Winter is here! (by Neil)

We've decided to drop the whole interview format, hopefully our bloyal blog fans don't mind.

This week marked the first snowfall within the city of Vancouver. We woke up Saturday morning to a couple of inches of snow on the ground. Whistler has been getting pounded with snow and opened up on Friday. Cypress (a mountain about 40 minutes from our place, where many of the Olympic downhill events took place) also announced they would open this weekend. Tara and I actually bought an 'off-peak' season's pass (meaning no holidays and no weekends in January and February) for Cypress, so we figured we might as well head up to pick up our passes and get a few runs in.

I unfortunately had not yet installed my winter tires, which would be required for our upcoming mountain journey. I only own one set of rims, so changing tires means I need to bring the car to a garage to dismount the summer tires from the rims, then mount and balance the winter tires. I called around in a hurry on Saturday morning trying to find a place nearby that would do it, only to be quoted some outrages prices such as $140 for the set. After reading a recommendation online, I called a place in Richmond and the conversation went like this:

Me: Hi, can you guys swap my summer and winter tires off of a single set of rims?
Other guy: Yes, sir.
Me: How much do you charge?
Other guy: Fifty dollar, what time you come?
Me: How about one o'clock?
Other guy: Aaaah...one o'clock too late...
Me: Okay I'll leave now and I'll be there at eleven thirty.
Other guy: Ok, you come at one o'clock, no problem.

So Tara and I drive out there for one and find the place in a little bit of a 'middle of nowhere' industrial zone. We pull up to the 'garage' and are greeted by the owner/mechanic, who pulls my car into his little garage and tells us we can have a seat on the couch and surf the internet on his computer if we want. Of course I did not take him up on this offer, and proceeded to use my iPhone to soothe my internet addiction. The funny thing was the whole process started to seem more legit than other garages I'd been to (minus the fact that there was only one employee and it looked like it doubled as his home) as I was able to sit there and watch everything he did to my car. Here's what the place looked like:

He did all four tires by himself in about 40 minutes, I paid him $50 cash, and he didn't even burden my wallet with an unnecessary receipt! In fact the only proof I have that I went there are some pictures I took of my car up on the jack. I'm still not sure if it was the greatest idea but it brought me that feeling of warmth inside knowing that I saved, like, at least $40.

Anyways, maybe you had to be there, but it was sketchy, hilarious, and super convenient as we were all ready to head up to Cypress today. We got there a little late as I forced Tara to go to a late showing of the new Harry Potter movie instead of going to watch UFC 123 like she wanted to, and we wanted to sleep in. There weren't many runs open but I am proud to say that we got in our first day of boarding before any of you did, muahahahaha! Here is a picture of me giving the peace sign in front of the Olympic rings, which I thought was appropriate since the Olympics are a symbol of international unity and I am a HUGE supporter of world peace:

Another shot from the 'top' (at least the highest point that was open). You can see the Howe Sound through the haze in the distance, it's really beautiful:

I'm actually pretty excited about having a season's pass to this place. They have night skiing (with amazing lighting thanks to last year's Olympics, apparently), and a decent amount of vertical considering it's a stone's throw from the city. I've never had a pass to a mountain before, and we plan on getting A LOT of boarding in. I might actually take a day off work this week and head up to Whistler with Bernie, depending on how our schedules go and what the conditions are like.

Aside from the snowy excitement, work went amazing this week as I 'fired' the experiment I'm working on for the first time. I was delayed a few weeks by some frustrating circumstances that were out of my control, but the shot on Friday marks the culmination of my first month and a half of work and I was really happy and relieved. I wish I could post pictures here, but I'll have to show them to you all in person. Instead, please enjoy and drool over the amazing pad thai we made for supper tonight:

That's all for now...