to ski a steep little chute near "Toshi's Drop". Hartz, Amy, Chris, Tiff, and many others (about 15 in the house although Hartz only booked for 2 people.. ha). Apparently the fireworks at Meadows and Timberline were cancelled due to the weather so all the crowds drove down to Ski Bowl and the place was packed! On our last run down the mountain I veered off towards the roped-off terrain park to check out the jumps. Apparently Emily followed me and never saw the rope cutting across the slope and close-lined herself hard giving herself a vicious case of rope-burn across the neck but thankfully no whiplash or other injury. She was hurting for the remainder of the night. We were both super tired and barely made it to midnight before leaving SkiBowl and heading down to the house. Emily and I got there first and started a fire and got our sleeping bags out for the night. At about 1am everyone else started to roll in and play drinking games. Emily had a hard time sleeping because of her neck and I had a hard time because I kept thinking Holm and Hartz were messin' with me to get back at me for the COAS ski trip 2 years ago when I tagged their faces after they passed out! I woke up

clean thankfully!

The conditions were pretty icy and cold and Emily's neck was very painful so we decided to head home the next day and take a few days for her to heal up. It was a fun New Years and I was happy to have a warm place to sleep this time instead of two years ago in my cold truck with Aaron after he hooked up with that girl in the hot tub! Ha! The image above is us choosing the lowest letters for scrabble and all of us choosing "o"... what are the chances of that!

Christmas

This Christmas I blew through 100,000 frequent flyer miles to fly Emily and I home to visit our families.  We decided to split the vacation half and half to make it fair for our relatives.  On Friday after I got out of Ruby Tuesday's Emily and I drove down to Portland with Bridget who also had a flight the following day to stay overnight at a Quality Inn near the airport.  This is always a great idea as they allow you to park your car in the parking lot for an entire week for only another 15 bucks as well as allowing you a good nights sleep before an early flight.  We picked up some beers and microwave dinners for the hotel room before settling in to watch some tv.  

Emily and I completely lucked out on Saturday as we zig-zagged across the nation missing every single major storm.  We left Portland literally hours before the city received nearly two feet of snow which is unheard of in the valley.  I read that if you combined all the snow Portland has received in the past 15 years it still wouldn't equal what that storm delivered.  In Chicago we flew out of the hub just as a storm was hitting there and we arrived in Hartford/Windsor Locks just 5 hours before a Nor'Easter hit the state.  We even managed to not lose any luggage or presents along the way either.  

On Sunday Emily and I woke up at her parents in a blizzard so decided to relax there for

the day rather than risk driving her mom's Mercedes in a blizzard to see my parents.  It was the first truly relaxing day I've had in months and really enjoyed it.  On Monday we drove up early to visit my dad in the hospital before heading over to my mother's house.  He was forced to leave the Landing where he has been staying because of a minor case of pneumonia.  He looked really bad and it was hard to see him in that condition.  We had to wake him from sleep and he was pretty out of it and a bit confused.  Just two weeks ago he turned 90.  I had to have a very hard conversation with him about dying with his doctor, Dr. Hoy, who stopped in to check on him.  Basically, he is being kept alive by machines (his dialysis every other day) because he has acute kidney failure.  He doesn't seem to want to let go but he also seems miserable and lonely. I think he is very scared of death.  After visiting with him for an hour with 

Emily who is always very supportive I left the hospital in tears trying to transition myself from utter sadness to happiness for when I would see my daughter and her mom who is visiting "Nana" for Christmas as well.

Emily and I put together a rocking horse for Ellie before they arrived at Aunt Catherine's Monday night.  We had a nice dinner with my mom before we all drove to Saratoga to meet up with Ellie and Nicolette.  Emily and I visited for about an hour before we took off to grab some drinks with Emily's old roomates as well as my High School buddy Matt Jones and the guy who hooked Emily and I up, Mike Lamonto.  Everyone was stoked to see Emily and I again and it felt like everyone in the room were couples which was nice.  Emily's old roomate Cassie got engaged the night we flew into

Hartford so everyone was excited about that.  I met Matt out at a bar and we chatted for a long time to catch up.  He apparently plans to move with his wife Sarah to Arizona as far as I could tell.  We don't talk enough but it is hard with our busy schedules and lives on opposite ends of the country.

   Mike loaned me a laptop charger which I had forgotten at Emily's parents so I could put together the digital picture frame for my father the following day.  Emily and I stayed until about 2am when we decided we should get back to Queensbury.

  It sure is nice having Emily's mom's Mercedes with heated seats!  We are not used to East Coast weather anymore.  

Having Ellie, Emily, Nicolette and my mom together for a couple days was very nice.  Ellie really seemed to like Emily and Emily was great with my daughter.  It was hard to stay excited all day every day because my thoughts kept drifting to my father lying alone in hospital bed for the holidays.  Nicolette and Ellie decided to bring an inflatable mattress to "Nana's" to stay there for Tuesday night (our fake Christmas Eve for Ellie).  All day tuesday we hung out in the house and played with Ellie, reading her books and even caring her around in the garbage bucket she climbed into (it was clean).  Ellie was so cute helping us peel potatoes in her high chair and break apart cauliflower.  She loved watching Nickolodean's Noggin's channel of educational cartoons for toddlers.  She is incredibly strong and loves to climb up on everything including all of us.  Her giggles and squeels of joy were great to hear in person and she is talking all the time now and can even sing the entire Twinkle Twinkle little star at just 2 years old.

