I stopped by the pharmacy today to pick up my levothyroxine (synthetic T4) prescription, and it wasn’t ready — so I sat and read the lit they had in the waiting area. One pamphlet was called “Weight Management” so I figured I’d see what kind of foolish things they’d say.

1. “Eat filling foods that are low in calories.” Because calories are calories, the body is a closed system, and our digestive system is identical to a bomb furnace, right? They suggest grains and legumes, because lectins are a health food, of course.

I’ve tried to completely avoid grains and legumes. The only legumes I’ve had since November is a bit of hummus, before I sat and thought about the fact that it’s ground garbanzo beans. Maybe some soybean oil in fast-food condiments, such as mayo and salad dressings. Unfortunately I’ve had a few pieces of bread: one sandwich, some breaded chicken nuggets (curse you Mickey Ds), and a brat in a bun. I need to stop doing that.

2. “When you eat meat, cut out fat and cut down portion sizes.” Hah! My last meal in Austin was a pound of steak. It was quite yummy. I try and get as much fat as I can, and I think I’m just not getting enough. I need to start adding more butter to the food I eat.

3. “Avoid fried foods.” Makes good sense, since most food is fried in vegetable oil, possibly including soy, peanut, and trans fats. As for losing weight, I don’t think this matters at all. Again, they’re trying to say “reduce calories,” and it’s easy to get a lot of calories from fried food.

4. “Use low-fat or nonfat dairy foods.” Cuz, you know, fat soluble vitamins are over-rated. This is part of the “fat makes you fat” mantra, which Taubes addressed directly in a “What if it’s all been a big fat lie” article in the NY Times Magazine and GCBC. Finding full-fat dairy is difficult. Raw milk cheeses are usually full-fat, but yogurt? Forget it. Out of the hundreds (no joke) of brands and flavors of yogurt at the local grocery store, there were maybe five that were full-fat; the rest reduced or nonfat. Yogurt is a good food if it’s made from raw milk. What’s the point of pasteurizing milk, then adding bacteria back in? Wtf? Of course, it’s what you have to do if your milk is ass. Frickin’ ass milk.

5. “Avoid fast food.” Tom Naughton addresses this well in his documentary. Fast food isn’t great on the paleo scale, but if you avoid full-sugar cola and strip the buns of the meat, it can be a part of a weight-loss diet. There’s low-carb options at tons of fast food places, especially if you’re willing to toss buns away. Stay away from their salad dressings, unless they’ve got a good oil and/or vinegar dressing.

6. “Avoid high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks.” I came to Paleo via the Weston A Price Foundation, which is high on nutrition, so I’m very much a high-nutrient guy. (They also tend to be pro-whole wheat, which is where they diverge from the rest of paleo crowd; see Kurt’s post on the subject.) There’s not much that’s high-calorie and low-nutrient, unless you eat potato chips, candy, fruit, or grain-based snack bars. They recommend nonfat yogurt (see above), hummus (see above!), baby carrots (nature’s candy bar), and pistachios (one out of four ain’t bad for a mainstream publication). I recommend not eating when you’re not hungry. And if you are hungry, eat a big, fatty piece of meat. With butter.

7. “Watch what you drink.” The only area that we agree, except for their recommendation of fat-free milk. At home I drink water; if I’m out, I drink unsweetened iced tea.

So this guide is mostly useless for weight loss. If you want to lose weight and be healthy, here’s my seven tips:

1. Eat fatty foods, such as meat and dairy. Add butter or bacon to every meal.
2. Avoid lean meat. It won’t be filling, your body is unlikely to process that much protein, and you’re skipping all the great fat-soluble vitamins.
3. Fast every so often. 24 hours a few days a week, or maybe 36 hours a couple times a week.
4. Cook with butter, not vegetable oil. If you’re lactose intolerant or want to stay away from casein, ghee or coconut oil are good options.
5. Avoid carbs. Your body burns way less fat when you’ve got an insulin spike. If you do eat carbs, only eat them once a day; you won’t be burning any fat for 3-4 hours after you ingest them.
6. Eat nutrient-dense food (such as pastured meat, eggs, and dairy), and avoid anti-nutrients (such as in grain and beans) and low-nutrient foods (such as potatoes or high-fiber veggies).
7. Avoid soda; drink water when you’re thirsty. Contemplate quitting caffeine, or switch to hot or iced tea.

