01/02: Personal space issues
So the Whistler thing ended… okay.
First, the funny bit: it’s the last day, around noon. I’m zipping along this quasi-trail through a gladed run, come around a tree, suddenly find myself being dumped unceremoniously into this bank covered in powder. There was this little kicker, first, and then nowhere to go but into it.
Harmless enough. I dig out a bit, try to get myself down the ravine from the trail a bit—‘cos that’s what it was—bottom of a creek thing, but no water visible underneath…
It’s difficult digging out of that much powder. And while I’m there, working on unsnarling myself from bindings and piles of powder, I hear someone saying ‘what the…’, look up, and some guy on a pair of massive powder skis has just landed exactly where I had, exactly the same way.
We chuckle, he climbs up the side to a groomer, heads off…
I get one foot out. I hear someone yelling ‘Oh shit…’
And look up to see a young woman on a board, who’s just made it three in a row.
This time, I actually laugh. Have to explain this to her. She laughs too. Whoever first went that way, set up that track had no idea how much trouble they’d caused.
Anyway, onto the annoying bit: I dig out, decide to follow the ravine downward, ‘cos there is this narrow trail there…
And it’s hairy. Ski patrol has marked off these sinkholes some three metres deep, going down to the water at the bottom. Scary. Don’t want to fall in those. It’s a warm day, and the water doesn’t look deep, but I’m betting you’d still be a mite uncomfortable by the time anyone could dig you out.
Anyway. Falls ensue, tho’ none into sinkholes, mercifully. Combination of nerves and close quarters. And at the bottom, I discover I’ve torn a cable on one of my Flows.
This is inconvenient. A Flow with a torn cable doesn’t close. And I’m at the bottom of the Symphony bowl, which means I’ve got at least two groomers and two traverses to go before I can just download on the gondola.
I make do. Fish some carabiners out of pockets, manage to wrap ‘em around the binding well enough to keep it sorta half closed, so at least it’s not dragging on the trail. I’ve got control, sorta… But have to take it easy with that foot, obviously…
But there’s this thing I’ve noticed about the skiiers at Whistler. Personal space issues. As in: they don’t give you as much of it as I’m used to. Way too often, they’re uncomfortably close to me, on the descent. Like that huffy older woman who zipped over my tail some days back, they do seem a bit cavalier to me about the possibilities for collisions…
I figure maybe it’s the environment. As in: on the East coast, there’s ice, it’s dangerous, everyone’s a bit more paranoid, a bit more cautious. Here, everyone’s a little less worried…
To my point: on the first traverse, I’m wobbling along, going easy on that none-too-tight binding, and this skiier just smacks the tail end of my board as its coming around on a carve, him going past, awfully fast, awfully close.
He wipes out. Not badly, picks himself up, apologizes, moves on, me with eyebrows raised, dark thoughts lingering about suicidal westerners with, in my ever so humble opinion, an insufficient appreciation of (a) how big a board a big guy might be riding, and (b) just what that many Newtons can do to your joints if you land wrong.
And back at the condo, I discover this nasty nick in the tail of the board where he’d hit it, a piece of the top surface torn off…
Cosmetic, mostly, I’d bet, and repairs lined up, and the cable’s already fixed…
But geez. It’s annoying, all the same.
So c’mon, people. Can we have a little less of that kind of silly, please?
Anyway. Otherwise, all was fun.
First, the funny bit: it’s the last day, around noon. I’m zipping along this quasi-trail through a gladed run, come around a tree, suddenly find myself being dumped unceremoniously into this bank covered in powder. There was this little kicker, first, and then nowhere to go but into it.
Harmless enough. I dig out a bit, try to get myself down the ravine from the trail a bit—‘cos that’s what it was—bottom of a creek thing, but no water visible underneath…
It’s difficult digging out of that much powder. And while I’m there, working on unsnarling myself from bindings and piles of powder, I hear someone saying ‘what the…’, look up, and some guy on a pair of massive powder skis has just landed exactly where I had, exactly the same way.
We chuckle, he climbs up the side to a groomer, heads off…
I get one foot out. I hear someone yelling ‘Oh shit…’
And look up to see a young woman on a board, who’s just made it three in a row.
This time, I actually laugh. Have to explain this to her. She laughs too. Whoever first went that way, set up that track had no idea how much trouble they’d caused.
Anyway, onto the annoying bit: I dig out, decide to follow the ravine downward, ‘cos there is this narrow trail there…
And it’s hairy. Ski patrol has marked off these sinkholes some three metres deep, going down to the water at the bottom. Scary. Don’t want to fall in those. It’s a warm day, and the water doesn’t look deep, but I’m betting you’d still be a mite uncomfortable by the time anyone could dig you out.