Very impressive, must get her brains from her mom.  We had a wonderful ham dinner on our fake Christmas Eve and Ellie stayed up for quite a while before finally passing out.  

Christmas morning was really fun and I think Ellie enjoyed her new rocking horse and Sprigg Toy that Emily and I got her.  At first she didn't feel like opening presents but as soon as we started to she got right into it.  I got the

 2TB external drive I needed for my research at school and Emily got a nice sweater.  I also got a "I love Ellie" shirt from Nicolette.  After opening presents and playing with Ellie for a while I set my mind to making my dad a batch of his goulash and putting together his photo frame.  He really dislikes the hospital food and is becoming weaker because of it so I thought perhaps he would feel better with his favorite (and mine) meal.  Around 1pm Emily and I had to take off to visit my father on the way out of town to her parents.  It was hard saying goodbye to Ellie not knowing when I'll see her again.  She gave me a kiss saying "I love you daddy, bye bye".  Truly heartbreaking, just like when she wouldn't let go of me last time I visited home.  

Next it was on to my next heartbreaking goodbye, that of my father in the hospital.

He seemed really happy with the goulash but less happy with the photo frame, although he still enjoyed that as well.  I turned it on and left it next to him on the bed for him to watch and told the nurses to please keep it on and lay it down next to him.  It was filled with childhood photos of himself, his family, my family, me, Emily, my daughter and all the best photos from my journeys into the mountains across the country.  Unfortunately he is in and out of sleep so much I'm not sure how much he'll enjoy it.  I wasn't prepared for how bad he was when I got home.  I visited with him for an hour while he was going through dialysis.  Once again I told him that it was ok to let go and that all of us would be fine including my mother which he always seems to be concerned about.  He kept asking about the baby which was heartbreaking

 to me because I knew he wanted to see her but I also knew his condition would scare Ellie and frankly I don't want her to have any memories of her grandfather in the condition he is in.  I chose not to take any photos of him and I together because I don't want to remember him like this either.  This is really hard to write so I'm going to stop.  I love my father with all my heart but I feel his time has come and I won't see him again.  He is headed for a nursing home next for extra care as he rarely can get out of bed anymore.  Saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest things I've ever done because I know I probably won't see him again.  

Emily drove her mom's car through a rainstorm in the dark (which scared me a bit) to her brother Nick's place for a fantastic Filet dinner with her family.  It was great to see everyone again and they were happy to see me as well.  I especially get along with Emily's brother Chris very well because he's outdoorsy and very soft spoken and seems truly interested in the same things I like as well, plus we are around the same age.  On the way down Emily and I stopped at Boarders to pick up "Freedom of the Hills" for him which is the bible of mountaineering.  I knew he'd enjoy that.

After a great dinner prepared by Nick's wife Jen we all sat around chatting for a while and playing with Sammie the spoiled pug.  The parents soon left but us kids stayed for a while to watch "A Christmas Story" and chat.

Emily and I slept in until nearly 10am on Christmas day before coming down to open presents with her younger cousins Julia and Jess.  There were more presents underneath the tree than I've ever seen before.  Emily and I got an electric can opener, an electric whisk, some clothes and other small stuff from the stockings. The rest of the day was spent chatting and playing the Wii which all of us had a riot with, including her dad who dominated a few games.  Chris dominated tennis but I dominated all the balance games that required the balance board like Shawn White's Snowboarding.  Emily's mom even smacked her dad pretty good while playing Wii tennis later in the night.  We had a wonderful meal of roast pork that her mother cooked up and I tried to help with dishes afterwards.  

On Friday we all relaxed at the house and Chris and I helped his dad put together a new mailbox for the front yard.  It was comforting to see that Chris also didn't have mechanical skills with tools so I wasn't overly embarrassed for not having any either.

In the afternoon we all went to see Valkari at the movies which left us all pretty speechless at the end = good movie.  We then went to Red Robbin for some burgers before heading back to the house to relax for the night.  Chris decided to take off to get back to his girlfriend in Portland, ME.  In the evening Emily and I drove down to see some of her childhood friends in a nearby town.  I found myself in a room of 6-8 intoxicated females all laughing about things I didn't have a clue about but there was food out and everyone I met was really nice so I had a great time.  

On Saturday we left Hartford on an early flight that was pretty uneventful back to Oregon.  We easily hopped the hotel shuttle from the airport back to our car and made it back to Corvallis by 4pm.  It was a weird trip.  I was both very happy to see my family but but it was stressful to see my dad the way he was and it always sucks to say goodbye to my beautiful daughter.  Thankfully I know she is in wonderful hands with Nicolette.  I was happy to see that my mother is getting help cleaning up the house and seems to be in much better health then when I left her in August as well.  It was a great trip but unfortunately it was, as usual with my busy life, way too short.  Check out some cute videos below.

Snow in Corvallis

First significant snow of the season and Corvallis actually got hit!  Check out these photos from our apartment and downtown by the waterfront.

First Day Skiing

Just a quick blog entry to say that Emily had our first day out skiing this season.  Timberline opened up two lifts so we packed up our equipment and headed to the mountain with Chris Holm.  It was pretty good skiing and the trees were fun.  It's so good to be back on my skis again!