Biting off more than I can chew

So as a part of my awesome surfing adventures, I'm planning on a trip to Portugal at some point this year.

It's a country I've never been to, it's a beautiful and relatively unspoilt land, and it gets consistent surf in wonderful conditions. Being that I'm not one to go for the package holiday deal to Torrimolinos to sit on the beach and drink Watley's Red Barrel (no-one will get that reference), I thought I'd investigate learning Portuguese. After all, I have an ipod and there are any number of "Learn to speak a language" podcasts out there.

Holy fucking shit.

No wonder no-one goes to Portugal - it's because the language is fucking terrifying.

Where's that brochure for Torrimolinos? Oh, and pass me a can of Watley's Red Barrel.

Canadian humour.

So, the old standard is that Canadians love hockey. Well apparently they now love hockey a bit too much, and it's got to the point where the Canadian Hockey Association are actually worried enough that they're making adverts trying to stop parents being stupid fucks.

That's right - the governing body for a sport where you only get sin binned for 2 minutes for having a full on brawl are worried that hockey parents are getting out of hand.

I found myself wondering what the fuck is going on at these games. After all I thought it couldn't be that bad...until I clicked here. And here. And here!

While I'm not sure there's an arguement for banning the sport of ice hockey - on this evidence, there's definitely an arguement for banning anyone from watching ice hockey. But hey - at least noone's dying over it.

The art of the Slash (tm)

This post is dedicated to Daniel 'Looks a bit like Jesus' Watson.


There's no denying that I am a childish son of a bitch. This is never more apparent than when I am snowboarding. Now Danno is just as bad as me at this (actually he's probably worse) and so the two of us on a slope usually ends up with at least some dicking around.

The thing is, as we've got better at snowboarding, so we've had to find other ways of being idiots. It started with kicking your board on the footrest of the lift as you go over the top of trails in an attempt to dislodge snow onto the poor saps below. Soon after, it escalated to taking snowballs onto the lift with you to drop on unsuspecting victims; now however, it has taken a darker and more deliberate turn. We've become Slash addicts.

The Slash is a simple move - you gain a wodge of speed, and as you pass a completely innocent bystander you put in a hard turn. This creates a large spray of snow in your wake, covering the aforementioned innocent bystander (often to their complete surprise). It's a childish, childish, childish thing to do. I love it. It's good old fashioned harmless idiocy. You create a huge cloud of snow and ride away as someone stands there looking like they've gone five rounds with a bag of flour.

The most important part of the Slash though is the final move - the wave. You're riding away, you've covered someone head to toe in snow and they're probably a little miffed at you; so you do the only thing you can - look back up the hill, smile and wave an apology.

I swear, I have no justification here - it's childish, it's stupid and I'm covering some poor innocent folk in snow. But it's great fun and gives me a chuckle every time, and if there's one thing that snowboarding should do it's make you smile.

I've been on a different bloody continent

Which is why there haven't been any updates for the last three weeks. So here comes the inevitable blogging backlash. I've been away snowboarding (which should be a surprise to nobody) in Canada. I had a great time, I had a lot of fun and I did a lot of snowboarding. So there.

I'd never left Europe before, so it was very exciting for me to spend nine and a half hours sat on a plane with less leg room than a Fiat Uno. The food was particularly exciting. Alright, so it was naff. But it was also worth it.

Flying into Calgary airport, you really get a feel of the wide open spaces that Canada's famous for. It really was breath taking - as you fly in you're surrounded by flat terrain and in the distance, the rockies rising out of the ground like the very bones of the earth.

Once you arrive, you become exposed to the one thing I found strangest of all...Canadians. I've met polite people before, I've met easy going folk before, but wowzers, Canadians are the politest, most laid back folk I've ever come across.

It's almost out of hand. Even behind the wheel of a car, they're stupidly polite. There were a couple of occasions when I was daydreaming by the kerb to look up and see a car silently waiting for me to cross the road.

So with the storms...

Come the waves...

For those of you who didn't see the photos on the BBC's website about the massive waves that've been turning up on the British coast, here's some proof from Wales. This photo's from Porthcawl - which is about 25 minutes down the road from me.

Where was I when this was taken? In bloody work.

Here's another shot from further down the coast showing just how big and awesome some of the Welsh waves have been since the big swells came in...

I stole the photos from Porthcawlsurf.co.uk and MagicSeaweed.com

This isn't my rant...

But it's still one I thought worthy of mention...

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) today asks why both the UK Government and Scottish Government are proposing a 50% cut in water quality testing when official figures for 2007, also released today, show a ten-fold increase in official UK coastal bathing sites failing legal minimum standards compared to 2006.

MCS believes that the number of failures will rise still further when unofficial sites are included in its Good Beach Guide 2008, published next May.

Government figures released today on UK bathing water quality for Summer 2007 show that the number of official coastal bathing sites failing legal minimum standards rose from 2 in 2006 to 20 in 2007.