Anyway. Falls ensue, tho’ none into sinkholes, mercifully. Combination of nerves and close quarters. And at the bottom, I discover I’ve torn a cable on one of my Flows.
This is inconvenient. A Flow with a torn cable doesn’t close. And I’m at the bottom of the Symphony bowl, which means I’ve got at least two groomers and two traverses to go before I can just download on the gondola.
I make do. Fish some carabiners out of pockets, manage to wrap ‘em around the binding well enough to keep it sorta half closed, so at least it’s not dragging on the trail. I’ve got control, sorta… But have to take it easy with that foot, obviously…
But there’s this thing I’ve noticed about the skiiers at Whistler. Personal space issues. As in: they don’t give you as much of it as I’m used to. Way too often, they’re uncomfortably close to me, on the descent. Like that huffy older woman who zipped over my tail some days back, they do seem a bit cavalier to me about the possibilities for collisions…
I figure maybe it’s the environment. As in: on the East coast, there’s ice, it’s dangerous, everyone’s a bit more paranoid, a bit more cautious. Here, everyone’s a little less worried…
To my point: on the first traverse, I’m wobbling along, going easy on that none-too-tight binding, and this skiier just smacks the tail end of my board as its coming around on a carve, him going past, awfully fast, awfully close.
He wipes out. Not badly, picks himself up, apologizes, moves on, me with eyebrows raised, dark thoughts lingering about suicidal westerners with, in my ever so humble opinion, an insufficient appreciation of (a) how big a board a big guy might be riding, and (b) just what that many Newtons can do to your joints if you land wrong.
And back at the condo, I discover this nasty nick in the tail of the board where he’d hit it, a piece of the top surface torn off…
Cosmetic, mostly, I’d bet, and repairs lined up, and the cable’s already fixed…
But geez. It’s annoying, all the same.
So c’mon, people. Can we have a little less of that kind of silly, please?
Anyway. Otherwise, all was fun.
So I can’t tell you much about Whistler’s nightlife, really.
The shops, I can tell you a bit about those. Because I’ve been supplying, there. New pair of goggles, because the gasket was pretty much gone on the ones I’d brought. New headphones because on one run, I tore the cord to shreds on the old ones—probably caught it on a tree. New base layer, new fleece, y’know. So I can report that you can get everything here. But it’s not like you couldn’t have guessed that.
And the restaurants are generally awesome. But you can read about that elsewhere, I’d expect. Me, I could tell you about a couple sushi places, the apparently somewhat famous Araxi, a nice Hy’s steak house, and can generally report: there is very good food here, but otherwise…
See, thing is, beyond eating, sleeping, and resupplying, we really haven’t done much in the village.
The schedule’s been, every day, for four days so far: up at 6:00 am (to the sound of a clock radio playing snow and weather reports), at the lifts by 7:15 or so for the early lift (you pay a bit more for this—they call it ‘Fresh Tracks’)—buffet breakfast at the top, on the slopes as soon as they open them, at 8:05 to 8:15, ride ‘til last lift, at around 3:30 or so—usually with a break for a cappucino in one of the places on the hill at late morning. No lunch, as breakfast, generally, is huge.
Then dinner, hit the hot tub, stick wet gear places it will dry, run vital supply errands, collapse, sleep, repeat.
Like I said, four days of that so far. And we’ve two more planned.
Now you might well wonder: just how do you board for seven or so hours a day on a hill with 11 km runs without destroying your legs? I’m now in a position to explain how I pull this off, anyway:
First, of course, make sure they’re in shape in the first place. I was doing deep knee bends with weights and riding almost nightly for a few hours for more than month prior. Probably helped.
Second: relax, as much as possible. Curling your toes during good sex equals a good sign it was really good. Curling them while riding equals unnecessary. Feet calm, relaxed but poised, no more active than necessary. Yes, work as hard as you must, when you must, to put the board exactly where it needs to be, but don’t get all anxious about it. Just do it.
Third, and I suspect most important: don’t get lazy. Keep carving, keep turning, keep that board swinging around in big, perfect arcs. That juddering, shuddering side-slipping thing that happens if you get lazy/stressed, and let the thing slide sideways to try to slow yourself that way is very costly—hell on joints and muscles. If you do need to bleed off speed, do it the smart way, instead: vary the rhythm, draw the turn out a bit longer, turn a bit farther, but don’t slide sideways. Sliding is bad on a marathon like this, and dangerously tiring. The edges of the board should be cutting through the snow like a hot knife through butter. Also, turning all the time like that spreads out the work over the muscle groups more—doesn’t lean too hard on any fibres in particular… Which reminds me: yes, even on long, looong turns one way or the other—like on long, narrow traverses where you’re going right or left for a long time, keep carving anyway—don’t just take the turn or turns on the edge that works for that direction, or you’ll burn out the muscles you use for that. Carve anyway, even there.