I lost 8 pounds in December, and 14 in January. February is a short month, but I’m hoping for another 14 pounds.

The past few days I’ve been spending time in the park, going over rollers (mounds of snow with a smooth, circular profile) and jumps (which are shaped with a lip and a knuckle). It’s been my first time getting air on a snowboard and I thought I’d capture some of what I’ve learned.

I see a lot of people in the park that don’t know how to ride; that are barely staying up. Going over the jumps is a bit much for them, I think. At least they’re getting used to the jumps, but I don’t know how useful it is. One of the key bits that I’ve heard and seen about tricks is that you want to control speed, takeoff, and landing. If you can barely ride, you might be getting air but you aren’t likely to be learning to do it in a way that you control, can repeat, or can improve on. I really think it’s important to be able to link turns first.

Part of the reason I say that is because of my experience on the rollers. Before I tackled the jumps themselves, I went over dozens of rollers. They’re like an intro to jumps; there’s a ramp up, and ramp down, and you’ll feel a little less gravity (but not quite weightless) as you ride over the top. Trying to carve over the top of a jump tends to mean making a sharp turn right after the crest of the roller; I’ve heard that riding flat (ie not on edge) over the top (unless you’re spinning) is crucial, and all those rollers helped me not just practice riding flat but to see first-hand what happens when you’re not. Snowboarding is a balance sport, like surfing and skateboarding; the key ‘trick’ to learning to ride is getting a feel for balance. Where to put your weight, how hard to lean, etc. And jumps are the same thing.

Between jumps, I also scrub off a bit of speed and take a line for the next feature; that means good board control. It’s forced me to be ready and able to make quick turns; I can’t sit and traverse and take my time waiting for a turn; when you’ve got to get lined up within yards to make the next jump, and don’t want to be cresting over it at a crazy angle, you’ve got to turn quickly.

Getting air isn’t really difficult. It’s a matter of speed and direction. Learning to make jumps just means getting a feel for how fast to go, and how to get lined up. That’s what I’ve been doing for a few days; getting a feel for the speed, getting used to going over the jump, getting used to air, and getting more familiar and comfortable with speed. Which brings me to the second big thing to learn: speed.

When I started riding this year, I worked on making turns, staying on my feet, not getting tired out or lacing my boots to tight. At the same time, I worked on going faster. I eventually realized that I really wasn’t comfortable making right turns, either normal or switch. So I slowed back down and worked on making turns, over and over. (And on powder days I worked on getting used to powder, which is hella fun!) Now I’m speeding back up again. One of the things about jumps is you need a certain speed at the takeoff, and once you launch you can’t slow down until you land. Speed happens. If you’re not comfortable at speed, then I suggest working on that before you hit too many jumps.

There’s a couple great areas to learn to get air here at Mammoth. One is a bit steeper than the other, but has a bunch of rollers; the other has jumps that are very easy to work into. Sessioning these two has been great, a bit of variety to try one thing or another. If you don’t have options, you do what you can, but if you do have options, then go for it. I feel like it was easier to get air on the lower slopes, but I learned more about speed and takeoffs from the steeper slopes.

Of course I’m no pro. I’m not even doing any grabs or spins yet. But I feel that the rollers have taught me a lot — not just in words, but in feel. And now I’ve got a feel for air. I plan to hit the same areas tomorrow, maybe I’ll actually be doing 1s.

Confirmation Bias is looking for confirmation of a held belief; interpreting data as support for your beliefs. If you believe that garlic keeps away vampires, then you would interpret the absence of vampire attacks as evidence for your theory. If you believe that God designed humans, then you would interpret irregularities in the theory of evolution as evidence for your belief.

But the absence of vampire attacks itself isn’t evidence of anything. You would need to contrast that absence with the presence of attacks somewhere else.

I would like to believe that I am getting fitter. Of course. I want to get fitter. I think what I am doing is helping me. But is it? I made it all the way down from one of the longer lifts yesterday without stopping. Is that cuz I’m more fit now, or because my muscles have more stamina, or because I had more energy available to my muscles that day, or because my feet and ankles weren’t killing me? Riding in the powder today was exhausting. In powder, one raises the front of the board up by leaning on the back leg. It feels more like surfing. But it’s also hell on that back leg. Today told me I wasn’t as fit as I thought I was. But then again, I’m 230 pounds — am I more fit, or do I just weigh less? I haven’t run since I left Houston.

