Was In Utah this last weekend doing a little snowboarding. Pretty poor conditions overall but we did manage to squeeze out one day of pretty good riding.

Normally I'm not the kind of guy to buy pictures from the people standing around taking pictures, usually at the top when you get off lifts....but as it turns out there was a guy/girl taking pictures in the middle of a hill. I had no idea that there was even a person doing that as I was moving pretty quick. My buddy was behind me and heard the photographer yell out a number. So at the end of the day we went and checked out the photos and I pretty much had to have them since I never get any decent action shots.
Here they both are:




Like always you can click on them to enlarge the photos.
They turned out pretty well considering I didn't see this person.

Florida!

This past weekend I was in Florida visiting a friend. Having never been to Florida before I did all the things that I could fit into the weekend in south Florida.
Airboat ride
See Alligators up close
See the Everglades
Party in Miami
Lounge on the beach
Watch Swamp Buggy Races!!

Here are some photos from the weekend.

Before getting on the airboat in the Everglades.

He was maybe 10' from the boat...whoa

Looking out over the beach.

Ft Lauderdale and Miami were just over flowing with excess spending.

Two of the buggies getting ready to start.

The buggies had up to 900hp and would fly down the water/mud track.

Fortune cookie

So I was in San Francisco last weekend, pics to come, and I bought two bags of chocolate/regular fortune cookies from a little fortune cookie factory/sweat shop in china town. So I crack one open just know and the fortune is:

Seek out the significance of your problem at this time.
Try to understand.

What the hell is that? My fortune pretty much told me to deal with it, what ever it is. The reason I go to the fortune cookie is to understand life's mysteries.

Full circle

I pretty much heart irony. Its the kind of thing that even when its something bad you have to marvel at it. Well, a while back I had a great idea and after telling my brother apparently I totally forgot about it until he reminded me about it just this afternoon.

Now before I toss the idea out there for public consumption I need to put the following disclaimer, I have given to the homeless/less fortunate in the past and will continue to in the future. One of my pet peeves is someone taking advantage of people.

There are some establishments that you can't walk through the parking lot with out getting panhandled for money. I've seen them carrying cell phones and asking for money, I had one dude at a truck stop in New Mexico asking me for money to fix a flat tire to make it home while he stood next to his car with all four tires ok but he had had his hood up obviously from earlier lies.

The idea I told my brother was that I need to make some waaaay fake checks that I can carry just for the occasion when I'm being panhandled by someone who is just taking advantage of the average passerby.

Panhandler: "sir, could you spare some change? I need gas to make it back home to __________"
Marshall: "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about your ploy. I don't have much money but I think I could spare a few dollars for such a purpose. I don't have any cash on me but I could make a check out for ten dollars and I'll just fill in with 'TO: CASH'. How about that?
Panhandler: "That would be great. Thank you so much and God Bless you."

I think I would be fine spending a few moments writing my fake check knowing that they would have been duped.

Another good one

So even though my friends/family know I have a blog it slips their minds and goes under the radar, so I have the freedom to post practical jokes that I'm playing pretty much with impunity.

About two months ago I'm over at my brother's house enjoying a meal and chit-chating with him and his wife when I am on there computer and notice that they are still logged into Netflix. Wanting to have some fun I add Brokeback Mountain to their queue knowing that neither of them would want to watch it to see what happens.

A couple of weeks go by and I forgot about the netflix thing until I stop by and my brother says they watched it and gave his review.

So two weeks after that I go over to babysit my neice and nephew while they are away. I take the oppurtunity to add some more fun to the Netflix queue.
I add, Trained in the Ways of Men, Happy Endings, and Transamerica. I don't have a clue what they were about other than they were in the Gay & Lesbian genre and they sounded funny.

Fast forward to last week and I'm having dinner with my brother and his wife having completely forgotten about this joke. My brother thanks me for Trained in the ways of Men and Happy Endings...bahahaha. I couldn't stop laughing. They tried to watch both assuming that the other had put it in the Netflix queue. I love having fun.

New York photos

Was in NYC weekend before last to hang out with a couple of friends. Went to the last two touristy places I missed over the summer, the Intrepid and the Natural History Museum. Here are some photos:

Me messing around on the Intrepid.

Ashley, Me, and Peter waiting on some food.

Me...being awesome.

Before I post this last picture I wanted to introduce it. I pretty much think this exhibit was designed by the summer intern or something as I think it is blatantly made up.

Now come on. The museum was trying to pass off some sort of swimming unicorn. I bet that the supposed horn was actually the weapon that killed the beast but since someone unburied it with it in this shape and the poor guy needed a research paper topic we now have to pretend that this swimming unicorn existed at some point.

On a pretty cool side note. This was my first touristy trip where I left my camera behind and just took my camera-phone, so all these shots where from my phone. These shots and others leave me believing that I made the right choice with my new phone (Motorola ZN5). As Peter put it, I have a camera with a phone in it.

Salmonella...

Pretty miserable day at work today and I get to my car and notice I have a voice mail. New voice mail is always excited as its like opening a non-junk mail letter.

It's from Ralph's (grocery store chain) saying that a recent purchase of mine is being recalled. I check the website and some bakery cookies I purchased last week were made with peanut butter that could be linked to a recent investigation into the Peanut Corporation of America. Whew, that was a close one, I was this close to eating the last two cookies in the container...

Mini

So I was wandering walmart this evening buying light bulbs and came across mini hot dogs.
Seems like a pretty solid buy. They are about the size of a pinky finger....so I guess its like eating delicious little fingers.
Kind of wish I could find some little hot dog buns to go with them. Oh snap..or I could just cram like four of them in a regular size hot dog bun.

Outside the box

Found this cartoon while stumbling the other day. Thought it was worth sharing.

Snow please!

In my mind I picture myself sitting on the porch with my snowboard and helmet waiting for snow. Since I can't get out and rip the snow I'll impart some snow wisdom upon both of my faithful readers.

Magne-traction = 4x4 for the board.
Last year I bought a Lib Tech Skunk Ape (162cm) after cracking my entry level in Colorado. Like anything else I purchase I did extensive research and came up with that pick (after finding the best deal on it of course). The difference was amazing. Suddenly I could find traction no matter the condition. Ice, no problem. Crunchy, Icy, rutted, steep sections, no problem. Now when racing with my buddy I can get gobs of speed and turn around to check on him with out fearing that the board is going to wander and catch an edge.

The difference comes from the fact that the edge is waved to increase the number of points of contact with the the snow when in a carve as shown here:Check it out here.

Nuff sales pitch, time for a funny story.

Last December I flew back to Texas for graduation (UTA). I loaded my Ipod with tons of stuff. Well, some of that happened to be classical which was fine by me seeing as its nicer to sleep to while flying.

Fast forward a week. Deleted all the classical music from my Ipod in anticipation of snowboarding, the I drove to Las Vegas so I could fly to Albuquerque. My friend picked me up there and we drove up to Wolf Creek. This is where I discovered my problem that I started on the trip to Texas.

I failed to delete Pyotry II'yich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Several things combined to make this a failure.
1) I stuff my ipod way in my jacket so it won't get wet or destroyed.
2) This particular Concerto is a hair under 21 minutes long.
I discovered this blunder on a chair lift and its funny now but was mostly unpleasant to try and 'give it hell' when your listening to chamber music.

I remembered that story while running just now...and having done so and with no snow to hit yet I'll go make a sweet snowboarding playlist.