Do it right, in fact, and it becomes less a strength thing, more a cardio workout. I’ll be sweating and breathing a bit harder at the end of a long run or a steep pitch from all that motion. But my legs won’t hurt. Or not much.
Anyway. As to Whistler: it’s been incredible. The first two days we started on fresh powder—‘round 10 cm each day—and I can report: powder is fun, makes doing things which would be suicidal on East coast ice into child’s play. Here I can jump, slip through trees, bounce through monster moguls, whatever. No worries.
(Oh. Yeah. ‘No worries’. You hear that a lot here. There are a lot of Aussies working and visiting here. On Australia day, which was Tuesday, it was nuts. Drunk and just generally cheerful people all over the hill, wearing big blue flags and tattoos. And any other day, the odds the person serving you or running the lift will sound generally Antipodean are pretty good.)
Right. Next two days were less about powder, more about groomed and skiied territory, since not much fell overnight. First one clear and gorgeous—the views are the usual almost unbelievable Canadian rockies postcard perfect. Second one there was a lot of cloud and heavy snow in the alpine—which was gorgeous in a far more dramatic, even more memorable, less postcard way. Sun peeping through all that atmosphere in pale shafts, jagged peaks and outcrops taking on a spectral quality—ghosts appearing and disappearing through a thick mist. Took some pictures, might post ‘em later when facilities are less spartan and I’ve a bit more time. Oh, and winding along narrowish ridge trails with cliffs on both sides in this sort of atmosphere makes that whole ‘relax’ rule up there a bit harder to honour.
We’ve hit pretty much every trail on both mountains, with so much time up there. Couple of the double black bowls on the far side of Blackcomb and the stuff closed for the upcoming Olympics being the only exceptions. Might yet look into those bowls a bit, too. Will see. Plan is to head over to some of the stuff off the glacier chair again if it gets busy Friday and Saturday, as the locals report those runs are generally quiet even then—weekend skiiers like sun, and they don’t get as much there. That’ll put us right next to those bowls, anyway.
And as to the hills, I can safely report, as if you couldn’t already guess, or didn’t already know: they’re incredible. There’s so much to do, so much variety. Long groomed cruisers, steeps on which you can push the sound barrier, enormous mogul fields, huge, off-piste fields of powder, endless glades, it just goes on and on, and at regular intervals you’ll encounter folks equally happily lost in it all. Favourites so far: the Symphony bowl for powder, the stuff off the glacier chair for long, fast runs—I think. Must review. Like I said, there’s so much of it. And just writing that, I get to thinking: but there’s also all this other stuff…
Other bits of boarding minutiae—switch is also useful for resting muscles. Oh, and for going through gladed stuff. Two ways around a tree is way better than one. And boarding through moguls isn’t yet, for me, that much like skiing through ‘em, but then I was never that good with moguls on skis, so I’m not really sure how relevant that is. But I am getting to what feels like a certain facility for this—using the moguls as pivots, on both edges, snaking through ‘em, jumping a bit on the turns, when this is more efficient.
And that’s all for a bit. I’ve got some sleeping to do, for now. I’ll be up early.
The shops, I can tell you a bit about those. Because I’ve been supplying, there. New pair of goggles, because the gasket was pretty much gone on the ones I’d brought. New headphones because on one run, I tore the cord to shreds on the old ones—probably caught it on a tree. New base layer, new fleece, y’know. So I can report that you can get everything here. But it’s not like you couldn’t have guessed that.
And the restaurants are generally awesome. But you can read about that elsewhere, I’d expect. Me, I could tell you about a couple sushi places, the apparently somewhat famous Araxi, a nice Hy’s steak house, and can generally report: there is very good food here, but otherwise…
See, thing is, beyond eating, sleeping, and resupplying, we really haven’t done much in the village.
The schedule’s been, every day, for four days so far: up at 6:00 am (to the sound of a clock radio playing snow and weather reports), at the lifts by 7:15 or so for the early lift (you pay a bit more for this—they call it ‘Fresh Tracks’)—buffet breakfast at the top, on the slopes as soon as they open them, at 8:05 to 8:15, ride ‘til last lift, at around 3:30 or so—usually with a break for a cappucino in one of the places on the hill at late morning. No lunch, as breakfast, generally, is huge.
