After ten days on the slopes here on the mountain, I’m reporting my progress and plans.

I’ve been snowboarding for eight years now. Kinda. I actually first started snowboarding eight years ago, but I only went about six times each of those first two years, only about twenty times the last time I was up at Mammoth, and just a few times outside that. I didn’t go at all last year, and I think I didn’t go any the year before that… so back during xmas week was the first time I went snowboarding in three seasons. These past ten day have been kind of like starting from scratch – minus the first couple days of falling on my ass all the time.

When I was in Colorado, I’d take a run, then take a 30-minute break (with my boots off) to recover. I stopped a dozen times during each run. I stopped for several reasons: boot pain, fitness, altitude, and leg burn. Eventually I got used to the altitude, but the other problems persisted.

The first problem I had to get over was boot pain. I eventually figured out the trick — I don’t tighten my lower boots at all. My boots have three sets of laces: one for the inner liner, one for the foot, and one for the calf. I don’t tighten the inner liner at all and leave the foot alone. I still occasionally over-tighten a boot, and usually that means I wind up taking the boot completely off and re-lace it. Larger boots would help, but with sufficiently tightened upper laces and bindings, and I don’t get a lot of foot movement inside the boot while I’m on the slopes.

Despite running up to two miles a day before I came out, I’m still not that fit. This is a combination of being overweight and unfit; snowboarding is a hefty physical activity and I’m a hefty guy. Losing weight will help, I’m sure. It’s hard to tell how much it’s helped so far, but if I continue my current losing streak (about .4 pounds a day) I should be at fighting weight… about when the season is over. Anyway, every bit helps. I’m thinking of sprinting up stairs on my days off to try to boost both leg strength and fitness.

Which brings me to my next point: leg burn. There’s a virtous cycle in snowboarding: the faster you go, the less time you spend on a run, the less you stop, the less tired you get, the less your legs burn. And the less I stop/etc, the faster I complete a run. Fatigue and leg burn build; a trip up the mountain resets that fatigue clock, allowing me to make the next run fresh. Because of this cycle of improvement, it’s hard to tell how much better my legs are doing. Plus I’m kinda working around the problem by riding switch for a few turns, then swapping again. This way I burn both legs, not just one, plus get more experience riding switch. I’m only marginally less adept at riding switch than normal and, as I’ve improved I’ve gotten better at both.

Although I’ve recently been riding blue-black slopes, I still spend most of my time on blue-green trails. “Blue-green” and “blue-black” seems to mean that the slope has characteristics of both; a blue-green is a green trail with some blue-level steepness in some parts. I’ve only ridden a true green slope once and I was surprised at how shallow it was. The steep bits on the blue-blacks aren’t too long, and are wide, too. I can handle the steeps, but not at speed.

On a few days I’ve sat in the lodge watching people come down the slopes. I’m surprised at the number of unskilled snowboarders that attempt the “true blue” slopes, slip-sliding their way down, falling every hundred feet, crouched down and bent over and arms splayed — or all of the above. I think either ego or a friend convinced them to try the more difficult slope, and I wonder if they’re getting anything out of it other than bragging rights, which to me seems stupid. I’m content riding the blue-greens, over and over. There’s tons of paths I can take so I don’t get bored of “the same trail,” especially if I venture onto nearby lifts and hit a blue-black now and then. I do fall; I fell once today, in my brief two hours of riding. I don’t like falling. I can look back at my path and figure out why I fell; lately, I’ve been working on cases where I roll from edge to edge but my board isn’t pointing straight, ie I roll onto my downhill edge while trying to link turns.

We had tons of snow last week – about 8 feet of fresh on the mountain. I wish I was a better rider, because there was tons of powder to take advantage of, especially with new snowfall every day and living local to grab it. As it was, I spent a bit of time in the powder, getting somewhat used to it. The powder-hounds tend to hit the top of the mountain, but one of the great things about Mammoth is that you can ride through the trees nearly everywhere; the trees have about the same base depth as the trails. Whereas many of the resorts out east tend to have trails that are built way up above the surrounding areas, some of the trails here are *below* the level of the surrounding snow, due to grooming packing the snow down.
As hinted at in Wednesday’s post about progression, I plan to keep riding the blue-greens until I’m much more comfortable in my turns. I need to get used to turning when I don’t have an easy, perfectly straight downhill path, ie when a turn might not put me perfectly across the fall line. I’ll hit the blue-blacks on occasion, to add variety and to test out my tolerance for steepness. I also plan on hitting rollers, a few rails, and maybe the eighth-pipe set up in Disco park.

