Snowboards and Rainy Days

Happy Easter All!

At last four days' rest...has been a frantic couple of weeks of late friends. That said, I think I have finally finished a reasonable piece of writing that has been troubling me for many months now (always a nice feeling to get these things finished!)...I now have a working theory of context waiting for some apposite moment of quiet application (I think I can finally feel a Canadian social sciences research grant application coming on!!)...anyway work schmirk! Things are going rather swimmingly at work at the moment and now I have the international Harm Reduction conference to look forward to with a big contingent of Aussies on their way so things are definitely looking up for a great spring! Speaking of spring, alas the snowfields are now closed though I did at last get a chance to get up to Grouse Mt and try out this snowboarding business that all the local teenage toughs have been banging on about...friends! Consider me converted to the perils of racing down a mountain face on a piece of polished space shuttle fuselage!! I'm seriously considering changing the name of this blog! How can I possibly pretend to hate a place where you can have this much fun just 20 minutes from work.

So my friend Danny (formerly known as the mountain man for reasons you are soon to be reminded of) has been bugging me for weeks to try boarding with him though each time I have offered some lame excuse (some to do with my desire to complete my aforementioned paper, others to do with my innate fear of falling on my arse at intemperate speed!). Not to be deterred, Danny persisted and so last Wednesday I finally got out there with him and ohmygod!! How much fun is snowboarding! I swear to god this is something else - high above the city with fantastic views all the way to Mt Baker in the northwest United States and to the ranges on Vancouver Island and that's without even considering the thrill of the boarding itself - fucking incredible!! So with Danny's expert tutelage and with no small injury to my pride I proceeded to acquire the skills of balance and perseverance. Once you have the sense of balance boarding is not all that difficult - the real challenge as I discovered was learning to have faith enough to actually lean down into the mountain to learn how to steer! This took quite some learning I can tell you - leaning into a downhill gradient when you're already going quite fast enough thank you very much takes quite an effort of will. Anyway - it was all great fun - I've been told to try and keep my posts "pithy" whatever that means so as to encourage repeat visits.

All else is well - our good friend Elvira has just given birth of her first child so this one's for you little Ayla - already the most beautiful girl in all of Spain and that's really saying something...

right friends!! Stay well.