sjh - mountain biking running linux vegan geek spice - mtb / vegan / running / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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email: sjh@svana.org

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Mon, 27 Aug 2007

Keeping with tradition, I missed my Blorthday once more. - 17:55
Yesterday was once more my Blorthday. Though only a day late this year in mentioning it, I am obviously getting with my trend of not posting on the date of the anniversary of this diary.

This year the stats are: 

[17:57:26] 173 oneiros sjh ~/diary/data>find -name '*.text' | wc -l
696
[17:57:28] 174 oneiros sjh ~/diary/data>wc `find -name '*.text'`
...
24060  181077 1143131 total

I have been following another prevalent trend out in diary space (yeah I still hate the term blogsphere) and that is the trend of posting frequency to approach zero over time. I have been posting a lot less this year than either of the previous two years. 148 posts is significantly lower than either 221 or 337. Ahh well no matter, I am sure I will keep doing this for my own reasons, as much as I feel like.

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What changed to make year round sports so much better - 17:36
Last Wednesday, Craig (who I did Geoquest with) and I headed up to Perisher Blue for a day of downhill skiing. This is the first time I had been skiing since 2002, which for me was a really long break from the sport. Until 2002 I had been skiing for between 2 and 3 weeks most years (except 1993 when we lived in England) from the age of 5 or there abouts.

To say I used to be snow obsessed is not overstating things. Although I have been an avid mountain biker since 1991/1992 I had been skiing avidly for longer and had spent a lot of time (and effort, money, etc) in being a competent skier. I tended to have a week of lessons every year to help improve more, then spend the rest of my time up there skiing a lot.

The interesting thing is that though I had a lot of fun last Wednesday, I do not feel the need to go back and ski more this year, or at least I do not feel the need strongly. So I have been wondering why I am not as snow obsessed as I once was.

I think a large part of the problem is that I am somewhat bored with Perisher Blue, sure I could go to Thredbo some more, or to Victorian resorts. However it would all be somewhat similar. I think a much more interesting thing to do would be more cross country skiing again, after all that opens up new places and adventures much more than lifted alpine skiing can. I suspect if I headed over to Europe or "Canadia" for an alpine skiing trip I would enjoy it a lot more due to the completely different environment and style of terrain and snow there.

However another aspect of this boredom with skiing I think is heavily related to the fact it is not easy to ski year round from where I live. See if I want to go mountain bike riding, paddling, running, hiking, etc. I can do that at any time of the year and have fun in the outdoors. I can concentrate on improving my ability and related fitness with each activity whenever I want to. Skiing on the other hand I can only do for a few short months eery year and it costs a lot of money. (I almost said a lot more money, then I thought of my tendency to break bike components and decided it may not be so incredibly different... though it is likely more expensive on a per hour of participation basis to go Alpine skiing)

My Alpine skis are "old skool" straight skis rather than parabolics, up on the slopes I was almost alone in skiing straight skis last Wednesday. Thus it was surprising, when I consider what a gear freak I can be that while looking at some shiny new skis in the shops in Jindabyne I was not even remotely tempted to buy new equipment. Probably because I realised I would not use it, looking at the price of some of the good ski and binding pairs I thought to myself, gee I could buy another boat for that (AUD $1400 or so), after all I can paddle year round (and I did not think I could buy a bike for that, being the bike snob that I am I would be wary of riding a bike that only cost AUD $1400 new.... <g>)

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