See y’all next week, enjoy your weekend. I’m spending tomorrow morning watching the local Gatorade amateur event, and planning on going to June on Sunday.

The life of a ski bum can be pretty cheap. Once you’ve got gear and a season pass, all you need to pay for is food and maybe a bit of gas for your car. If you’re feeling spendy, the occasional six-pack of cheap beer is the next most common expense. Moving up the fiscal ladder, renting a room is the next step. Truly rich ski bums pay for health insurance.

I think the term “ski bum” somehow implies sleeping in your car (or van, down by the river), but there’s tons of people here in town that have a roof. Paying for a room requires a job, and obviously a nights-and-weekend job is ideal for leaving your days free to hit the slopes. Some bums might travel from mountain to mountain, hiking up the hills and ducking through lift lines instead of buying tickets, but that’s outside my experience. I’m going to stick to the semi-legit ski bums, those with jobs (or savings) enough to stick around at one mountain for a season.

My monthly expenses are easy enough to list: rent & utilities, food, car payment, insurance, and cell phone.

Room: the cheapest room is one you don’t have to pay for; couch surfing is cheap. A case of beer might buy you a week, and if you don’t care who you piss off maybe three or four weeks. Mountain employees here (at Mammoth) can stay in employee housing, which can be as cheap as $270 a month. Crowding a bunch of people into a room can also reduce expenses; a $30 or $40 hotel split six ways is pretty cheap. But for a bit more, you can get a real room. There were dozens of ads available here for $500 rooms, although utilities were extra. And those utilities can add a lot, especially if you don’t have a fireplace or wood-burning stove. Electricity might run about $60/mo during the winter, less if you’ve got wood burning or gas heating. So plan for about $50-100 for heating expenses, depending on how tolerant you (and your roommates) are to the cold. An internet connection, telephone, and TV add a bit, too. If you’re willing to sit at a coffee shop without buying anything, you might get your inet fix for free; otherwise, it’s $2 for a cup of joe and several hours of surfing. (Or blog posting.)

Food: Eating paleo can be expensive. Grass-fed meat is not cheap, and raw-milk cheeses typically run around $14 per pound. Factory-farmed meat is very cheap; one of the great things about Mammoth is the free bus that runs throughout town, for about 20 hours of the day. Getting to the grocery store is cake, and it’s only a two-mile walk elsewise. So I can check the specials each week. Last week, factory ground beef was $1/lb; this week, chicken is $1.97/lb. I’ve found cheap steak, pork, ham, bacon, and cheese. Eating on the hill can be grossly expensive, so don’t do that. My weekly food budget is $30, but that doesn’t include any extra drinks, snacks, coffee, etc. I cook at home a lot more now, which is both cheap and paleo-friendly. Mostly. I wish there was a Whole Foods in town, although then my food budget would double. I do fast at least 4 meals a week, eating about 10 meals a week total. I’ve got over 200,000 calories of fat to burn off here so that helps too!

Car: The ideal path is to own your car outright. I bought a new car shortly before heading out, so I’ve actually got a car payment that’s kinda hefty relative to my new mountain lifestyle. I’m recommending against car payments, for the record.

Insurance: Car insurance is kinda critical whether you own or are making payments, though, and that’s another $80-200 a month, depending on your state, car, driving history, blah blah. Health insurance also varies a lot from state to state. If you’re young and healthy, health insurance might seem like a needless expense, but if you’re skiing — you might want it! An accident won’t just end your season, it’ll bankrupt you.

Cell phone: Plans are the same whether you live in the city or in the mountains. Chances are you already know how much this costs. Having a cell phone is, I think, critical for keeping in touch with friends and family.

My monthly budget is just under $1200, but it could have been much cheaper if I didn’t have a new car. If you’re willing to go into debt, your out-of-pocket expenses could be much lower — just over 500 or 600. With a part-time job or two, you have that made.

For those with “real jobs” that want to take six months off, the key is savings and debt. No debt payments is critical.  At $1000 a month, a season-long vacation costs about as much as two weeks’ vacation to someplace fancy. That’s what brought be here!

