This past week I finally took part in something I had been curious about for many years but never actually tried - autocross!

There was a Level 1 training session this past week consisting of a classroom session Wednesday and an in-car session Saturday. What a blast! I think everybody there had a great time. I must really thank Jann for telling me about the school session and asking me to go along with him. Autocross in Winnipeg is put on by the WSSC - Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Check out their website for more information.

The training session was very well run and I learned a great deal from it. My first run on the training course was 61.727 seconds, and my fastest lap was 49.125 seconds - over 12.5 seconds faster. What an amazing rush!

Here are some pictures that Jann took of me. Thanks again Jann!













In my next post, I’ll talk about my first race that was held on Sunday, the day after Level 1 school.

Wow!

Today is certainly a great day to be Canadian! What a gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the USA!! It was very close, and the Americans wanted it very badly, but we wanted it just a little bit more.

With this gold, Canada has set some great Olympic records in 2010. Here are a couple off the top of my head:

• The most winter olympic gold medals by the host nation (14, previous was 10)
• The most winter olympic gold medals by any nation (14, previous was 13)

Congratulations to all our Canadian athletes, and to all the athletes from every country who participated in these 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC!!!

Good evening,

It was a long time coming, but here is the video from the Frost Fire trip on December 20, 2009. It was recorded in HD (720p), so make sure to go full screen for best results. Enjoy!

Frost Fire December 20, 2009

Good morning!

Last night going through the footage taken from the snow day at Frost Fire, I decided to put together a very brief snippet of my spectacular fall. Looking at it now on camera, it doesn’t look that spectacular, but it trust me - it was! I still feel like I got hit by a bus even today. Rolling into and out of a fall is easy - I learned that in Kung Fu. The hard part is getting the snowboard (which extends a good distance past you on either side of your feet) to roll along with you.

Anyway, here it is. It’s okay to laugh - I still laugh every time I see it! If you click on the HD button in the video, you’ll be presented with an option to watch the video on Vimeo’s site in HD; they don’t allow HD embedding with the free account.



Stay tuned for the full video. There’s almost an hour of footage to go through! I’ve never had to go through that much raw film before - this will be great.

Helloooooo!

I’m very pleased to say that our inaugural snow outing was a complete success. Ryan and I went down to Frost Fire in Walhalla, North Dakota for a great day of skiing and snowboarding. I only took one video and no still pictures. Ryan, however, made a nice little acquisition this week. He picked up an HD helmet cam! I haven’t seen the footage on it yet, but apparently it’s really good. I look forward to seeing it. It’s very convenient to have the camera filming all the way down the hill instead of somebody having to go ahead and park somewhere to catch everyone going by. Halfway through the day we mounted the camera on my head for some variety. Nobody wants to see video of me all day long. Although, Ryan did catch me making a spectacular fall that I can’t wait to see!

Stay tuned for the video.

Hi everybody,

On March 29th, a bunch of us took advantage of the unexpected dump of snow and went out to Holiday Mountain for one last trip out on the hills. As I mentioned previously, I rented ski boards (aka snow blades) and I really had a blast! I think I’m converted from snowboarding to skiboarding, or at least have both of them in my arsenal. The learning curve was very brief, I had a lot of fun, they are so much more convenient than snowboards, and I didn’t suffer my usual injuries whenever I head out to the snow hills!

It is so convenient to be able to move around at the top and bottom of the hill without having to take one foot out of the binding, then strap back up again, then back out, etc. for the day. Moving around is like ice skating. It’s a bit awkward at first (my rentals from Gord’s were probably about 80cm long - Ryan’s are 99.9cm long), but I quickly adapted.

We didn’t have many regulars out, but that’s okay because Dan brought his friend Luke, Adrian brought his friends Mike, Armando, and Lucas, and we met Salar and Yashar on the hill and hung out all day and even had lunch together too. Salar is the guy with the light coloured jacket on the snowboard getting crazy height on jumps in the video!

Anyway, here is the video page - enjoy!

Woo hoo!!! Although I thought that my perfectly melted driveway and temps well above zero meant that I was done shovelling for the year, it also had the sad distinction of me thinking the snow hills were also done for the year. But alas, I was wrong! Yay snow! Yay one more trip to Holiday Mountain on Sunday!

I’m also excited because I’m going to try something different. I’m going to rent a pair of skiboards (also referred to as Snow Blades - Snow Blades is to skiboards what Kleenex is to facial tissue) and try that instead of snowboarding this weekend. My friend Ryan has a pair and absolutely loves them, so it’s a good opportunity for me to try it out. Plus, the vast majority of my snowboarding injuries this year (actually, every year) stem from having to take one foot out of the binding to navigate the chair lift and therefore not being completely stable when getting off the lift. I can handle pretty much anything going down the hill without injury (that’s not to say that I’m good at it, just that I can keep it under control and not get hurt), but it’s that chair lift that gets me every time. Not having to worry about that will be nice and allow for an injury free end to the season. This is nice, because I thought my end to the season was with that nasty freak knee injury where I couldn’t even drive my car home after Asessippi.

