This film could have been made by the Cohen Brothers, which is not to take anything away from Martin McDonagh, far from it given that the Cohen Bros. are considered to be geniuses! But it definitely had that perfect balance of tragedy, pathos, simmering menace and tension and comedy. And of course, the ending is classic Cohen Bros. For a moment though, I did wonder wether the was going to bundle it’s way into a fourth act so was actually relieved when it ended where it did.

Saw it a few days ago with the girlfriend. Excellent piece of film making. I very much agree that it could of been a Coen Brothers film, had something a kin to their trademark black comedy and tragic drama and caused by ineptitude and character flaws.  Some brilliant actings and Ioved the ending. If it had been all wrapped up neatly I would of felt a little let down, honestly, given the tone of the rest of the film.

I was expecting much worse under all the bandages. I hope that sorts itself out soon!

Kirroughtree and Dalbeattie are definitely best for mountain biking, but if you’re over at Brighouse then they are a bit of a drive, given the small windy roads. The road riding is great though, very quiet and nice rolling hills. I’d probably do something that heads into Gatehouse, up and over the top to Lauriston, back down to Castle Douglas then back to Kirkcudbright around the coast.

We fly to Whistler tomorrow

Nice! The last few weeks have filled in all the holes and stuff nicely, so pretty much anything that looks skiable is good to go. Not a lot of snow in the forecast, but things are skiing nicely.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BetfURplEzr/ – Short clip of one moment from this morning. Lots of fun all round, even thought the visibility wasn’t great!

I’m only popping in once or twice a day now. I’m struggling to find the threads I’m interested in an got fed up of the broken quotes etc. I’ll probably use it more when it’s all fixed.

Cheers Jamba.

Sweaman  – It’s not terrible on skis tbh, but trying to skate a long a flat FSR in a channel that’s about 18″ wide is never going to be fun, especially when the snow is thicker than school custard. The snowboarders had it a lot worse. Without poles they’re having to skate but the snow is so soft and the channel so narrow that it’s a bit of a nightmare.

Made the most of the 80cm + of new snow and hit some laps down the Khyber area of Whistler mountain. Bottomless, and light. The ski back to the lift was a horror show, but well worth it.

Sounds about right! The chunder in the lower 3rd of the mountain was pretty interesting! All my skis are pretty stiff, so not so bad for me, but the trend for noodly ‘fun’ skis probably caused a few problems too :lol:

So this happened.

Forecast was for anything between 10 and 35cm depending on which model you looked at. We ended up getting 58cm over night then another 20 odd during the day today. Nearly 2 hours late in opening due to high winds and doing avalanche control mid mountain, which is very rare.

We had a good day, but it turns out that 60cm of west coast cement will show a lot of people up! Some proper comedy viewing from the chairlifts today.

First time in powder, excited and nervous, might need a lesson.

Good luck! It can be a bit of a challenge the first time, but once it clicks, it’s the best thing ever. If you’re skiing, think about putting your weight a little more through your heels rather than your toes. Don’t lean back though, it’s a fairly subtle shift. Enjoy!

Too add to my earlier Canada Post rant, they’ve seemingly managed to lose some rather important visa related paper work. It’s a tracked 2 day service and my parcel has apparently not moved from RIchmond in 12 days. I asked them to investigate and all they say is that they can confirm it’s not been delivered. Well, no shit.

Good laps today in Whistler. Had a good amount of snow in the last few days but also 150km/h winds, so no alpine skiing, but plenty of fresh stuff in the trees.

Hopefully the alpine opens tomorrow, should be around 50-80 cm of fresh snow up there if the wind didn’t blow all of it right off the mountain.

I always forget about the squirrel catcher as it really isn’t an issue. There’s nothing to it.

You’re right, there isn’t really. It’s super easy and well built. But if you’re not sure you can do it….

You could do, as many people do, and ride down Karate Monkey and pick up A-Line where you meet the fire road. Everything beyond that is rollable and the jumps are quite easy to squash.

You shouldn’t do this. It’s there for a reason and if the small drop in isn’t in your skillset you’re likely to have or cause issues later down the trail. Just because it can be rolled doesnt mean it should.

I’m hunting about for a multisport jacket that will stand up to the rigours of Scottish snowboarding and able enough for walking and possibly biking. Alpkit have nice offering but none in stock. I’m kinda reaching saturation point with outdoor kit and really want kit to have a cross purpose.

I’m skiing in an Oakley Gore Tex Pro shell at the moment. I wouldn’t use it for biking, but have used it for hiking on wet days. The Gore Tex Pro is pretty tough but light enough to walk around or tour in. Not as expensive as a Patagonia or similar offering. Style and colours may not be up your street though, depending on what you’re looking for?

You cannot roll all of A Line, the tail head is a drop off but you can ride about trail and then link into it further down.

If you go – Do not do this! If you’re not comfortable with the small drop in you shouldn’t be riding the rest of the trail. It’s a fast black with some large jumps. That small drop in is a gate keeper and it’s there for a reason.