We had a gathering (not quite a party) at the house last night, and a girl I was talking to mentioned that she was bored with snowboarding. I suggested that might be because she had achieved her snowboarding goals, or had reached a plateau and
wasn’t getting better. A goal can be a great motivator, and when you’re learning something new, a goal (even a small one) can give context to your attempts.

I haven’t really had specific goals so far this year. I don’t think I went out at all in the last two years, which means that xmas week was the first time that I’ve been snowboarding in three seasons. I might have spent 30 days on the snow before that, but that’s definitely not full days — the last season I spent up here, I had bad boot problems and tended to only ride for a  half day.

What are my goals for this year?

I dunno. Have fun? I want to take a lesson, possibly this weekend or next week. I want to take the 3-day park and pipe workshop next month. I want to ride more of the mountain — the blacks and the steeps.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know how long it will take to get good at riding. How long til I’m riding blacks  comfortably? Should I take a lesson to learn some advanced techniques before hitting them? It’s foolish to think I’d be doing double-corks before the end of the season. What wouldn’t it be foolish to think? Threes? Fives? Sevens? Flips? Blacks, double-blacks, chutes?

I think the only realistic plan is to have long-range goals (without a time schedule attached). I tried searching for a good timeline for learning various snowboarding skills, but had no luck. Since most people aren’t riding five days a week, and most people just ride on the weekends a few times each season, my experience is way outside the norm. I found no good guide for how many days of riding each step of advancement will take.

What I did find is a number of people that claimed that, once you’re linking turns, you can move from greens to blacks very quickly. I know that’s different with skiers, since advanced (black-diamond and double-diamond) ski turns are very different than what you learn on the green slopes. Snowboarders, evidently, learn to carve turns … and then go down blacks.

I’m already carving turns. In fact, I was carving turns before this year, but I started on the blue-green trails mostly cuz of boot issues. (More on that in a couple days.) I’ve already focused on gaining comfort going down steeper terrain. I guess I ride blacks tomorrow?

So: My plan for this year comes in two stages. First, ride blue-blacks comfortably then ride blacks comfortably. Second, work on tackling harder terrain while simultaneously moving over to the park and pipe. It seems that I have the skills (except maybe for jump-turns) to ride the blacks, just not yet the confidence.

Also, I plan to keep improving fitness, so I can stay out longer, and to lose weight (for the same reason). Plus, having to bend over my belly makes it harder to reach my bindings.

Tomorrow, my plan is to ski across the mountain, from Canyon to Mill to Main to 12, and ride the blues all day. On Friday, I might stick to Canyon lodge, which tends to be less busy than Main in general and especially on the weekends.

I have a diabetic friend that eats lots of cake, cookies, and candy. It’s all low-sugar and low-glycemic index, but it’s still carbs. I can kind of understand his point of view; reality has told him that he’s not allowed to eat all the tasty things that he remembers from his youth, and he is (in a way) rebelling against that and eating it anyway — just in a more diabetic-friendly manner.

But I think the notion is dangerous. I don’t want to eat cake, or pasta, or bread. I tried gluten-free pizza, and it’s just not the same. I’m not going to eat buckwheat pasta just so I can have pasta. Eating those foods is a way of refusing to acknowledge reality. Wheat is evil. Don’t eat wheat. Everyone else eats wheat, but so what? I don’t want to return to the “good old days” of my ignorance.

Besides, the fake stuff tends to taste like ass.

A friend of mine advises to go zero carb cuz that way you don’t have to count; eating is very simple: if it’s a carb, don’t eat it. I appreciate his point of view but that’s not for me. That sort of strict rule doesn’t tend to work with me for some reason; I can’t keep to a rule if I know it’s arbitrary.

To me, eating fake food is breaking a more important rule: don’t eat poison (like gluten, lectin, etc). I can stick to that rule, and eating fake food means that sometimes I can eat “bad” food. I’m much happier treating all breads, even if they’re gluten-free, as bad.

By not choosing fake foods, I also get to eat other stuff, which tends to taste better, too. Beef & butter for dinner!

I snowboard 8:30am – 4pm, Monday through Friday. What do you do during those hours?

There’s one major key to living your dream. Before I get to it, however, there’s one major roadblock to living a go-anywhere, do-anything sort of lifestyle.

