1. 25 April 2008

    Out the window.

    133 days ago

    I like to set my desk up right in front of a window. That way when I need to look away from the computer it’s a piece of cake—just stare out the window for a few seconds until I’m ready to dive back onto the desktop. My room in morris is on the second floor of a smallish white house. There’s an amply sized window facing north–east right in the middle across from the door. My desk sits there, my bed to the left and a lamp and chair to the right. The desk supports my laptop and whatever crap, plus an old, corked wine bottle with a few leaves of Epipremnum aureum (Devil’s Ivy) growing in it, terrarium–style.

    When I was in fifth grade for some reason I was big on plants. I worked out in the garden during the summer, read all kinds of books on all kinds of *–culture, and I eventually built up a nice little greenhouse where else but right in my room. I was particularly taken with orchids and bonsai trees, (which I couldn’t much afford but did with whatever money I earned working odd jobs and through gifts from my parents). I also liked messing around with my mom’s houseplants, making cuttings and that sort of thing and putting them in odd places. That’s where this this wine bottle comes from, it’s a few inches of pebbles that I spiked with fertilizer and water then stuck an ivy cutting into, which has thrived ever since. I’ve probably only uncorked the thing twice in the intervening years (10 or so? I think 9), new leaves have grown to replace those that die, making a nice cycle. It’s an efficient little atmospheric system. The coolest part is that I just made it, just thought that I should see if it’d work, could I just copy the idea of a terrarium? And I did.

    But back to that view. Out the window at my normal vantage there’s about 1/3 roof, the roof over the living room below that pops out from what I would assume was once an even smaller plain white house. Green shingles, with a very relaxed slope. Once or twice I’ve popped off the screen and hopped out there just to sit—but it really isn’t that nice a place to sit and read. The best part of the roof is the animals that run across it, birds and a squirrel every once in a while, going about their business with no idea I’m just on the other side of a pane of glass watching them. Until they notice me and scamper off. The house next door takes up a similar amount of space, it’s a big, boxy, light blue, vinyl–clad thing, well–proportioned but ugly. The front of of ends in a porch, which I liked until I walked onto it one day and realized it was not just faux–wood for the floor, but the railing was plastic made to look like it had been lathed and for gods sake, why?

    I like the roof being in my view, it’s very rule–of–thirds; I could stand the house getting out of there. If it was just a little smaller and older, to fit in with all the other houses on the block, I might not be so mad about it. But the real view is off to the left of big blue and above the green roof. It’s a mass of trees in the cumulative front yards of the houses next door. It lifts my view when I do look out the window so that my head tilts up and to the right, a good thinking pose. The first two trees clustered in the first yard (damn blue house) are thick pine trees of some sort, trunks worn orange in places, needles green even when snow blows (out here snow never just falls, it’s always horizontal). Behind it are a few big deciduous ones that fill out the treed portion of my window. At the far left is the street, just inside the street the sidewalk, where I can see bikes/people/cars going by (ordered by interestingness). Overall it’s a good view.

    The only reason I’m writing about it is that because today it’s been profoundly debased and contaminated. It’s snowing like a bitch. For a point of reference, it’s the 25th of april, 2008. This weekend I played in a soccer tournament on saturday, it was perfect weather—65º and sunny—I got a nice sunburn, and up until yesterday it’s hovered between 60 and 70 degrees. Very much springlike. For a couple of weeks now whenever the weather was looking up people have been joking about how a renegade snowstorm would blow through and fuck everything up. It isn’t funny anymore. The snow layer had already melted twice then reclaimed itself at the foot of everything when collectively we all knew it was finally gone for good. The thermometers hit 70º (and when I say thermometers, I expect you to understand that I mean a 100×250 pixel animation that slides on and off my computer screen when I hit a certain button with my right fourth finger, sends a few packets to the internet to ask another computer that receives dispatches from a network–connected thermometer someplace in or near the city of Morris, and can combine that temperature with a hopelessly abbreviated 7 day forecast), snow is gone for good. Nope. Yesterday I left for school at 10am, markedly enjoying the hot humid feeling I got: haven’t felt this for an awful long time, this is nice. All this week we’ve played soccer on our field, the big spacious grass one as opposed to the cramped plastic football field we’d been using while the field reconstituted itself after being swamped with the melting white stuff. But yesterday, the last day of practice, it was cold as a bitch with 30mph gusts of wind (this is after I’d remarked how nice it was at 10am). And this morning I biked to school at 10:30, just as I left it started to tinkle little crystals. Not snow, not rain, not slush, not hail. I couldn’t feel them falling, but I heard them hitting the ground. I was fine with that actually. But come time to leave the science building it had turned into snow, and by the next time I needed to go out of doors it was really blowing, at some point between snow and slush, coalescing on the ground into a half–ice–half–snow, thick and wet like I’d imagine a frozen cheesecake undergoing the process of thaw.