I would like to believe that Vit D3 is helping me ward of colds. In the hour or two after I take 4000 IU, my nasal congestion goes way. Then it comes back, and I take a couple more. How accurately am I keeping records? Is it just that I notice nasal congestion some times but not others? It’s been a persistant problem since I got here. Until Richard’s recent post on Vit D and colds, I was only taking 4000 IU a day. Now I’m taking 12, or more. Is it helping? Am I getting over new allergies? I’m I just giving credit for any improvement in my sinuses to D?

I will continue what I’m doing, but I’ve got to be cautious in my interpretations. More snow tonight, so I’ll hit the powder again first thing in the morning. I doubt my legs will improve greatly in the night – but I’ll be here for the season.

and it was good.

My first trip down a run in Colorado on December 22nd, I stopped about 14 times — about every 100 yards. My first run down Round Robin here at Mammoth, I stopped three or four times. Today, I made it all the way down Easy Rider/Comeback without stopping.

I feel more fit, at least on the slopes. My legs don’t burn as much, my ankles don’t hurt. As I talked about in the Ten Day Review, there’s a virtuous cycle there: I’m riding faster, making more turns and slipping less. As a result, I get down the mountain faster with less time spent straining my legs. I’ve dropped 14 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 in December, so that helps too; less extra mass to throw around the mountain.

I’ve heard a number of people say that snowboarding (and skiing) aren’t great workouts, but they’re fit people. If you’re overweight and/or unfit, walking up stairs can be a great workout, so I think snowboarding really does count. I remember back in December when I stopped, my heart and breathing was fast; I was obviously working hard. I haven’t done any weight training while I’ve been here but I’d like to start.

Today was my first real day in the park. I sessioned Wonderland yesterday, mostly hitting the rollers but also rolling over the small jumps a couple times, not getting air. But today I rode over to Disco Park and hit the rails, boxes, and jumps, getting some real air. There’s an “eighth-pipe” down at the bottom that I consider a gentle introduction to pipe riding. I like Disco; I find it much easier to ease into park stuff there than at Wonderland. Wonderland is much less crowded, however, and it’s easier to get some speed going into the jumps. Forest Trail, Main Park, South Park, and Jibs Galore are all a bit above my pay grade at the moment.

I also think I injured about every part of my body today; my knees, left wrist, and left shoulder. I found a stat (from 2000) that says that skiers have about 2.6 injuries per 1000 visits, whereas snowboarders have nearly 7 injuries per 1000 visits. Yeah, that was me today. (I didn’t visit ski patrol tho, so I guess this my injuries are uncounted in that total.) Luckily one doesn’t actually use their upper body when snowboarding!

We’re expecting about three feet of snow between now and the end of Saturday, so I plan to ride for a couple days, getting more powder experience. I might hit the park tomorrow morning, maybe not, but even tho Saturday will be crowded I do want to learn how to ride powder better. Sunday will be bluebird, but prolly groomed. Hmm. Choices!

I’ve been thinking of Fake Food the past few days, since my previous post last week. Strangely, Kurt had a post on a similar theme (Smoking Candy Cigarettes) a couple weeks ago that I missed (as I’ve been on a limited-internet diet til we got service here at the house) and recently read.

His post focuses on the sanction that such cheats give to the offending item; how a cheat now and then might give the impression that you still eat cake, etc. That avoiding cake isn’t a central part of your diet. I was coming at it from the effect it has on you, the cheater: eating fake pasta and sugar-free cookies is still pretty bad, and only one step removed from the real (bad) thing. That accepting that it’s OK to eat bread as long as it is gluten-free might lead to an occasional gluten-loaded bun now and then.

I did cheat last week; I ate a bun. It came with bratwurst, which is a favorite of mine, although I acknowledge that’s not an excuse. I’m not happy about the bun. I’m mentioning it here cuz I’d rather admit my failings then fake it (har). Plus mentioning it, writing it down, is a way of cementing the event in my mind, and remotivating myself to not do that again. I don’t want wheat, I don’t want cancer, I don’t want autoimmune diseases and gut distress.

Anyway, I was shopping today, and I thought of buying some rice noodles so I could make pasta, because … hmm, nostalgia? I used to make a lot of pasta. Pasta sauces are easy to make, and it’s easy to put whatever you want in to them. Pasta dishes are also hefty and filling. But… I don’t eat pasta, and although rice is probably the friendliest of the villainous grains it’s still a villain.