A mortgage is probably the worst investments a dreamer can make. There are better and worse mortgages, of course; I don’t mean to be categorical in calling mortgages evil. If you put a lot down (say 50%), choose a short term (say 10 years), and the payments are easy to make, then it won’t be a drain on your income. It might still be hard to get out of, and those payments might keep you locked down when there’s so much in the world to see.

This is where I am. Where are you?

A house is not a place to live; it’s an *expensive* place to live. If your mortgage is a giant chunk of your salary, such that you bring a sack lunch to work every day because you can’t afford a $7 lunch out, then you’re paying way too much for your house. $2000 a month for a place to live and $120 a month for food is crazy. I think those priorities are backwards. Food is nutrition; it’s health; it’s life. Shelter is cheap.

Buying a house is an investment. If you don’t know where the real estate market is, you could be where many people are today: upside-down on your mortgage. Even if you own your home outright, it’s not a liquid asset. In a bad market, it could take a year to sell the house — if you’re willing to wait that long. And every year you still have to pay taxes, insurance, and maintenance fees.

I’m surprised at the amount of money people will dump into redoing their kitchen or bathrooms. For that kind of money, I could live easy for a couple years. Throw that money into investments and it’s a good chunk of living expenses on its own. The money you pay in interest is pure bank profit; it’s a huge amount of money that YOU pay so that you can live in a nice place for a few years. In decades past, the interest was about 2/3rds of the monthly payment, but with modern low-down-payment and long-term loans, that percentage is creeping up.

Debt is the #1 roadblock to chasing your dream.

I used to feel guilty about having never bought a house, but I moved so much, I thought — soon as I find a job that I want to keep for five years, I’ll buy a house. Layoffs, bad bosses, crappy jobs, and better opportunities kept me moving; luckily, I moved up the responsibility and salary ladders too. Everyone else had a house, going over to visit them was cool, but… it was never for me. Never looked seriously.

With the tankage of the market in 2008, I suddenly felt very good about renting an apartment. I’m mobile, my living expenses are tiny, and I never bought a house full of furniture. Say your monthly mortgage payment was $2000. $1300 of that is interest, and $700 is principal — ie investment. Instead of paying  $1300 in interest to the bank every month, I put around $800 that “disappeared,” ie didn’t turn into an asset. How is paying interest better than paying rent? And what if the rent is lower? A family of four could live in a nice apartment for $1300 a month, skip expensive insurance and
maintenance fees, and instead of putting $700 of principal payment into a slowly-appreciating asset (that might not even be appreciating!) you could put that $700 into much better investments.

Yes, the stock market cratered in 2008. If you’re going to invest, invest smart.  There’s a lot of crossover in the paleo community with other non-mainstream groups, including the crowd that follows sites like Mish (and others) that saw housing headed for a bust back in 2005. But that’s a topic for another day.

So, where was I? Oh yeah.

I was able to move to the mountains! My monthly expenses are now about 14% of my old salary, and even that’s a bit inflated due to a new car and the insurance costs that go along with it. If I had traded my old car 1:1 for a used buggy that would do well in the snow, and… I’d be looking at 11% of my old salary. At this point that kind of comparison gets silly.

The first thing that let me go live my dream was low expenses. That’s the one major key.

If your dream is to travel the world and stay in first-class hotels and eat at 5-star restaurants every night, the only way to get there is with lots of cash. But is that really your dream? I’d like to do that, but I don’t think it would make me happy. I’m much happier going out and snowboarding five days a week. I could be doing that by staying in a mountain-side room at $150/night, etc etc, but again that luxury wasn’t essential to my dreams. It’d be nice, of course.

Being rich is a dream that requires more than a full-time investment. It’s an 80-hour a week thing, and it requires talent or smarts or luck, too. And what it gets you is money. What do you do then? Live in luxury? I’ve had jobs where I could just sit there and twiddle my thumbs and still get paid. Those jobs sucked. It was boring. I felt like I was wasting my time, learning nothing, getting better at nothing, not furthering my career or my life. I can’t understand those that say they’d like to sit at home and watch TV all day. That sounds like a fucking bore to me.

To me, happiness is a specific thing. It’s chasing my goals. Right now, snowboarding every day is hella fun. And in six months, maybe I do something else, but for the next six months? I’m in heaven.