Then dinner, hit the hot tub, stick wet gear places it will dry, run vital supply errands, collapse, sleep, repeat.
Like I said, four days of that so far. And we’ve two more planned.
Now you might well wonder: just how do you board for seven or so hours a day on a hill with 11 km runs without destroying your legs? I’m now in a position to explain how I pull this off, anyway:
First, of course, make sure they’re in shape in the first place. I was doing deep knee bends with weights and riding almost nightly for a few hours for more than month prior. Probably helped.
Second: relax, as much as possible. Curling your toes during good sex equals a good sign it was really good. Curling them while riding equals unnecessary. Feet calm, relaxed but poised, no more active than necessary. Yes, work as hard as you must, when you must, to put the board exactly where it needs to be, but don’t get all anxious about it. Just do it.
Third, and I suspect most important: don’t get lazy. Keep carving, keep turning, keep that board swinging around in big, perfect arcs. That juddering, shuddering side-slipping thing that happens if you get lazy/stressed, and let the thing slide sideways to try to slow yourself that way is very costly—hell on joints and muscles. If you do need to bleed off speed, do it the smart way, instead: vary the rhythm, draw the turn out a bit longer, turn a bit farther, but don’t slide sideways. Sliding is bad on a marathon like this, and dangerously tiring. The edges of the board should be cutting through the snow like a hot knife through butter. Also, turning all the time like that spreads out the work over the muscle groups more—doesn’t lean too hard on any fibres in particular… Which reminds me: yes, even on long, looong turns one way or the other—like on long, narrow traverses where you’re going right or left for a long time, keep carving anyway—don’t just take the turn or turns on the edge that works for that direction, or you’ll burn out the muscles you use for that. Carve anyway, even there.
Do it right, in fact, and it becomes less a strength thing, more a cardio workout. I’ll be sweating and breathing a bit harder at the end of a long run or a steep pitch from all that motion. But my legs won’t hurt. Or not much.
Anyway. As to Whistler: it’s been incredible. The first two days we started on fresh powder—‘round 10 cm each day—and I can report: powder is fun, makes doing things which would be suicidal on East coast ice into child’s play. Here I can jump, slip through trees, bounce through monster moguls, whatever. No worries.
(Oh. Yeah. ‘No worries’. You hear that a lot here. There are a lot of Aussies working and visiting here. On Australia day, which was Tuesday, it was nuts. Drunk and just generally cheerful people all over the hill, wearing big blue flags and tattoos. And any other day, the odds the person serving you or running the lift will sound generally Antipodean are pretty good.)
Right. Next two days were less about powder, more about groomed and skiied territory, since not much fell overnight. First one clear and gorgeous—the views are the usual almost unbelievable Canadian rockies postcard perfect. Second one there was a lot of cloud and heavy snow in the alpine—which was gorgeous in a far more dramatic, even more memorable, less postcard way. Sun peeping through all that atmosphere in pale shafts, jagged peaks and outcrops taking on a spectral quality—ghosts appearing and disappearing through a thick mist. Took some pictures, might post ‘em later when facilities are less spartan and I’ve a bit more time. Oh, and winding along narrowish ridge trails with cliffs on both sides in this sort of atmosphere makes that whole ‘relax’ rule up there a bit harder to honour.
We’ve hit pretty much every trail on both mountains, with so much time up there. Couple of the double black bowls on the far side of Blackcomb and the stuff closed for the upcoming Olympics being the only exceptions. Might yet look into those bowls a bit, too. Will see. Plan is to head over to some of the stuff off the glacier chair again if it gets busy Friday and Saturday, as the locals report those runs are generally quiet even then—weekend skiiers like sun, and they don’t get as much there. That’ll put us right next to those bowls, anyway.
And as to the hills, I can safely report, as if you couldn’t already guess, or didn’t already know: they’re incredible. There’s so much to do, so much variety. Long groomed cruisers, steeps on which you can push the sound barrier, enormous mogul fields, huge, off-piste fields of powder, endless glades, it just goes on and on, and at regular intervals you’ll encounter folks equally happily lost in it all. Favourites so far: the Symphony bowl for powder, the stuff off the glacier chair for long, fast runs—I think. Must review. Like I said, there’s so much of it. And just writing that, I get to thinking: but there’s also all this other stuff…
Other bits of boarding minutiae—switch is also useful for resting muscles. Oh, and for going through gladed stuff. Two ways around a tree is way better than one. And boarding through moguls isn’t yet, for me, that much like skiing through ‘em, but then I was never that good with moguls on skis, so I’m not really sure how relevant that is. But I am getting to what feels like a certain facility for this—using the moguls as pivots, on both edges, snaking through ‘em, jumping a bit on the turns, when this is more efficient.