    Here I must digress, having just hit 1000 words in this stupid little rant. It’s been more than I week since a certain french paper was due, and I haven’t written a word of it (I did write a paragraph at one point, but deleted it). There’s something about springtime that keeps me from doing schoolwork, I noticed it last year and it’s hitting me equally hard this year, even though I’m sitting here looking up every 30 seconds as snow blows completely on the horizontal right outside the window. No good.

    The amazing thing about a real blizzard is that the snow blows omnidirectionally. You can walk however you want, but that shit is still going to smack you in the face. It might hit one side more than the other, but never does it just hit you in the back. It’s always going to get you in the mouth, nose, and eyes. It might be that snow is so much lighter than rain, then, just like in the vortexes you see in a wind tunnel, after the wind blows past an obstruction it whips around propelling snow into the only place I particularly mind the stuff.

    I biked back from the RFC—the farthest point on campus from my house—in the storm, through this pudding buildup of snow–slush and on my schwinn with 1.25” tires nonetheless. That was no good. I walked to class after that because I don’t have any glasses to shield my eyes while biking—the way there wasn’t so bad, but the trip back I couldn’t take it and after I was 1/4 the way home I just decided to sprint the last few blocks to get my poor self out of the cold. This isn’t how april is supposed to work. If april showers bring may flowers, I’m damn glad that I’m not one of the poor daffodils who dared to stick my sensitive green nub of a head out of the soil before this storm came along and frost–bit me to death. I, again, don’t think this is how april is supposed to work. But I don’t have anything to back me up except for the bitching of each and every person hit by this storm, so who knows. Maybe global warming should have been called global major–fuck–with–weather–patterns–the–world–over, that way people would never have sat back and thought: great, I’ll be able to grow oranges in the garden 10 years from now!

  2. A magical world indeed.

  3. 09 February 2006

    I reccommend that you do not:

    939 days ago

    • Program with java.
    • Wear a tshirt in a snowstorm.
    • Wear one sock that slips down the back of your heel because it has a loose neck.
    • Leave your window open when snow is forecast, come back two hours later to find the head of your bed well powdered.
    • Especially when your window opens left to right and funnels extra snow and wind through itself.

  4. 04 January 2006

    Skiing

    975 days ago

    It’s ambiguous to me whether skiing or soccer is better recreation, but they both definitely rock.

    The family did three days of skiing at Blacktail the past week while we stayed with my grandparents, and it was great.

    I don’t get enough chances to ski. Living in Minnesota, where there aren’t any mountains, the only decent skiing is up north, on what I’m willing to call slopes. Anything within a half an hour of my house doesn’t deserve the moniker hill, and it all ends up being prohibitively expensive. End result: it’s not worth it.

    Luckily all my life the family has gone out to Montana around christmas, and since I was 4 my parents have taken me out skiing.

    My first time the story goes that I went down the hill, didn’t stop, and flipped over a barricade into a parking lot. That dampened my spirits, and I didn’t ski the next year. But ever since I’ve managed 3 or 4 good days skiing real mountains per year, and that little bit of experience sticks surprisingly well, I wouldn’t hesitate to call myself an expert skier. At least compared to the skiers I’ve had to compare myself against out there.