Whatnobeer, that was an issue for me when guided there. People would head over there due to hearing that Whistler was a mecca for mtbing but not doing any research. You’d ride around the Lost Lake trails and people would already be taking their bike for a walk. I’d then be thinking “**** they are here for two weeks! Where can I take them?!”. People tended to like the Flank heading south and down 27 Switchbacks. Probably not everyone’s first choice for a Whistler lap but at least people got ‘out there’ and got to see some awesome views, good lunch spots etc.

Yeah, I could imagine that being the case. I know everyone has different tastes and the standard tech that makes up a lot of Whistler isn’t it. At least Squamish is reasonably close with a decent selection of trails which won’t scare the pants off the less confident rider.

I only really realised the lack of ‘friendly but interesting’ trails which I started teach my girlfriend to ride. She’ll get around most of Lost Lake, which is good, but where else do I take her? She’s not quite ready for Danimal so that leaves the Riverside trails in Function and Cut Yer Bars. So not a huge selection. If someone is happy to push through and accept that they might be walking a bit (or a lot) it’s fine, but it definitely not for everyone.

Maybe have a look on Youtube for the Lost Lake trails, Danimal, Cut Yer Bars, Highline, Farside/Riverside and some of the other blue trails on Trail Forks. Should give you an idea of what the trails on the easier end of the spectrum outside the park are like. One criticism I have of Whistler is that there’s not a lot of interesting ‘easy’ trails. The Lost Lake blue trails are great, but if you’re not confident on wood work (of any width), small rockfaces etc then they can be quite intimidating. The green trails tend to be pretty dull, smooth and wide gravel affairs. Basically not much approaching the UK blue trails that are mostly singletrack but not filled with rocks and potentially intimidating features.

, Valley Trails are ace work up to Kill Me Thrill Me , Comfortably Numb and A River Runs Through It .

If you like slow tech with no flow. I guess they’re marmite trails. I’ll ride each once a summer to remind myself that there’s much more fun to be on other trails :P

A Line can all be rolled, bar the squirrel catcher, but it shouldn’t be encouraged. The bike parks blue tech trails aren’t crazy gnarly and are a lot of fun on a trail/enduro bike as well as on a bike DH bike. Even black tech generally can all be rolled but are often easier if you’re comfortable dropping off small rocks etc. The flow trails are all super wide but tend to be high speed and designed to be ridden as jump trails. If you want to keep your wheels on the ground you’ll either be braking a lot or getting very good at sucking up the lips… The greens are a mixed bag, some are awful, wide dull affairs where as Del Boca Vista is great fun.

Out side the park the Lost Lake trails are similar to any given UK trail centre red trail. There’s lots of other blue and black rated trails around the valley that don’t require the wheels to come off the ground and aren’t crazy technical.

The new Lord of the Squirrels alpine trail is a big old ride but a fantastic descent which any decent rider should have fun on. It’s well worth doing if you’re in the area in the mid summer.

Squamish has some great riding which tends to have a bit more flow than the Whistler trails while still being fun and wheels down.

Quality coaching, man management and a winning mentality go an awful long way. The Canucks have been awful for a few years so a new coaching team this season and a player clearout of sorts. It looked to have helped but they’ve only won 2 games in 15 of late. The players they brought in haven’t performed. You need more than 1 star player, McDavid or Boeser. If the trades don’t work and you’re hamstrung with still paying for overinflated contracts like the Canucks are then it’s very difficult to drag yourself out of that.

Whistler bike park do ladies only and men only coaching sessions a few nights a week in the summer. Each night has a raffle with names drawn out of the hat for prizes. It’s usually everything from tires to helmets and usually a big prize each week, drive train, brakes, full face helmet etc. It’s a pretty sweet thing for the entrants and the sponsors get a good reputation too. Problem is that anything size specific was always large, XL or XXL. So a bunch of this stuff ended up on the local buy and sell page and the sponsors took the huff. I can see why, but maybe don’t donate prizes that can only be used by people 6 ft and 200 lbs?

Once a day, occasionally twice if needed after sweaty exercise. Sometimes none at all.

A optional toggle to maximise performance or battery life would of been best, but I’d be pretty happy knowing that even though my phone is slow, the battery isnt going to suddenly die on me. A phone with a shot battery is as useless as a slow one. So I can’t say I’m upset with them. The denials haven’t helped them any though.

Celtic will be pleased with that bit of news

Generally it used to be (not sure now) but TNF ‘’Summit series’ used to be decent stuff

Still is. The entire Whistler Blackcomb on mountain staff use TNF stuff. The ones I know like it.

Some cracking images above. Looks like everyones been having a blast.

