Black Mountain Morning

A good view of the runs on Black Mountain, at Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver, while riding the Sunrise Quad up Mount Strachan first thing in the morning.

The straight run at the far left, middle of the frame, is the new section that will be the moguls and aerials venue at the 2010 Olympics.  I’ve put a  larger photo showing more of the aerials and moguls section at Flickr.

Verchere and the Janitor

Sunrise Chair - Cypress Mountain - 14 Jan 07

I ran into Ian Verchere at Cypress Bowl today. Ian’s the Chief Creative Officer at ShiftControlMedia, a great guy, and great skier.

I know him from my stint at Radical Entertainment in 1998-99, back when the company was still on Homer Street in Yaletown.

Back then, for some reason, I wore my keys on a carabiner on my belt, and when I walked they’d jingle-jangle-jingle.

Because of where our team room was situation, I used to walk by Ian’s office about 20 times a day, keys jingling all the way. He was always really polite about it, but I’m pretty sure for the first while I worked there, he was convinced I was the new janitor.

Ian’s written a great book about the glory days of Whistler, VON1B0.

There’s a review, excerpts and loads of pictures in The Tyee. It’s really valuable having Ian’s insights into the little town, the people, and the psyche of the place before it turned into the world renowned destination it has become, and in the process completely changing what it was.

Grab it will it’s on sale, either at Amazonor Chapters.Indigo.

CBC’s Early Streaming Audio Remembered

CBC’s internal blog marks milestones in the company’s history. 

This weekend Tod Maffin posted regarding the program RealTime and its early entry into streaming audio on the internet.  Tod asked if I could paint the picture of what that was like.  The full post at InsideTheCBC.com

Our entire connection to the internet was a 14.4 phone modem in our offices on C-floor. CBC had no corporate internet connection then. We’d encode the files, then Loc would run out of the control room during the news and start a command line FTP program to send the files to Seattle, where Progressive Networks would mount them and serve them…

Our boss in Vancouver, the late Susan Englebert, was brilliant in letting us squirrel away in the bowels of the CBC building and running interference when someone tried to shut down the work we were doing. Audio streaming at CBC would never have happened if Susan Englebert hadn’t made it possible, simple as that.

 

Boarding Above the Fog On Cypress

Conditions were great this morning, though it’s icey once you poke through the soft stuff. There was a massive fog bank floating around near the bottom of Cypress bowl, and occasionally working its way part way up. 

Vancouver’s White Pointers

When In Vancouver…

Wax up the board, head north, and don’t stop until you’re knee deep in snow.

I know white pointers means something different in Australia, I just think it works for our local mountains, so I’ve adopted it. No Worries, right ?

Mounted In Vancouver’s The West End

@ Denman and Haro

Five Things I Know About Moose

 

1. In high school, our biology teacher Mr. Wally took us for a field trip to a floating bog in Riding Mountain National Park. Two major events happened during this outing.  One of our class members fell through through the delicate bog surface and almost disappeared into 5 metres of bog water. The other thing that happened was Mr. Wally’s moose-call. We all thought it was hilarious, until a mom moose actually showed up with calf, scaring the living crap out of all of us – Mr. Wally included.  Moose have this in common with side-view mirrors;  things are much larger than they appear. 
2. Moose have bad eyesight. Really bad eyesight. They rely on smell to figure out if you’re a relatively innocuous backwoodsman or a scared sh*tless teenage biology student.
3. In the summer, moose eat leaves, twigs, shrubs and water plants in great quantity. A large moose will eat 25 to 30 kilograms of stuff a day. They will also dive up to 5 metres to feed on lilies or any wayward high school biology students who may be found nearby.
4. Baby moose look pretty wonky on their pegs, and are helpless for the first few days after birth. However, they quickly find their legs, and within a couple of days they can outrun an adult human. The only thing faster than a baby moose is a frightened teenage biology student.
5. Northern Voice is an awesome conference in Vancouver that has a Moose for logo.  The mere logo itself instills fear in every one of Mr. Wally’s class of ‘74 grade XII biology students. After years of therapy, many of us have learned to face the fear and Embrace the Moose!

Moose facts courtesy Hinterland’s Who’s Who (hum the theme, I know you want to).  No actual high school students were harmed during the field trip, but everything else is true.  Mr. Wally is a real person, and was the best high school biology teacher I ever had.  He was also the only high school biology teacher I ever had.  This post was inspired by kk’s reminder to sign up for Northern Voice.  I did, you should too.  

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