Whistler finally!

After our Mexican adventure, Mike and I both really felt the need for snow. So when we finally arrived in Whistler and met up with the rest of the Golden crew life felt pretty good. And its been a couple of really good weeks since then, even though half the mountain is closed without prior notice to us season passholders since the construction of the stupid Peak to Peak gondola project. But mostly its been good times here. The telus festival came and went with lots of tourists and expensive cover at the nightclubs...The weather has been really cold, in fact one of the coldest april since the 1950s, temperatures creeping towards -20 for weeks is pretty remarkable. Here is the usual dose of pictures And here is a little bonus of what we have been up to the last week. I got some good confidence out of a bottle of beer and promised that I would be able to learn how to do a 540 and a 720 within a week and today was the last day and the result is that I wasnt able to do the 720 but i managed to learn some other neat tricks instead.
Enjoy!

If it doesent work use vlc and download this file instad Whistler.mov

From Portland to mexico

Here are a slideshow with the pics from our trip down to Mexico. Im going to update with the pictures from Dallas and My first week here in whistler.

Chichen Itza

We went to get some culture into our trip and took a 3 hour bus to Chichen Itza one of the worlds seven wonders. Im trying a new way of posting pictures so hopfully there will be somekind of a slideshow here, so enjoy. If you want to see the pictures in a better resolution you can go to my web albums by clicking the lower right corner. and find your way to the slideshow feature there.

Connection problems

Our Mexicotrip is going fine, but havent had any good internetconnection around so updating this with pictures is going to be a future issue but anyway. We have moved from Cancun to Playa del Carmen, and were checking out the Riviera Maya. Everything is nice here but activities are a tad on the expensive side and waking around the beach is only fun for so long. But atleast we meet a whole bunch of fun people. Maybe we would have been better off going to the other side of Mexico with all the surfing. This is getting the need for skiis to raise considerably. Its going to be really fun getting back on snow up in whistler in about a week. In other related news mexico is really hot which makes sleeping a big project every night, get a cold shower till youre freezing get in bed and hoping you fall asleep before you dry up, if you dont the only thing to do is to get another shower and repeat the procedure.

You win some, you lose some...

So we lost the car, the cam belt broke and the repairs would be more than the cars worth so its the scapyard next for our small King Cab. 

What do we do in Oregon without a car, we started thinking. We didn't come up with much instead we'll go for some more sun down i Cancun, Mexico for the next week and a half, more updates on that matter later on, along with som photos ofcourse.

On indian grounds...

Ok, now the updates are coming all at once, found a way to make posting a bit more hazzle-free. I can upload a load of pictures o flickr.com and then use them on this blog releaving me of the teadious task of uploading pics one by one on blogspot, if i only could come up with a way to get the pictures to picasa instead I would really be going somwhere.

Anyway, Mike and I went to a nearby Indian reservation Mike mostly to accompany me and see something different but I went for the Gambling =) The Kah-Nee-Ta indian tribe is running a Casino on their premises. And on saturdays at 4:30pm they have a $37+5 with $10 bounty added per person (if you take somenone out of the tournament you get 10 bucks from the casino)

Its really fun playing live poker in a casino it gives a lot more to the game compared to sitting in front of a computer. I really love the Casinoenvironment and has always done. And you always meet some characters at those cheaper games. Last year I played one tournament in California and got 8 of a starting field of 110 something players I got about 120 bucks that time. This time my goal was to beat that. When we arrived, in the last minute, the registration was closed when i registered, there where 22 player with top three places paid 1st $407 2nd $244 3rd $163. So if i was gonna beat my old record winnings a top three is enogh =)

The lanscape changes quickly 30minutes from the massive snow in mt hood we're out of the forest and entering the desert.

Its pretty Cowboy out here

straight ahead...

Im concentrated at getting to the tournament in time, just keeping the speed above 60mph and it should be good

Beautiful creek along the road looks like John Wayne andcompany could be anywhere around.

We cant stop here... this is indian country.

Finally a place where the old indians can fleece the white man for some money to repay a tiny bit for the horrible landstealing that went on in the old days

Mike has a birdsview of the blackjacktables.

Its all about being there long enogh...

...and at the right machine

Overview of the main floor in the casino

Mike didnt join the tournament and instead sat and enjoyed the free drinks in the poker room, root beer is not good...

Shuffle up and deal. 22 players 11 at each table

Down to the final table..

Four players to go 3 places paid who will be the bubbleboy?

In the money!! Discussing a deal with the other players but no agreement and we play for the big bucks

Down to two now, im chipleader so looking good we didnt split the money.

All in the next hand, I went in as favourite and it held up. Good to win =)

Biggest win (yet) in my livepoker career $447 with the four bountys i picked up.

Leaving Golden for USA

By all means of a timeline this post should've been uploaded before the Hawaii-trip. But we didn't get the pictures from the trip sorted until now. So enjoy these until next update.

Just outside of golden 1400kms to go...

First stop Whistler Creekside were we slept with the boys and girls in Vale inn #305 thanks a bunch dudes cya in a couple weeks

Mike is happy when driving through Vancouver

Mike was so happy in the last pic he forgot to change lanes... We did a timelapse of the scenic hwy 99 from whistler to vancouver or really, mike did his camera has waaay to many butons and dials for me.