- Thomas Bell, MCS Coastal Pollution Officer

There you go. There's no doubt some more blurb on this at the Marine Conservation Society's webby site if you need more information.

For those of you concerned that I'm going to turn into a hippy - don't worry, I'm just off to watch bambi's mother die on a 72" widescreen telly. That always perks me right up.

I had an awesome Friday

Just wanted to mention it really. I made a trip down to Gennith for some surfing, and had an absolutely awesome time. I used my wetsuit booties for the first time and had some of the best waves I've ever had in my short surfing experience.

So there.

Need for speed Mars.

Did you know that NASA scientists are driving a remote control buggy around on the surface of Mars? Did you know that they've set up a jump ramp into the 200 feet deep Victoria crater in the hope of doing the first martian backflip? Did you know that they did a frontflip into the shallower Opportunity crater 3 years ago, but that was just a case of tanking it up to the lip and pulling the front brakes as hard as they could - they needed the steeper lip and bigger drop of Victoria to go for the backflip.

This is all in preparation for next year - GW Bush, in an attempt to rescue his reputation as a bit of a fuckwit is going to dress in the Stars & Stripes and ride a rocketcycle to Mars, then do a superman seatgrab over Eagle crater. Honest.

Surfing level 2 - what I have learnt

So after the incredibly long and vague post about the last 2 weeks, I think I'll take some time to talk about my progress into becoming a surfing legend.

For those of you who've ever tried surfing, you'll know that it's a lot harder than it looks - so despite the fact that I've been working hard, I'm not exactly awesome just yet. I have however reached an important landmark - I'm starting to get 'out back.'

I am however still falling off the board a lot. I've gone over the side, off the back and over the nose of the board more times than I care to count. I'm still loving it though. I also got a real treat a couple of days ago. Just as I was getting out to the line up I saw what looked like a dog's head pop up about 10 feet ahead of me. It looked at me for a bit and then dived into the water and vanished. I've seen seals before (at zoos & stuff), but never this close, and never in the wild. It was a strange and rather beautiful experience as it was a quiet day in the surf, and there weren't many other folk around when this happened - but it was definitely awesome.

Oh please don't change

Though you could also title this "my lack of surfing adventures".

So it's been nearly a month since I bought a wetsuit and declared to those of my friends unfortunate enough to be in shouting range that I was going to take up surfing. My nextdoor neighbour is a superfriendly guy called Al, and he's a very enthusiastic surfer, and very kindly was more than willing to take me along and help me get started. I was all set and ready to go.

Then the weather decided to continue in it's mission to screw with me. The waves since have either been (a) flat (b) blown out or (c) filled with deadly maneating sharks.

Ok, not C.

So I haven't been surfing. Which makes me want to surf all the more. I've been watching webcams, reading surf reports and weather forecasts almost obsessively waiting for something to happen. And now - it looks like it has. The forecast for Sunday looks good. One could even go so far as to say that it looks awesome.

So now I have to pray that it doesn't change, and that the waves arrive as promised. I also have to figure out a way to tell my sister that I would rather go surfing than go to my nephew's 3rd birthday party; which I'm sure will go down like a lead balloon. Sod it, he's only 3. It's not like he's going to remember that I wasn't there, he'll be too busy eating cake and shitting his pants.

Another week of kookiness

Yeah, I'm on nightshift again. So far this week I've shouted at my brother for no real reason and compared talking to me to trying to argue with a goat.

I really wish these shifts wouldn't turn me into a blithering bellicose bastard, but this is what seems to happen.

In other news, I am making progress on my earlier promise to learn how to surf. I've now bought a wetsuit, and tentatively arranged to go surfing next week. No goats are involved.

Supergnar Shredalism

Whatever.

So as winter approaches (what? It's right after summer isn't it?) the snowboard industry has started shaking it's tail feather in my direction trying to tempt me with it's sweet sweet candy. Mostly it's stuff like new kit that's available, and as nice as some of it is, it ain't really blogable.

However, Mack Dawg have released the trailer for their new movie 'Picture This'. For those of you who need this explained, snowboard movies are released every year, and feature a bunch of riders being supergnarly and doing megawootangtrickery. The Mack Dawg crew are some of the best in the world, and their films tend to be pretty awesome.

For the AV nerds out there, I'm sure you'll be happy to know it's also being released in HD DVD. For those of you who have a life and don't spend 45 minutes at a dinner party telling people about the active speaker sound funnel that puts out 1.21 gigawatts that you have - it's being released in normal DVD as well.

Sponsorship and Advertising - a blank cheque?

This is an interesting one for for me.

Ásgeir Leifur Höskuldsson, who is the director of the Icelandic Snowboard Association has written an open letter to the publishers of Snowboarder magazine complaining that they are currently running a series of advertisments on their website for the US Army.