That got me thinking about diet soda. Diet Coke is a lot like gluten-free bread, or rice noodles, or candy cigarettes. Despite the flowery advertising for diet colas, I don’t think there’s anyone that would voluntarily drink them if it wasn’t for a desire for the non-diet versions, whether that desire comes from carb cravings or nostalgia or habit or whatever.

I think they’re fine as crutches; if you’re trying to transition to paleo, I think gluten-free bread, rice noodles, and diet coke are great. Some people do great quitting cold turkey, and if that’s you, then you can really skip this whole conversation. But I’ve had persistent problems with cheating. Carbs are cheating for me, and it’s the easiest thing to cheat on, because I’m eating low-carb to lose weight, not strictly to avoid disease. Wheat, however, is something I want to avoid 100%. I’d like to be wheat-free for a year, two years, a decade…. I’ve been aluminum and flouride free for years. Somehow that was a bit easier, mostly because those purchases (deodorant and toothpaste) are made rarely enough that I just need to be strong like once every six months. Cake.

Food, however, is something I eat daily. There are constant temptations to cheat. Convenience, social pressure, carb cravings that lead to bad food choices, etc. I don’t drink diet soda (choosing tea whenever I’m at a restaurant where I’d otherwise feel pressured to drink soda), and I’ve been 99% bean-free since last April. I still eat factory meat & eggs near daily, but 80% of my cheese is unpasteurized. I just need to … remember. Thinking about it before I down that hot dog bun would help. Gah.

One day at a time? I haven’t had any wheat today. It’s been five days since I last ate wheat.

I ate… somewhat better this week. No wheat (whereas last week I’d eaten a sandwich), but a few cokes. I’m cooking a bit more variety, which helps. I like preparing the same meal a few times in a row, but eating the same thing day after day gets to me. I’ve got chicken, ground beef, steak, and pork stocked in the freezer now so it’s easier. Plus eggs and ham.

I’m still buying basic supplies. Just today I bought EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil), which I don’t cook with of course but used to brush on some caprese. I don’t have a crock pot and I haven’t made stock, but I plan to soon. Sadly, I was a bit rushed on the day that I left Texas, and I forgot all my cooking stuff – my good knife, handy utensils, and the cookbooks. I felt the need for sugar today; we hosted a potluck here and someone prepared fried bananas, and I wanted to mix up some rum and sugar. But luckily that desire passed, and the bananas are gone so I’m not tempted with them any more.

I stopped at Mickey D’s this week to satisfy a french fry craving, buying a McDouble and stripping off the bun. But the tea sucked. Like day-old, bitter, nasty-tasting bark. I would have complained but instead I’m remembering it as a lesson to not go back. I had a similar experience at a restaurant up near the mountain, another incentive to eat out less.

I priced some grass-fed beef today. It could double my monthly food budget but at this point I think it’s the thing to do. I’ve got about eight pounds of frozen meat (of various flavors) atm, so not quite yet. I’ll prolly make stock first, then switch to grass-fed. I’m eating raw-milk cheese and taking my D3 and K2. I want to do more. Moving here was a life reset, so it’s a great time to establish new habits – like pastured meat and eggs, less fructose, etc. I’m even worried about solanine, despite having bought five pounds of potatoes for a buck (yay for the grocery circular!).

I do enjoy cooking. I find it very relaxing, even if I’m preparing food for a party. When I start cooking interesting stuff, I’ll post my results here.

I’m thinking Tuesdays will be food/cooking post days, and I do plan on doing snowboarding progress reports every ten days on the snow. The rest of the posts will continue to be random.

Going into my third week here, I’m settling into a routine. I ride Monday thru Friday, and find something else to do when the crowds move in on the weekends. When I ride, I get up in the morning, suit up, ride, and cook when I get home. Usually just one meal a day, which means frequent 24-hour fasts. I haven’t yet tried a 36-hour fast, but it’s tempting.

Every day that I’m on the mountain, there’s tons of people eating bagels, candy, breakfast bars, etc. They gotta take lunch, they gotta eat breakfast first, they gotta snack when they’re on the mountain… I really don’t feel it. Fasting is cake. But then, I’m on a 100% fat diet — burning off body fat the whole time.

IF is easy. I don’t feel hungry when I’m riding. I’m losing weight – is it the fasting, or the fact that I’m calorie-deficient?

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.