The concrete/glass architectural marvel of downtown Vancouver, as well as any other big city. impressive and ugly at the same time

At the gates of freedom... Soon enogh we will be in the land of the free and home of the brave, just a terryfing passportcontrol between us and us.

The bordercrossing went fine 30min and then we were in. A high-speed drive for a couple of hours and we arrived at this fine 17buck a night lodging in the next vancouver. This Vancouver is just north of Portland.

We even got free wireless internet If snaking it from another fancyer motel... But holding the computer exacly at that angle I could call home to sweden for a couple of minutes.

We went past a load of funny places but this one we guessed werent one of them... Update: when going home from hawaii we took the road through boring and well, it wasnt Funny thats for sure.

Finally closing in on our goal. just 30mins left of our journey. Mt Hood is the Volcano straight ahead.

The Cascade Ski Club our home for the next couple of weeks. Notice the snow I am 180cm.

Same stair im walking towards earlier in the season

Inside, nice livingroom, TV with acouple of hundred channels (doesnt say much about the quality though)

Our Sleeping beds, where we sleep, mine the first to the right. Mikes to the left.

One side off the road in Government camp, about one tenth of the population in Golden a whooping 314 persons live here

The other side of the road, and thats about all there is to Govy Camp

The road to the skihill Mt Hood Meadows, one of five resorts at Mt Hood. The snow actually covered the exit sign so we missed it and had to u-turn back.

Finally at Mt Hood Meadows, now im the happy camper. in the background is our grey King Cab, not very king at all compared to the beasts that pass us on the interstate 5 all the time.

These handrails are depicted in a whole load of ski-/boardmovies.

Mikes one week Hawaii-vacation luggage, oh yes almost forgot a pro-grade Hi-Def solid-state Camcorder

Got some more snow. about 15-20cm

Yeah lots of snow, best season in 30 years the locals say.

Good old 2 seat slow as syrup liftequipment

Plenty of time for a photoshoot.

Mike the photographer, doing a selfportrait

Before we left to hawaii the parks and pipe werent really as good as expected but now its shaped like a dream, just some practise and the dumont altitude will be there =)

Mt Hood, Oregon

In an impulse decision Mike and i left Golden for Mt Hood about an hour from Portland in Oregon. We now live at a ski club in bunk beds hostel-style. Its great the only thing we miss about this accomodation is the ability to cook food for ourselves so since we left canada our food budget skyrocketed and the nutricious value of burgers, thaifood, mexican and microwavables makes me think of the Supersize me movie. And that experiment didnt work out too well... Check out the movie if you havnt seen it. In a sudden second impulse decision three days after we arrived in mt Hood we felt an urge to have a bath and what better place to swim a bit than Hawaii. We booked a flight and about 29 hours later we were sitting on the airplane taking us to Oahu.

Arriving at HNL, Honolulu

Waikiki Beach, our hostel is about 200m from the beach

Sun is setting in Waikiki and everyone wants ther piece of the last fading light of the day

 

Waikiki from another angle.

The first two nights we spent in Honolulu and Waikiki beach. Nice place but to really see what Oahu is all about, behind the glitz and glamour of the worlds most famous beach, we were told to go to the north shore. To make it easier to get around for us we got a rental car and went on a roadtrip on the small island for the remaining five days.

Not a 60's Volkswagenbus but kind of a presentday hippiesque mobile home for us, and when you wake up to a sunrise in some of the worlds most beautiful places you cant complain about the $25 a night this particular accomodation set us back.

I'm enjoying the sunset, it only happen once a day

Mike is the lucky one tonight and sleeps in the trunk, for the record Hyundai Sonatas trunk is really big and could potentially house two people if folding both parts of the backseat. Not Volvo 2/745-good but I'll give the car 3,5 really tired camels running through the Gobi-desert out of 5 for the sleepability

The road leading into Haleiwa with the typical american uglyass electricitywiring.

Loads of brown ditches housing shrimpfarms made for a good meal from the famous Giovannis shrimp bus. Shrimp served Fresh from the Sewers of Haleiwa, with Garlic! Since it sounded so delicious I thought I would get sick and while eating i was mostly thinking of Morgan Pålsson taking in the whole southeast asia...

We also rented surfboards for the week, a funny note is that 7 days surfboardrental is about the same price as renting a car the same period. Either its really cheap to get a rentalcar or its REALLY expensive to rent a surfboard. Off we went to the Worlds best surfingspots on the north shore with our surfboards strapped to the Hyundai Sonatas roof. Unfortunately we both got a bad sunburn (especally me with my computernerd-pale-no-good-for-sun-exposure-nordic-winterskin) and the 7 days of surfing quickly shrank to 4. I was the only one on all of Hawaiis beaches that were using jeans and longsleeve shirt at least that was what peoples looks said to me. 

But all in all we had a kickass week on Oahu and we got to see some really good surfing in the waves on Pipeline and we got to try out the surf ourselves and got scared of the raw power of nature. when the ocean suddently turns into a big wall coming towards you the thinking you do is more "Whoa! lets get back to the beach alive" rather than "fun, lets go surfing!"

Mike has more good Hawaiipics at http://www.mikaelnorrman.com take a look!

Thats it for now and the next update will be about mt Hood or something completely different...

Have a nice day!