Now I know full well from running a young extreme sport how important securing revenue is, but when I look at this issue, I find myself falling on the side of Mr Höskuldsson. It could be that I'm a bleeding heart liberal and a dirty socialist, but for me I feel that any young sport such as snowboarding or mountainboarding has to recognise that it has a huge 'cool factor' with younger people out there, and it's important to bear this in mind.

What's made this even more relevant for me is that this year's OTG Team challenge is being co-sponsored by the Army. Now this is just my personal opinion, but I don't feel that the organisers have done the right thing by accepting this cash.

I suppose it's easy for me to say this as I was never put in the position to refuse the cash from a sponsor that I found morally incompatible, but I like to think that I would have stood up for what I believed in and turned the cash down. Anyway, have a read of Mr Höskuldsson's letter. It's an eloquently made point, and I rather like what he's saying.

I want one! I want one! I want one!

So one of the problems with being an eager snowboarderer is that snowboarderation companies have a terrible habit of bringing out cooler and cooler stuff each and every year. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I am a complete and total sucker for cool stuff.

Sometimes, this coolstuff impulse is put to use for the powers of good, and many people get absolutely awesome presents from me. But in all honesty, this isn't the regular state of affairs, and what tends to happen is that I buy cool stuff for me, and my friends get shitty presents because I'm skint.

On the other hand, they get the pleasure of my sparkling company, so they don't have anything to complain about.

Anyway - the reason I'm telling you this is that for the last month or so, my coolstuff gland has been working overtime in regard to something coming out next year from an American company called Libtech. In a world obsessed with being cool and looking gnarlier and having more shizzle than the competitors, Lib stand out as being effortlessly cool and completely barking mad.

The board that I have my eye on is something called (and I'm not kidding) THE SKATE BANANA. Even if there wasn't brand new technology involved in this board, even if early reviews didn't suggest it's one of the most fun boards ever made ever I reckon I'd still be interested in this board because it's bright fucking yellow.

Hell, I want this board if only because Lib are crazy enough to make an advertisment like this one!

I want to be a proper skateboarder.

I've had an on/off relationship with skateboarding for quite a few years now, and to my great personal chagrin I still manage to be totally naff at it.

It's something that's frustrating about skateboarding. The keystone to the vast majority of skateboarding trickery is the ollie, which is an incredibly frustrating trick to try and learn. You have to tap one foot down, scrap the other foot up and across and jump in the air - all at the same time.

Despite having a skateboard for so long, I suck at ollies. I'm fed up of it, and I'm determined that it's going to change. So here on this blog I'm going to promise to learn better ollies, and keep the internet updated on my progress.

I suspect that I won't get around to it, but the intention's the important thing isn't it.

I love extreme sports (gnarly shizzle dizzle)

This is an interesting one for me. I remember being introduced to one of my current flatmates as a snowboarder, mountainboarder and skateboarder. All pretty accurate, and those 3 activities do occupy a fair amount of my free time. Now here's the thing - the guy commented that "So you're an X-treme kinda guy" (or words to that affect). This started me thinking on the topic - am I X-treme?

The thing is, the use of the X in X-treme is a bit of a marketing gimmick, it's not something that should be taken too seriously, and if I'm honest I find the label extreme sports a bit naff. I'm not saying that there are any viable alternatives out there but if we accept that X is used to describe a certain subculture from a demographic viewpoint, then I'm pretty certain I don't really fit that well.

Let's face it, the mass media have a prestigious history of not getting what extreme sports are about. Last year at the winter olympics the Beeb's Clare Balding managed to put her foot in her mouth by suggesting that snowboarding wasn't a real sport, and I know from my own work in mountainboarding that PR companies really don't get what these sports are all about.

I guess however that I'm going to be stuck with the label for a while longer. It's not so bad after all, I mean at least I'm not being called boring. the other definite plus is that it seems us extreme sportists get our own language to confound the rest of you with. So keep your shiz tight, and gnar out folks.

Would you wear this?

I just wanted to share this image with you so that I can't be accused of not putting any effort into this blogging lark.

On the right, we have Mr Dan Watson. Snowboard bum extraordinaire. On the left, we have a lady who was skiing in Courchevel.

Now it should be said that Dan had previously asked this lady's permission for a photograph and had been rebuffed rather rudely. So we did what any other person would. Chased her down the piste, snuck up behind and took this photo.

I'm sure that some of you out there are thinking that this is childish behaviour, and that making fun of someone afflicted so badly with the rare and debilitating disease "Dressinglikeaclownism" is morally repugnant, but really - I disagree. I believe that it is our responsibility to draw attention to this disease and it's horrible side effects every chance that we get. After all, it could be that your kid's next - and if that's the case, won't you be happier if at least some of the stigma of looking like a complete idiot has been removed?

The thing I can't work out though is why anyone would choose to wear that.