I’m also using my spare time to build software products that I can sell. This is a 4HWW sort of thing; build or buy a product and sell it. This goes hand-in-hand with having low expenses. It won’t take much for a few software products to pay my living and travel expenses. I’d love to talk more about that part of my life, but I’m waiting for a few more products to get out there in the market.

In the meanwhile, I’m living it up, cheaply, here at 8000 feet elevation.

December 31st: 243.4 pounds

January 20th: 232.8 pounds

New Digit! I hit a new record low on the scale. I started last year around 270, hit a low of 237 in the Summer, then crept back up as my eating habits went to crap — too many fries and cokes. Tuesday this week I finally broke below that Summer low, to 236.4 pounds. Exercise and good paleo eating has helped tons.

One of the things that really drove me to reduce my sugar consumption was a line from Fitness Spotlight:

every time you put sugar into your mouth just tell youself “I don’t feel like burning fat for the next 3-4 hours”

I’ve lost 11 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 pounds in December. Obviously snowboarding helps, but I’m not going out every day, and usually only making about 8-10 runs. It burns calories, sure, but that just makes me active — and I was just as active back in Houston. Being 240 pounds and active means I burn 3000-4000 calories a day, just toting that extra weight around. I see the “skinny” (ie normal-weight) people and wish I could get around like them. I wish I was that fit — and then I think, maybe I am that fit. If they were carrying a sixty-pound weight strapped to their belly, they’d probably be having the same problems I am.

And that means: my #1 way to improve my success on the slopes (other than practice) is probably to lose weight. My muscles will work less, my cardiovascular system will work less, I’ll burn less energy, and be able to stay on the hill longer. That’s definitely incentive to stay away from the sugar.

I’m not, of course, looking for weight loss alone. I can imagine paleo critics saying, “of course, it must be snowboarding at 240 pounds that’s causing you to lose weight.” But I’m not just losing weight – I’m burning fat. If I was eating the same toxic shit that most people on the mountain are consuming – glazed donuts, sandwiches, buns – then the insulin spike would prevent a lot of fat loss and burn a lot of lean tissue. I want that lean tissue!

Progress is always motivation to stay the course. I had 5 cokes and two servings of fries in my first week in town; my goal is much less in the second week. And I’ll be posting my lower numbers here, too.

Thursday, January 21st: 232.8

I was waiting in the lift line yesterday, and this guy was getting exasperated at his wife, who had fallen down (on skis) and couldn’t get up. It was obvious to him how to get up, but not to her — and skiing and snowboarding is more than “just do it.” There’s learning, execution, and …. fitness.

One of the four corners of this blog is fitness. I started running 14 months ago, to get in shape in general as well as to get in shape for snowboarding. Being aerobically fit is a prerequisite for lots of sports, and it’s a big part of enjoying those sports, and I think snow sports especially. Getting tired while you’re out on the snow having fun just sucks.

14 months ago, I could run 200 yards before I ran out of breath. Over these months, I’ve realized that running faster will ‘empty’ out my breath faster, but fourteen months of running have also helped me finish 5k runs without stopping. At a slow pace, alright, but I’m still running a lot further.

My first time snowboarding this season was December 22nd, the Tuesday before Christmas. It was a tough day, since the run was really long (about mile), at altitude (compared to Houston!), and I’m still not that fit. I stopped about a dozen times that first run down the mountain, which was a combination of running out of breath, my feet hurting, my legs hurting, my ankles hurting…

Here in Mammoth, I’m making much longer runs. I’ve figured out how to tighten my boots so that they’re snug, but don’t crush my feet. I’m getting used to the altitude, improving my fitness more, and building up snowboarding muscles. I wish I had run more last year, but I’m still glad I got in as much as I did — nearly every day for the past six months.

I’m making good carved turns, but I still feel fatigued before I’m all the way down the mountain. Tired muscles, or out of breath? I think it’s a bit of both, plus I’m also fighting a cold. I see improvement, and getting better is awesome. It’s a tremendous motivator. Plus, snowboarding is fun as hell!

We’ve got big fluffy flakes falling right now, and tomorrow is gonna be sick. (See, I’m a snowboarder now, I gotta use the words “sick” and “stoked” as often as possible.) See ya on the slopes!

