Saturday Feb 4th- day whatever

Up early and off to catch the bus up to Snoqualmie. There's a storm coming in off the ocean to the West, and up at the top, it is snowy, cold and windy. REAL windy. It keeps dropping, but when it blows, the snow is going horizontally, and even uphill! I feel like a proper Arctic explorer at times, getting battered by the icy winds. The snow is quite good though. It is more like little balls of ice than snowflakes (due to the temperature I guess) and this means the snow is drier and the board floats over them more easily- they act a bit like millions of little ball bearings.

Anyhoo, in the afternoon, I meet David and Ben and we go off for a lesson. Some of the runs and lifts are closed due to the weather, making the ones that are still open pretty busy. David teaches us how to do an ollie- and suddenly the terrain becomes not something to carve through, but something to jump over and hop off. I go so far as to attempt a 180- try and turn the board round in the air. I land it, but can't manage to continue the line (that involves riding fakie, which is the other way around to normal). So I invariably end in a heap. This might all sound impressive, until you see what some of the young bucks can do! I also go down the half pipe for a laugh- the walls rise up about 10-15 feet either side into sheet ice, and I don't even try and get airborne. Maybe next time I will learn how to do a roastbeef. I do enjoy a nice beefburger at the end of the day- does that count?



















Have you seen this man?

Back on the Ave,and as I wait for the bus, a nearby public telephone rings to the empty street. Is it for me, I wonder? Is it someone whispering a codeword? Or is it me Mum telling me to go home and have a bath? On the bus, a wino sits down next to me. Sigh.
"That sure is a big load there."
"Yeah, it's a snowboard."
"You goin off to Aye-Rack?"
"No, it's a SNOWBOARD..."
He mumbles various other things to me during the course of the journey, but I am still thinking what it would be like to be setting off for Iraq. To have spent the last month dreaming about sand and car bombings, about mess tents and faceless enemies, about kids in the street and men in combats. Quite a thought really.