    The first two days this year were good, but not great. The weather had been 40 degrees the week before we came out, and so the mountain was mostly closed: the intermediate lift 0% open, advanced lift 50%, and the beginner lift not really worth mentioning. The mountain goes top down, so the best snow was on top. But all the runs were closed from the midway down.

    It wasn’t all that bad, but for the fact that it jammed everyone onto the expert mountain, which had to be groomed to accommodate everyone. The lifts were crowded. Kids with their families routinely had trouble with getting on, resulting in an outrageous amount of stoppages. That got old real fast.

    But overall things were still good. We skied every other day, staying back and visiting between. Between the second and third days, a new foot of power had dumped, and it was real good. Best skiing I’d ever done.

    I’ve never managed to get lucky enough to ski in much more then two inches of new stuff. And boy, is powder nice. It kills your legs, but you get over that. The I really don’t like ice, and powder gives you so much volume to counteract your velocity down the hill. I had to learn real fast how to get through the stuff – it’s not so bad early on, but once it gets all chopped up and bumpy it is tough. But I managed, and it was great.

    We were the first ones over onto the Crystal lift, which had opened the day before, and my first few runs I made the first tracks of the day. I cut a real nice set right down under the lift, and made sure to admire them each time the on the way up. It was really fun to be able to see my line.

    Another thing I never really got was skiing the trees. Really, I was just intimidated by needing to keep between them, not hitting them. Once I forgot how easy it would be to slip and crack my head open I dropped in the top of a gladed run (so I wouldn’t be able to get out easy) and took it all the way down.

    I was hooked. It wasn’t too hard, just stay between the trees, scan ahead, figure out a few routes so that if one doesn’t work you still have some hope of evading the trees.

    You have to think a lot more in the glades. It’s lots quieter, more technical, and harder. I took one run the first day, about four at the end of the second, and ended up spending about half the third day in there. It’s nice to be able to make your own way as opposed to just taking a run all the way down.

    That said, there was only one gladed area in which the trees weren’t dense lodgepole pine. The trees were spaced quite generously, making things really not that hard to deal with. So a good change of pace from hurtling down normally, but I’m not quite this guy (although that slope really isn’t steep, and at second glance, those trees don’t look to dense).

    What I especially loved is how I could get myself into situations I’d never had to deal with before, and manage just fine. If you hopped into the woods near to the lift, as opposed to going above then and cutting in more centrally, you’d get to a real steep 25 foot section that was well hemmed on either side by trees. I managed the real cool looking style you see when a real pro is coming down some absurdly steep slope. Hopping and swiveling around your inside pole, turning yourself nearly 180 degrees in the air, landing your skis and coiling your knees just so you’re ready to do the whole thing in the opposite direction again.

    The one thing I hate are the snowboarders. I’ll call it the 10-30-60 rule: 10 percent of snowbarders are great. Technically excellent, they get down the mountain with no problems and look good while they’re at it. 30 percent are entirely decent. They’re not experts, but they get down. Some may be annoying, but they do just fine.

    The problems come with the remaining 60 percent. Snowboards are big. They’re as long as skis, and two or three times as thick. And being that they are hooked to your feet left/right, as opposed to the forward/backward of skis, the last 60 naturally grind the living hell out of any snow they touch.

    The last 60 percent are the less skilled, still learning, who haven’t yet learned that the aim of snowboarding isn’t to just slip down the mountain, it’s to do it (a) quickly, or (b) gracefully, and© without raping every square foot of snow into a rocky mess.

    Beginning skiers learn to stop with the snowplow, or pizza. Thats where you put the tips of your skis together and the tails far apart to form a wedge pointing down that will slow and then stop you. Snowboarders just point their shoulders up or down the hill, leaving their long edge perpendicular to the slope.

    Now that’s perfectly reasonable. They need to stop somehow. We start having problems when these dumbass kids don’t learn that there is more to the art of snowboard then sliding down the hill on their back edge. Or they continually take on terrain they can’t handle, and all they can do is slide down it funny. Carve!