Here I go!

I leave tomorrow. I’m driving up to Austin to stay with some friends, then it’s off to Colorado and the mountains. I haven’t secured a place to live, but I’m talking to a few people about available rooms which fit right into my budget, are close to the slopes, and will be available through the season. I’ve got nearly all the gear I need, except for goggles and a helmet. I’m losing weight again (yay no more cheating!) and feeding my body right. I’ve got six months of expenses saved up, and leads on other revenue (more on that when it’s real income and not just beer money).

I’ve been trying to push myself to run more lately, to get as much improvement in fitness as possible. I’m planning to run tonight, even though it’s near freezing here in Houston.

I’ve tagged this post “4HWW” because Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour WorkWeek serves as an anchor for much of what I’m doing here: doing something I want, as cheaply as it can be done, while actively searching out entrepreneurial activities that can pay the bills.

I get into town on Tuesday, I’ve got a season pass on the way, my gear is packed… I’m bound for the snow!

A few of the paleo bloggers have mentioned Dr Mehmet Oz’s new year’s guidelines. Oz is also in the Larry King interview with Gary Taubes (part 1, part 2). The interview is interesting because it brings in not just Oz but also Jillian Michaels.

The mainstream (Oz, Michaels) contention is that “just 100 calories a day” of extra food (or less exercise) is what causes obesity. Thermodynamics is often brought in: calories in = calories out! It’s all sciency so therefore it’s true! “Weight is an energy equation,” Michaels says.

But it’s not an independent equation. Oz kinda hints at this: exercise isn’t awesome because it burns calories, but because it builds muscle, and muscle is what burns calories. Yet cardio doesn’t build muscle (in most people it probably breaks it down). Biggest Loser is all about cardio, too. You don’t get buff and pump up your basic metabolic rate (BMR) by sitting on the exercise bike for an hour a day; you’re just burning off whatever fuel your body can find.

AND IF YOU’RE EATING CARBS, your body can’t burn fat. Carbs up-regulates insulin and down-regulates glucagon. Burning fat is very hard if your hormones aren’t cooperating. Exercise burns through any circulating blood sugar, muscles need more energy, and the body responds by releasing stress hormones, which then scavenge lean tissue for some protein to convert into energy. (And some researchers theorize that those stress hormones then lead to heart disease.) Riding a bike and running burn off your muscles and give you heart disease. A great way to burn off body fat? Not at all.

Strength (resistance) training is a great way to build muscles. The smart way. Whether you’re at a gym, doing body-weight exercises (like pushups and pullups), or something like Crossfit, you’re putting on muscles. 24 hours a day, those muscles need food. About 20% of your total BMR is muscles, so being more muscular won’t dramatically increase your daily energy expenditure, but indeed it does only take about 100 calories a day to shift to weight loss; a few pounds of muscle can do that. Maximize muscle gain by working out after a long fast; the absence of insulin and the presence of growth hormone will help you bulk up faster and more efficiently.

So more muscle tissue increases BMR, which means the negative side of the weight equation gets bigger, which means weight loss. The positive side of the equation is calories in. And this is really what Taubes was getting at in the interview: what you eat isn’t just calories; it also produces hormonal responses.

Trading one meal for another calorically equivalent food isn’t neutral. The presence of cofactors and/or anti-nutrients will change what gets absorbed, so just because you put it in your mouth doesn’t mean you’ll get those calories. The elephant in this room is the insulin response from consuming carbs. Eat carbs and you’re body won’t want to burn fat for the next four hours. Eat a meal (or snack) every 3-4 hours and you won’t burn fat til you sleep.

Well, not strictly true. Triglycerides are constantly going in and out of adipose tissue. Insulin suppresses the burning of body fat, but it doesn’t drop it to zero. It’s just much much harder. This is why the Biggest Loser contestants are able to drop so much weight — that, and at 400 pounds, an hour of exercise burns an obscene amount of calories. Reduce carbs a bit, starve yourself, and burn five thousand or more calories a day, and you’ll drop weight.

Alternately, you could drop to <20g of carbs a day, fast a couple times a week, and skip the exercise — and lose weight anyway. Avoid the antinutrients (like phytate and lectins), get a full complement of vitamins (eg A, D3, and K2 together), and you’ll be healthier in addition to weighing less.