And that’s all for a bit. I’ve got some sleeping to do, for now. I’ll be up early.
25/01: ZOMG Whistler...
… yeah, I know. I should try to say somethin’ witty or erudite or somethin’, I guess…
I’ll get to that. Honest. Soon as I can stand.
And right, actually, I can stand. Mostly. Legs a bit tired after the first day, but still functional.
But yeah, this is a big mountain. Or pair of mountains, since they’re doing their best to make ‘em as one, and I did, in fact, ride both this morning.
Lessons learned so far:
1) Yes, powder is fun. Different, but fun. Jumping is like: whatever, I land, I don’t land, it’s all good. And the stuff is a fair bit less exhausting per kilometer than I’d feared it might be.
2) But here, see, there are a lot of those kilometers. So my wise and lovely wife called it correctly when she saw to it there would be a dedicated hot tub on our porch.
3) Unrelated to the quality of the hill, it’s really fucking inconvenient to lose your cell just before flying out of town.
4) But the Rogers in Whistler is well-stocked, and I am online for text/data, with speech coming shortly, with any luck.
5) Hotel snafus are a universal reality. And the valuable skill of being able to flag an awesome cabbie who can shuttle you and your absurd quantity of gear around will never be obsolete while this is true.
6) Irritating older folk with an unwarranted sense of entitlement are also a universal reality. And if they come plowing through the lift line at double black speeds and run over your board because you brazenly stopped to unclip your foot, it is your fault.
7) Corollary to (6)… if you do not wish it to be your fault, next time, hip check ‘em into the aluminum queue guides, and hope their unwarranted velocity finishes their excessively huffy existence before they get a chance to kvetch about it.
8) The local BC folks’ attitude to the encroaching Olympics here is… conflicted. They are happy to see vast quantities of money on the horizon. They are tired of fibreglass inukshuks being erected on every spare square meter of soil.
That is all. Additional breathtakingly insightful observations will follow just as soon as I’ve finished dissolving in the tub.
I’ll get to that. Honest. Soon as I can stand.
And right, actually, I can stand. Mostly. Legs a bit tired after the first day, but still functional.
But yeah, this is a big mountain. Or pair of mountains, since they’re doing their best to make ‘em as one, and I did, in fact, ride both this morning.
Lessons learned so far:
1) Yes, powder is fun. Different, but fun. Jumping is like: whatever, I land, I don’t land, it’s all good. And the stuff is a fair bit less exhausting per kilometer than I’d feared it might be.
2) But here, see, there are a lot of those kilometers. So my wise and lovely wife called it correctly when she saw to it there would be a dedicated hot tub on our porch.
3) Unrelated to the quality of the hill, it’s really fucking inconvenient to lose your cell just before flying out of town.
4) But the Rogers in Whistler is well-stocked, and I am online for text/data, with speech coming shortly, with any luck.
5) Hotel snafus are a universal reality. And the valuable skill of being able to flag an awesome cabbie who can shuttle you and your absurd quantity of gear around will never be obsolete while this is true.
6) Irritating older folk with an unwarranted sense of entitlement are also a universal reality. And if they come plowing through the lift line at double black speeds and run over your board because you brazenly stopped to unclip your foot, it is your fault.
7) Corollary to (6)… if you do not wish it to be your fault, next time, hip check ‘em into the aluminum queue guides, and hope their unwarranted velocity finishes their excessively huffy existence before they get a chance to kvetch about it.
8) The local BC folks’ attitude to the encroaching Olympics here is… conflicted. They are happy to see vast quantities of money on the horizon. They are tired of fibreglass inukshuks being erected on every spare square meter of soil.
That is all. Additional breathtakingly insightful observations will follow just as soon as I’ve finished dissolving in the tub.
17/01: Milestone/Testosterone
So I finally got ‘round to trying a new position in my bindings. Set the front one to six degrees—mirroring the back, which is at minus six. The notion is this should make switch easier…
And it certainly seems to do so. Yestereve’s milestone: I rode all the way down a blue, switch all the way.
I was able to repeat this performance several times—and awkwardly in places, sure—but it’s funny—sometimes the temptation to turn around and do it the easy way is just incredible. It’s like that left foot is always saying: ‘Oh c’mon… let me lead… You know I’m better at it.’