    Boarders also tend to rove in packs, 2-5 at a time. The combination of that many of five foot long boards scraping down the hill really, really can mess up the snow.

    And it’s inevitably on the steep sections of slope that the boarders decide they need to take their back edge down. Other places they sort of slide from gentle side, to back edge, to other gentle side, leaving the snow in tolerable condition. (Whereas, of course, a real carve would be going hard on the front edge, then rolling hard onto the back edge, all the while pointing your board down the hill and not your shoulders).

    The steeper sections are where I find myself going faster, carving harder, and generally much less happily disposed to come across rocks. Not to mention where it really helps to have regularly spaced drifts to get a rhythm and be able to launch my turns better.

    Ironically, one day the local paper carried an AP article to the effect of “4 old time ski resorts still backward enough to prohibit snowboarding”. Taos here I come.

  5. 02 December 2005

    1008 days ago

    SnowCam

    Blacktail is where my family goes skiing every year, it’s about a 30 minute drive from my grandparents house. On track to open in a week.

    Last year they didn’t open until after we’d left (early january!), and we missed out and had to trek north to a way more expensive resort and could only ski a few days because of it.

    via Kjell Olsen1008 days ago

  6. 15 November 2005

    Snow

    1025 days ago

    I’m a winter guy. So I was worried this saturday when it was 70 degrees out. Mid November, Minnesota, and 70 degrees just don’t go together. I was sweating just walking around, wearing shorts and a tshirt.

    I figured it was just global warming, MN probably wouldn’t have a significant winter ever again.

    Let’s hope we do. It’s snowing pretty well today, with the temperature back down around 30F, where it should be. Finally I can take advantage of my northern european acclimation to the cold.

    It’s about time anyway, all that summery weather was getting to me.

  7. 01 August 2005

    Snow Crash

    Neal Stephenson

    1131 days ago

    Sweet novel by Neal Stephenson. Set in the near future, the US has fallen into a collection of corporations controlling everything from Suburbia and Religion to Pizza Delivery. The Metaverse becomes the global vessel for person to person interaction, and Hiro, the main character knows his shit about the metaverse. But when Da5id, Hiro’s close friend and co-conspirating hacker is infected with a deadly virus after watching a virtual video, Hiro knows something big is happening.

  8. 14 April 2005

    1240 days ago

    Spirit of Snow

    Sweet looking documentary on powder skiing. Wow.

    via Kjell Olsen1240 days ago

  9. 09 March 2005

    1276 days ago

    NOVA Online | Surviving Denali | Igloo

    Another igloo building guide, again nicely illustrated.

    via Kjell Olsen1276 days ago

  10. 08 March 2005

    1277 days ago

    Igloo - how to build one

    I’ve always wanted to build one of these – and maybe even sleep in one sometime. Here I go.

    via Kjell Olsen1277 days ago

  11. 18 February 2005

    1295 days ago

    SKI Magazine ~ Guru Dave and the Tao of Snowbird

    nspired by an airfoil introduced to Snowbird by French skiers decades ago, he set out to make a set of stubby wings that a skier could carry in lieu of poles.

    Dave promises me the sensation of lift will be tangible. “It’s like skiing with handrails for support,” he says. “Your feet pendulum underneath you. And once your speed increases, you can bank into your turn and really dig in.”

    I want to be like this when I grow up – its exciting just to think about it.

    “Look at the slice of time we’re living in,” he tells me one day as we ascend the mountain. “How many people throughout history have had the leisure time we enjoy? In our lives, we have a 60- or 70-year window. Yet people take living for granted. Here we are in a gleaming tram with gleaming equipment. We get to ski. We are blessed.”

    via Kjell Olsen1295 days ago

  12. 22 January 2005

    1322 days ago

    CNN.com - Northeast bracing for winter wallop - Jan 22, 2005

    This storm hit us all day yesterday and last night, and god does it feel good to have winter again! I think we got a little over a foot of snow, I shoveled out the whole driveway last night, then coming back from a friends another friends car got stuck! Winter! Yes!

    via Kjell Olsen1322 days ago

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