me? fakie?... not so much...

four day snowboarding trip. left thursday, came home monday (no boarding on thursday). nice...

okay, so... new board last year, right? huge improvements because i actually had a board that i could move (instead of one that moves me)... well, i'm up on the bunny slopes with my family, and i can actually--um... i think i should go into some background first...

the old board... it was 155, and heavy as... um, well... me. i could carve on the damn thing, and i could swing it around in front of me in case of emergencies (and stop on a dime, fyi... but doing that early's a snowboarding thing...), but i was at its mercy... if i wanted to ride straight, i had to stay on an edge, or else it would catch and edge and fling me into the ground (usually ice on the east coast). so... riding on relatively flat ground was horrible because 1) flat ground means slow speeds, and 2) when you're slow, and you try to keep an edge, it's easy to fall (think riding slowly on a bike and leaning into a turn). plus, there's this whole thing about catching an edge... if i caught any edge on that board, i was flopped over, because it'd anchor itself by its own weight. that, and it was just incredibly hard to force any turns because i didn't weigh enough for it.

back then, i judged "too fast" by how much it would hurt if i fell... if a fall at a speed would hurt more than i was willing to subject myself to, then that was "too fast." you know, since i never know when my board might want to go a different direction than me...

anyway, new board as of last year (ride vista since the salomon ivy was butt-ass ugly... it's a much better board, but i ended up succumbing to vanity... someone kick my ass now...), and my snowboarding progressed at a speed which you wouldn't believe. it's like when rabbit tried to sabotage tigger's bouncing dreams. but nobody knows what i'm talking about...

oh, yeah... so last week, on the slopes, i realized that i was going way faster than i would be willing to fall at. but i didn't have the urge to stop. because i felt comfortable with keeping myself from falling. i did so many things this year that would have been a guaranteed merc-bashing with the heavy board, but i got away with it all (for the most part... a wobble if anything) because i am now the dominant mass in the merc-board setup combination. go me. i could coast (yeah, just coast straight ahead) and relax (for the most part... there's so much play in the boots that i still have to press on the boot to keep the board from doing stuff without me, but that'll change when i get new boots, i hope), and make it over flat ground. which i could kinda do last year (first year with the new board), but i was still scared shitless, so i'd slow down once in a while. so flat terrain was still a no-no.

so... i am thankful for my new board. yes, i realize it's too late for thanksgiving, but my holidays kinda run year-round. you know, presents year-round (non-wrapped, of course) and none at christmas (unless you count the 22 inches of snow from two years ago... that was a great present). and yes, i realize it's not that new, too.

remember the boots i mentioned earlier? i went to try on boots, and... i like burtons. i feel like such a fucking sellout. i mean, i'm always bashing burton for charging so much for that damn arrow... but their liners are just the most comfortable. they're cushy. and no so cushy that the boots kinda have a mind of their own (or at least that's how i feel, since right now the boots i have slide all over the fucking place... but seriously, i've never tried on boots where i didn't get *any* heel lift on flat ground. i don't know how it'll work strapped into the board, but it's nice to know that there's a boot out there that conforms to my foot...).

oh, yeah, the other thing... i'd decided to learn fakie before i even got in the slopes this winter. i got a boost of confidence for the whole thing when it turns out that i didn't need to relearn to snowboard on the first day (for the first season ever, i didn't have a tip-filled first run). well, i tried a little, and my transitions weren't fast, but i could do it. and then suddenly i couldn't. i, uh... bruised my ass. it hurt for about a week. seriously.

because all the girls and michael changed over to snowboarding, and alex and andrew weren't around, i'm now the fastest kid (or, person of my generation. i'm in the kid generation.). so i took over alex's job of, um... sitting on my ass while everybody leaves, and then passing them on the way to the next logical waiting spot. except that i would wait too long sometimes (you know... when i start staring at people that go by or just randomly space out for other reasons... or when i get over-confident.), and they'd get there before i would. i spaced out once, completely lost michael in the sea of little dots, and by the time i realized that i didn't know where he was, he was already waiting for me at the lift. that, and i never really boarded with most of the girls. by the time i found them (the last day they were there), they were, um... done snowboarding.

***

netzero pisses the hell out of me. "defenders of the free world" my ass. they fucking took over all the free isps and then started charging fucking 10/mo. ooh, it's less than half the price of aol. should i bow down to them and thank them for not charging as much as aol? there are lots of companies that charge about 10. none of them felt the need to lie about what they were doing... bastards.

of course, the netscape commercial (the original one) that compared itself to netzero pissed me off too. everything they offered was available with netzero, but they don't mention it, and the guy just switches. it's not lying, really, just... wrong. misleading. not that i'm defening netzero... but if you're going to compare your product to theirs, you should at least make sure yours is actually better. yeah.

oh, and an update on the heisman thing, because i just realized that i never did mentioned this... lineart didn't even win the mvp for this *team.* if he's not the best on his team, how the hell could he be best in the league? the system needs revamping! and it needs to be done after all the bowl games. yes.