There are two situations in which this temptation is particularly compelling. One is obvious—on a steeper or generally more difficult pitch, naturally enough…
The other is, I guess, not so surprising either. But amusing in its way…
‘Cos man, I do so want to turn around and just go flashing past riding the easy way whenever there’s someone a) female and b) attractive anywhere in sight…
It’s funny, I guess. I mean, yeah, I’m 40, and yeah, I’m married, but that intense desire to look like I may actually know what I’m doing in the presence of a pretty woman, apparently, that never quite leaves you. It’s like it’s primal, or some damned thing…
It makes me a little more sympathetic, I guess, to a certain subclass of skiier/rider that does, in honesty, get on my nerves, from time to time…
As in: man, sometimes I’ll get on the lift next to or just too close to a coupla youngish bearers of Y chromosomes, and it’s like there’s this cloud of testosterone around ‘em that’s so thick you could swear you can smell the stuff. There will emanate from their vicinity all manner of hypercompetitive weirdness—and everything’s all about how incredible they are about everthing they do, how so-and-so who’s not currently present just totally sucks compared with them, and about who they’re ‘nailing’ or who they would like to ‘nail’, who they’re damn sure they’re gonna ‘nail’…
Oh, and pro tip: hypercompetitive young bearers of Y chromosomes do not ‘have sex’, do not even ‘fuck’, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead ‘making love’… They ‘nail’… Or, apparently ‘do’ whomever is being ‘done’… Presumably their sexual partners… Tho’ honestly, I guess I’m just assuming that, technically…
And, in fairness, I guess it’s probably partly the territory. Adrenaline sports, I’d expect they do sorta invite that sorta thing…
And anyway, like I said: given the revealed reality that male vanity is apparently pretty much a puberty-to-grave thing, for me at least, I guess I can resist the temptation to push some of ‘em off the lift for a few more nights at least anyway.
And it certainly seems to do so. Yestereve’s milestone: I rode all the way down a blue, switch all the way.
I was able to repeat this performance several times—and awkwardly in places, sure—but it’s funny—sometimes the temptation to turn around and do it the easy way is just incredible. It’s like that left foot is always saying: ‘Oh c’mon… let me lead… You know I’m better at it.’
There are two situations in which this temptation is particularly compelling. One is obvious—on a steeper or generally more difficult pitch, naturally enough…
The other is, I guess, not so surprising either. But amusing in its way…
‘Cos man, I do so want to turn around and just go flashing past riding the easy way whenever there’s someone a) female and b) attractive anywhere in sight…
It’s funny, I guess. I mean, yeah, I’m 40, and yeah, I’m married, but that intense desire to look like I may actually know what I’m doing in the presence of a pretty woman, apparently, that never quite leaves you. It’s like it’s primal, or some damned thing…
It makes me a little more sympathetic, I guess, to a certain subclass of skiier/rider that does, in honesty, get on my nerves, from time to time…
As in: man, sometimes I’ll get on the lift next to or just too close to a coupla youngish bearers of Y chromosomes, and it’s like there’s this cloud of testosterone around ‘em that’s so thick you could swear you can smell the stuff. There will emanate from their vicinity all manner of hypercompetitive weirdness—and everything’s all about how incredible they are about everthing they do, how so-and-so who’s not currently present just totally sucks compared with them, and about who they’re ‘nailing’ or who they would like to ‘nail’, who they’re damn sure they’re gonna ‘nail’…
Oh, and pro tip: hypercompetitive young bearers of Y chromosomes do not ‘have sex’, do not even ‘fuck’, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead ‘making love’… They ‘nail’… Or, apparently ‘do’ whomever is being ‘done’… Presumably their sexual partners… Tho’ honestly, I guess I’m just assuming that, technically…
And, in fairness, I guess it’s probably partly the territory. Adrenaline sports, I’d expect they do sorta invite that sorta thing…
And anyway, like I said: given the revealed reality that male vanity is apparently pretty much a puberty-to-grave thing, for me at least, I guess I can resist the temptation to push some of ‘em off the lift for a few more nights at least anyway.
In the course of one of the usual discussions over at PZ’s place on religious weirdness we have observed, we got to talking about Joseph Smith and that hilarious ‘Book of Abraham’ fiasco of his. My observation on this was that what’s at once kind of funny and scary about what Smith was. As in: the guy wasn’t even that good a con man, by many measures. Hardly the smoothest operator at all. You really do get the impression, in retrospect, that he just wasn’t that terribly bright.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
13/01: Nailing it
It ain’t like you didn’t know this. But practice makes perfect.
This eve, at long last, I was finally nailing those turns to and from and in switch. All ways I could think of—even doing those formerly unpleasant clockwise spins comfortably.
On blacks. With maybe 4 cm of powder on the base at best. It was all good. Under lights, on measurable pitches. Wherever, whenever. Apparently, I can do this thing now.
