Ordinary

An Ordinary Day from Whistler Whatever on Vimeo.

Anything but ordinary. A great sesaon: 192 days in length – opening two weeks early on November 14, 2009. Over five metres of snow fell in November and a total of 15 metres of snow fell over the season. There was also the winter Olympics, Paralympics and lots of great memories. I skied 176 days, missing days only due to poor weather (rain and high winds) and recovery from the Canadian hockey team gold medal game.

Recorded from November 14, 2009 to May 24, 2010 with a digital camera that took a photo every 30 minutes; the film is comprised of over 8000 images. It was taken from the taco-cam perched on a windowsill above the deck in the house that I live.

Roadtrip

Cross Canada Road Trip from Whistler Whatever on Vimeo.

East to west; from Barrie, ON to Whistler, BC in about four and a half minutes. Recorded October 26 to 31, 2009.

Burn

After a lightning strike last Thursday, a fire started on the Crystal Ridge area of Blackcomb Mountain. It was mostly contained within the first day as I’m sure workers were pulled off the 100 or so other fires burning in the province. I imagine fires in Whistler are given some sort of priority over other fires given the high profile nature of the location.

For the many firemen in town for the World Police and Fire Games, I wonder if it was a treat or a horror show for them to watch the mountain burning.

As of yesterday, four days after the original fire another fire started on Ruby Bowl, an area with very steep terrain. Blackcomb mountain was closed to tourists and hikers for a few days after the original fire, but remains open after the new fire on Ruby Bowl yesterday. Whistler mountain and the Peak 2 Peak are open with the exception of the backcountry trails which the province has issued a voluntary ban on hiking due to the fire risk. It’s been an eventful week.

As I know all of you like watching stuff burn, here are my photos from the fire. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one. If you’re on a mobile device, click here to view the images.

Salty Dreams

I always find it funny when I see bags of potato chips in a town that is at a high elevation. Whistler isn’t that high at 670 m/2,198 ft but when the chips are packed at near sea level and then brought to a higher elevation, it’s a bit puffed up – enough to be used as a pillow in a pinch. But I wouldn’t take my food to bed with me.

It’s simple science and great entertainment as explained by this science teacher in Mussoorie, India (elevation 1,826 m/5,991 ft). I wonder how puffed up the bag would be if I took it to the top of Blackcomb Mountain (elevation 2240 m/7349 ft). Maybe this has to be done.

Pre

Palm Inc, an off shoot of the 3 Com company, made the PDA a mainstream object – it was the Palm Pilot; a name synonymous with the PDA. I never owned a Palm Pilot until they merged that item with a phone. The Palm Phone was born and I was a fan.

I got my first Palm Phone, the Palm Treo 600 in 2004 and then the Palm Treo 650 in 2006. The Treo 650 works so well, that I still use it to this day. I think It still works better than the Apple iPhone.

Recently, the Palm Pre was released on the Sprint network in the US. I got to test drive it when I was in New York last month. It is a worthy successor, unfortunately, in North America, the new Palm Pre is only available in the US on the Sprint network – a non-GSM network. I refuse to get one because I wouldn’t be able to use it outside of North America and I’m on Rogers in Canada. It it were available on GSM, there would be a much larger market for this phone.

However, they did produce some good commercials as seen below…

Drink

My main meals today were smoothies, a chocolate one for breakfast, blueberry for lunch and a green (kale) smoothie for dinner. In addition, I had some bananas, oranges, a nectarine and some trail mix. This is probably the best I’ve eaten in quite a while. Nutritious, but not as many calories as I probably need considering I went on six-hour hike today. I may supplement my diet with some potato chips (only half kidding).

iLike

The new Safari interface is friendly to look at and make it easy to access my frequently visited websites. I had been using Firefox more often before this because it worked with more websites. Hopefully Apple has made it more compatible and did not only put on a new face. I’ll keep using Safari for now.

I was starting to lose faith in some Apple products after my iPhone was underperforming. I realized that it was today after it shut down in the midst of a phone conversation. Some say I talk too much, but I noticed that this has been going on since October of last year according to my photo below. After an unusually quick call to Rogers, they offered to replace my dysfunctional iPhone with a new one – hopefully that makes it all right again.

Kryptonite

I don’t have green smoothies that often as I prefer to eat my greens. After making my first one last year, they’ve grown on me and now I have them on a regular basis.

They aren’t always as bright as the one pictured above, sometimes they come out a murky green colour. The bright green one reminds me of kyrptonite – but it has the opposite effect! The colour is affected by the type of vegetable and other ingredients I use. Regardless of the colour they usually are pretty tasty (to me).

Here’s how I made the one listed above.

Ingredients

• 1 apple, cut into chunks (or other fruit)
• handful of frozen cranberries
• 1/2 bunch of green kale
• 2 tablespoons ground flax
• lemon juice
• cayenne pepper (another one of those secret ingredients)
• water

Instructions

1. Put everything but the flax in a blender and blend on the highest speed.
2. When well blended, add the flax.
3. Add more water to the desired consistency.

If you want your smoothie to be a bright green colour, substitute the flax with 1/6 of an avocado. I also sometimes add dulse too – this will change the colour to a muddy brown-green colour. Red kale does the same thing. If you want a bright green smoothie, don’t use these ingredients.

Edit [August 15, 2010]: Here is the nutritional information…

Catwoman

Eartha Kitt, a talented woman who played Catwoman – and the best one at that – in the Batman series in the 1960s passed away yesterday at the age of 81. When I first saw her on Batman she was already a celebrity -  like all the other villans on the show. She was also a talented singer, actress and stage performer. However, I will remember her most for her sultry voice.

Championships

As I was going through some things tonight, I ran across two posters that I had forgotten that I had. The first one is of Björn Borg as he won the finals at Wimbledon in 1978. This was a pretty famous image in its day. I got it autographed in the 1980s when he made a promotional appearance in Toronto. The poster has been rolled up in a tube since then. I was lucky enough to watch the finals live at Wimbledon in 1988 when another Swede, Stefan Edberg defeated Boris Becker. I’ve been to Wimbledon (twice), the French Open and the US Open. I’ll have to complete the grand slam in Australia soon.

The other championship that I watched was the Whistler World Cup in 1995. Me and some friends traveled there for a weekend to ski and watch the race – but we all know we like to watch it for the wipe outs. We stationed ourselves at a corner where many skiers lost it and sometimes hit and bounce off a snow fence in midair like Spiderman might do. It’s a crazy sport, but it’s fun to watch. I was at Whistler in 2008 for the World Cup race but it was canceled due to fog. Hopefully the weather will cooperate in 2009.