January
Started the year off with pretty epic snow conditions.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

February
More of the same. Days upon days of fresh snow and sweet lines.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

March
Erm, yeah, more snow photos. This day in particular was a surprise. Not a huge dump of snow, but the 1st sun we’d seen in a while and still enough to get fresh lines.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

April
The final snow photo from last season.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

May
May still had good snow, and even some sun to get some biking in, but I got mumps. Not a fun few weeks.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

June
Little visit to Ottawa to hangout with the girlfriends family and see where she grew up.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

July
Full on biking season now. Lots of trail riding and lots of bike park.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

August
Crankworx was great, but I didn’t get any good shots, so here’s Tom riding Captain Safety.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

September
Dead season in Whistler. Trip to the East Coast for a wedding and general city fun.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

October
Epic fall conditions in Pemberton.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

Novemeber
Back to skiing! Always a good lesson for life this:
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

December
Fresh lines again, sometimes a little boot packing required, but sometimes you just need to earn your turns.
A year in Photos by Jamie Carson[/url], on Flickr

You’ve said you don’t want Bose and their out of your budget anyway, but they really are the best at the noise cancellation game.

Maybe have a look at Audio Technica?ive found them good value and their NC is meant to be on the better end of the spectrum for the price.

I’m not sure if I’d prefer MH or ‘still living in the dark ages’ Canada Post. They were running adverts 2 or 3 years ago saying “in the future you’ll do most of your shopping online and have it delivered straight to your door by Canada Post!”. In the future?!? I’ve been shopping online for at least 15 years. Never mind the fact that my building complex doesnt have mail boxes, so you need to go to the post office itself to get mail and parcels. At this time of year it’s usually a 30 minute wait, sometimes 45 or an hour. And they’ll only hold things for 10 days. Fun fun fun.

Pretty easy to see why. 925 requests to a stupid amount of various types of resources and lots of outside Ad serving scripts killing the site.

Even without all those requests their server is taking a very long time to do something.

Yup, requests are taking a long long time to get returned. Something in the backend is clearly not right!

Snowboards in powder are all very well until the inevitable flat spot. It still brings a smile to my face remembering when one shot past me then stopped…then (having forgotten 2m snow pack in thrill of the moment) unfastened and stepped off his board and in up to the chest.

:lol:

Nice Luke. Great sound track, some fun riding and those lingering shots of Tom… *Sploosh*

whatnobeer – are they just saving them for the holidays? I presume there’s enough snow up there by now.

Definitely looks like enough snow to open, and from the stuff we hiked, apart from a few shark fins it’s been pretty reasonable. I assume it’s just a case of the new owners wanting to save a little cash and not run them until it’s a little busier. Either that or lift opts are still working their asses off to get them ready after getting hit with the early opening. 7th heaven was rumoured to be opening this weekend, so they shouldn’t be far away.

whatnobeer – cheers, really interesting and I’ve been holding off replacing all my touring kit as i just do not like pin bindings. Might repair my current stuff and hold out.

Aye, Blister had a first look review today and reckon they could be the real deal but obviously waiting on further testing. Looking like a potential game changer.

Shift Bindings

These look very interesting from Salomon for next season. Tours like a pin binding, descends like a full alpine binding.

This would be the sort of thing I’d go for, not crazy heavy but with the safety features and performance I’m used to from a DIN certified alpine binding.

Spot on Sandy. Having recently worked with and engineer who had moved from a big team to a very small one who insisted on implementing Scrum, he missed the point spectacularly. No picking and choosing, very little compromise on how it should be implemented, way too much bickering about unimportant BS. After 6 months I quit as in a team with 4 Devs it was totally unnecessary and wasted so much of my drastically underpaid time.

Nice, is that North Flute? (The cat track is confusing me.) Looking forward to getting back out there at the start of Feb. Hope the snow returns before then

Nope, Flute currently requires skinning out to as neither Harmony or Symphony are running, and my touring skis still don’t have bindings on them.

This is above Crystal, just above the cat track that you would ski down to get there from Glacier chair.

We’re about to get 2 weeks of sun and not a drop of precipitation in sight. Freezing level way above the mountain top too, but today wasn’t too shabby.

Tasers are the ones the shoot barbs onto what ever your pointing the thing at and will make them convulse on the ground. It’s also a specific brand not a generic term.

Stun guns on the other hand are not actually guns and will give you a shock while the thing is pressed into you but not anything like a real Taser.

I’d guess your Polish guy is selling the latter and that would likely be consistent with the small fine.

Not sure if I’m more impressed with sweajnr forward or sweamrs going backwards….

Nice! Sounds like the instructor knows his stuff. He’ll grow into the current set by the sounds of it.

Is the instructor any good? Or are they a glorified baby sitter? If it’s the latter I’d not sure I’d trust them. Some of them rock up here and can hardly ski themselves….

Too many people fall into the trap of want new technology to be perfect, really it should only need to be better than what we currently have, which are us, and we’re shit.

With regard to the original article, it was clearly written with a very deliberate set of biasses with only one conclusion in mind, but it’s entertaining to see it taken apart regardless.

It popped into my Google News feed as I’m interested in ‘bicycles’ as far as Google are concerned, obviously Google haven’t worked out that I’m pro bike rather than anti. I’d like to see some of the comments above in the comment section on the article. With no refutals this is type of article will reinforce the attitude of many towards people on bikes, and cycling infrastructure.

Oh and ‘flannelwank’ might be my new favourite insult.