The clockwise thing really is a different animal than counter. Have to do them more compactly, body less active, taking up less slope to do it. Counter, I do this bigger sweep on the toe, coming around. Clockwise, it’s these tight little twists.
Injury-wise, I figure I’m on the mend. Still gotta be real careful how I stretch on that side, but I’m learning to work around it. One annoying concession to this reality has been just in kneeling to lock in at the top instead of trying to do it standing. Gives some critical muscle groups a break. This is a minor nuisance, but worth it, I figure, if it gets me to functional faster. Put on my older Cloudveils, too—figuring that’s gonna be harder on their knees.
It’s a funny thing tho’—I think one of the things that got this eve started off right was a little bit of artificial powder. They were running the snow guns on one of the greens at Fortune when I got there—they’d left the run open, set the guns real high so they were raining powder on you from above while you rode. I did a few runs there for a change just to have some powder underfoot—it’s been a bad season that way—not a lot of snowfall, so there’s been a lotta hardpack and ice under my edges. And it was nice also to pretend it was actually snowing for a change. So I played under the guns for a while, goggles on, dancing in all that soft, forgiving powder…
It’s funny because: while it was a nice, gentle beginning to the evening, and I got to play with those more difficult clockwise spins in this rather less brutal environment, I didn’t really start making them so neat until I’d got that sharp, nasty Skunk Ape up onto the ice of the harder runs over on the other side. The powder was forgiving, sure, but it had also made it a lot harder to be as precise, as agile about this business…
I find myself mildly curious, thinking about it now, how I’m going to adjust to Rockies powder, when it comes to that. So much of my technique is adapted to hard, merciless Eastern ice—I almost wonder if it’s gonna be like trying to swordfight in a room full of pillows… Feathers all over the place, and no way in hell to land a blow neatly…
(Touches ribs, strained muscles gingerly…)
Right. And then again, I guess there are worse things.
This eve, at long last, I was finally nailing those turns to and from and in switch. All ways I could think of—even doing those formerly unpleasant clockwise spins comfortably.
On blacks. With maybe 4 cm of powder on the base at best. It was all good. Under lights, on measurable pitches. Wherever, whenever. Apparently, I can do this thing now.
The clockwise thing really is a different animal than counter. Have to do them more compactly, body less active, taking up less slope to do it. Counter, I do this bigger sweep on the toe, coming around. Clockwise, it’s these tight little twists.
Injury-wise, I figure I’m on the mend. Still gotta be real careful how I stretch on that side, but I’m learning to work around it. One annoying concession to this reality has been just in kneeling to lock in at the top instead of trying to do it standing. Gives some critical muscle groups a break. This is a minor nuisance, but worth it, I figure, if it gets me to functional faster. Put on my older Cloudveils, too—figuring that’s gonna be harder on their knees.
It’s a funny thing tho’—I think one of the things that got this eve started off right was a little bit of artificial powder. They were running the snow guns on one of the greens at Fortune when I got there—they’d left the run open, set the guns real high so they were raining powder on you from above while you rode. I did a few runs there for a change just to have some powder underfoot—it’s been a bad season that way—not a lot of snowfall, so there’s been a lotta hardpack and ice under my edges. And it was nice also to pretend it was actually snowing for a change. So I played under the guns for a while, goggles on, dancing in all that soft, forgiving powder…
It’s funny because: while it was a nice, gentle beginning to the evening, and I got to play with those more difficult clockwise spins in this rather less brutal environment, I didn’t really start making them so neat until I’d got that sharp, nasty Skunk Ape up onto the ice of the harder runs over on the other side. The powder was forgiving, sure, but it had also made it a lot harder to be as precise, as agile about this business…
I find myself mildly curious, thinking about it now, how I’m going to adjust to Rockies powder, when it comes to that. So much of my technique is adapted to hard, merciless Eastern ice—I almost wonder if it’s gonna be like trying to swordfight in a room full of pillows… Feathers all over the place, and no way in hell to land a blow neatly…
(Touches ribs, strained muscles gingerly…)
Right. And then again, I guess there are worse things.
Mr. Balder moves on.
He’ll be missed. But the good news is, I guess, the new guy made me laugh, too…
Granted, it’s probably just because I happen to hate cows.
(/’Kay. That’s not true. Cows are okay people, as ruminants go. Taste pretty good, too.)
He’ll be missed. But the good news is, I guess, the new guy made me laugh, too…
Granted, it’s probably just because I happen to hate cows.
(/’Kay. That’s not true. Cows are okay people, as ruminants go. Taste pretty good, too.)