Three cheers for the snow!

Alas, not all the snow today was good. To the idiot who rear ended my brother’s car while he was stopped at a stop sign waiting for a pedestrian to cross safely - WHAT THE @#$% WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?! Fortunately nobody got hurt, but please, people, don’t follow so closely when the intersections are all polished and/or snow covered sheets of ice!!!

It’s finally here! The Asessippi 2009 video you’ve all been waiting for.

I actually had the video finished yesterday morning, but since then I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to deliver it to you. I set the video to music rather than the whooshing on the snow which makes it much more engaging and enjoyable. However, I’ve noticed quite a few videos on YouTube lately that have had the entire audio track stripped from the video because of copyright violations. I do legally own the music I used in the video, but I didn’t want to chance any problems from YouTube with my video here so I’m hosting it on my site. This also gives me the ability to put it in QuickTime format which I find to be better quality than YouTube.

The video is 7:01 long. I hope you enjoy it! --> Asessippi 2009 video <--

First, an injury update. It turns out that Lynn also had her legs pinched under the chairlift while mounting, also skied into the trees, and fell on her hip in the parking lot in regular boots but fortunately while still wearing her helmet. I think we may have a new winner in the most-beat-up department.

I’ve got the photos page up here. It’s also accessible from the Photo & Video Gallery to have easy access any time you come back, not just from this particular blog entry. Check back for the videos. To make a proper montage will take a bit of time, but I hope it won’t be too long.

Until then, enjoy the pics!

Wow, Asessippi was a blast!

Eleven of us went out to Asessippi for the weekend for some great snowboarding, skiing, and tubing. Most even got away injury free! There was nothing serious, fortunately. You have to expect bumps and bruises on such a trip. In terms of physical injury, I think I had it the worst with a bad dismount off the chair lift causing a massive encounter of my shin and the metal edge of my snowboard on Saturday followed by a knee injury on Sunday 30 minutes before it was time to get off the hill to return to Winnipeg. I couldn’t even drive my car home - Paul had to drive for me (thanks Paul!) because it was my clutch knee. Fortunately both were on the same leg so I can still hobble around on my right leg. I’m also glad I booked today off of work to recover! Despite the ouchies, I’d do it again in a second. Well, okay, after I heal then I’d do it in a second.

I wasn’t alone, though. Shannon and Andrea both ended up in the trees, Shannon and Karen had their legs pinched under the chair lift while getting on, and Ryan had a nasty fall on his hip while also landing on a clasp or something on his jacket making the hard hip landing that much worse. There may have been others, but that’s what I know about for now.

We stayed at Hank’s Hideaway, a great cabin with a hot tub about 10 minutes from the hill. If you ever go to Asessippi, I strongly recommend Hank’s Hideaway!

I’ve got lots of pictures and video that I’ll be putting up shortly. The pictures should be fairly soon, but the video will be a bit longer. I want to make more of a montage set to music this time.

Stay tuned for more!

Good morning!

I was involved in a small movie making project at work recently, and I found it to be really interesting and a lot of fun. Although I only saw a small portion of the video editing to make the final clip, it also looked like it was fun to do. Now, he was using professional level software (Final Cut Pro), but there are many other tools you can use for beginners like myself.

I have iMovie ’08 on my computer, but I’ve never used it. Well, I finally blew the proverbial dust off the program and gave it a go. I used the videos I had taken from the Holiday Mountain trip on January 2nd and combined them along with a title, credits, and probably more transition variations than you’d actually use.

For your enjoyment, I present a 5 minute video showcasing the snowboarding trip.

Hi,

After testing the videos live this morning after they uploaded to my web host last night, I realized that it really hurts the user experience when you have to wait for a couple of hundred megabytes of data to download before watching the videos. It was late last night when I posted them and I was tired from a day on the hill, so my brain wasn’t altogether there. If you didn’t try it between last night and now, trust me - it’s much better this way!

Also, if you’re familiar with YouTube videos, often you’ll now see a link under the video that says “Watch in high quality”. I was able to figure out how to embed the high quality flag in the videos below, which is nice because they default to low quality and the user can’t change the setting when the video is embedded in another page like I’ve done here.

Holiday Mountain pictures
Holiday Mountain videos

Well, it took a while, but we (Sean, Dan, Adrian, Ryan, and I) finally made it out for our first snowboarding/skiing trip of the season. We tried to make it out to Springhill a couple of times, but being right on the floodway they are more sensitive to the wind chill and so they were closed down on those days. Today, we planned ahead and got an early start for the drive to Holiday Mountain in La Riviere, Manitoba.

We had a great time, the weather was nice (mid -20s Celsius), we all worked on our jumps, and while there were some spills, nobody got hurt.

Pictures and Videos from the day