10/01: My son is a machine
Four years old, skiied some nine hours this weekend. And no, that’s not counting breaks for food.
He’s skiing entirely on his own now, too—doing his own turns, controlling his speed himself, finding his own way down the hill. And never seems to want to stop. Today, I had to explain at last lift that yes, regrettably ski hills do close at night (earlier, tonight, in this case). And this was his second day on the hill this weekend. His sister—no slouch either, by any means—had had enough after a long Saturday at the hill. He wanted to come back.
Indeed, I kinda had to take him back. Insofar as assuring him I would had been the only way I’d got him to come home the night before.
Dunno where he gets that. But it’s nice. I can ride down with him now, mostly just stay close enough to keep an eye out for clumsy idiots who might run him over, otherwise just let him do his thing, just do my thing. Has to be all very low speed things, sure, but there’s lots I can work on that fits that bill—played with switching, spinning today, mostly: keeping the board spinning like a helicopter all the way down those slow greens. I can do that counter-clockwise pretty much indefinitely now—clockwise still needs work.
Kid’s a skiing machine.
He’s skiing entirely on his own now, too—doing his own turns, controlling his speed himself, finding his own way down the hill. And never seems to want to stop. Today, I had to explain at last lift that yes, regrettably ski hills do close at night (earlier, tonight, in this case). And this was his second day on the hill this weekend. His sister—no slouch either, by any means—had had enough after a long Saturday at the hill. He wanted to come back.
Indeed, I kinda had to take him back. Insofar as assuring him I would had been the only way I’d got him to come home the night before.
Dunno where he gets that. But it’s nice. I can ride down with him now, mostly just stay close enough to keep an eye out for clumsy idiots who might run him over, otherwise just let him do his thing, just do my thing. Has to be all very low speed things, sure, but there’s lots I can work on that fits that bill—played with switching, spinning today, mostly: keeping the board spinning like a helicopter all the way down those slow greens. I can do that counter-clockwise pretty much indefinitely now—clockwise still needs work.
Kid’s a skiing machine.
08/01: On the injury list
… tho’ hopefully just briefly. A nice gentleman from Carleton’s sports medicine centre will be looking at some X-rays shortly to determine if I may have actually broken a rib or two after all. A spot further down from where I thought the real trouble was really did start causing some serious awkwardness a few days ago. It’s sorta weird—I don’t see how I could have done such damage in said place (no impact around the time it start causing trouble—seriously, I wonder if maybe I just strained something reaching around the other injury), but anyway, I’m packing on frozen gelpacks a few days and taking things a bit easier.
The good news: the considered opinion of the guy who’s looking at those X-rays is that whether he finds a fracture or not, I’m probably still going to be okay to do Whistler in a few weeks time, as is the plan.
Which is good. Folk hearing I’ll be going have been raving about how no other mountain is ever quite going to make me happy again after this—and as this was also the experience of my lovely wife, who has been before, I tend to believe them. It would be beyond frustrating to have to pass because I went and messed up a rib in the process of training for it.
The good news: the considered opinion of the guy who’s looking at those X-rays is that whether he finds a fracture or not, I’m probably still going to be okay to do Whistler in a few weeks time, as is the plan.
Which is good. Folk hearing I’ll be going have been raving about how no other mountain is ever quite going to make me happy again after this—and as this was also the experience of my lovely wife, who has been before, I tend to believe them. It would be beyond frustrating to have to pass because I went and messed up a rib in the process of training for it.
06/01: Weirdly loveable
Ms. Morissette’s So Pure is hereby presented fer yer consideration…
I’m one of those weirdos who fucking outright loves the oddly meandering disk whence comes this track—Morissette’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which apparently confounded any number of critics who were expecting… umm…
‘Kay. Actually, I’ve no idea what they were expecting. And I don’t much care. I do, however, submit, that if you can listen to this alternately brooding and comic disk without wanting to sing along, now and then, there’s something wrong with you. Get help.
(/Also, submitted for your consideration, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie can also absolutely be appreciated while boarding in the dark in the Gatineaus. Morissette being from here, after all, I guess this is to be expected. Or something.)
I’m one of those weirdos who fucking outright loves the oddly meandering disk whence comes this track—Morissette’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which apparently confounded any number of critics who were expecting… umm…
‘Kay. Actually, I’ve no idea what they were expecting. And I don’t much care. I do, however, submit, that if you can listen to this alternately brooding and comic disk without wanting to sing along, now and then, there’s something wrong with you. Get help.
(/Also, submitted for your consideration, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie can also absolutely be appreciated while boarding in the dark in the Gatineaus. Morissette being from here, after all, I guess this is to be expected. Or something.)
