Ryanair

When I needed to get off the Scandinavian peninsula to go ski the Alps and I had been too stupid to think about it until two days prior to my departure from Finland, Ryanair saved my ass. Now there's an article about Ryanair in the New York Times and I'm going to link to it from here, particularly because their CEO suggested that business class pastures on hypothetical transatlantic flights would receive oral sex. I really do need to get rich.

Ryanair is Thrifty, and Chief Makes No Apologies

Here's to you, Mr O'Leary, from a blogger who is NOT ranting about poor service. Long live cheap flights! I don't need a pot to piss in....

Maybe I'll work on those trip reports from Chamonix, Argentiere and La Grave next week. But tomorrow, I'm going to Squamish again.

Stoked on Squamish

What is it about skiing the Mowich Face that makes me more interested in rock climbing? I don't know, but it was the case in 2005 and it seems to be the case now.

Squamish really does have it all. The 700 m granite cliffs of the Chief at the head of the Howe Sound have blown my mind. Ryan and I took the bus to climb there two weekends in a row. Eco-warriors, baby!

Snake, St Vitus Dance, and Ultimate Everything

Thanks for the good times, Ryan.

In addition to fixing the MouseOvers for Safari and adding more MouseOvers, I'm moving all the advertisements to the bottom of the pages. (These things will take some time because I'm trying to have a life.) If you're entertained enough to read a whole TR, maybe the geniuses at the dominant search engine will have used keywords aptly enough to place something there that grabs your interest just enough to make you click on it. That's the idea, at least.

Safari Swap

I had long forgotten problems with SkiSickness in Safari (Apple's browser). I'm in the process of fixing all the mouseovers on SkiSickness so that they'll work with Safari. When I made the site, I checked that everything worked with IE and Firefox and called it good. I just fixed the Mowich Map. I'll eventually put a prettier picture there and give the whole site a facelift. I'd really like to buy a new camera too, but that will just have to wait.

More importantly, I'm stoked to get on some of that flawless Chief granite this weekend. Squamish stoke!

>>*dork out*

Shastatina-Shastina-ShasTNA

So the weather just wouldn't cooperate during my vacation. Desperation led to a ski trip I never would have made otherwise. But it was a nice change of pace. Sometimes different is good.

This is a half-assed trip report, but it still allows for a nice display of CSS steeze.
Shastina North Face et alia

Long Overdue from Wedge Mountain

Here's a long overdue, fresh perspective from a very fun trip to Wedgemount Lake during Canada Day weekend, 2008.

Cécile on the Wedge Mountain safety patrol (In all fairness, l'histoire m'est envoyée depuis neuf mois!)

And now, to Squamish.

Mt Resplendent

Here is the first report from the fabulous week-long trip Andy Dimmen and I took to the Canadian Rockies this June.

I highly recommend skiing Mt Resplendent.

More to come soon from Robson and Andromeda.

Da Blog, Reloaded

So, I've sacrificed my ideals and now there are advertisements on SkiSickness. I spent several days crying in a fetal position, but I'm finally over it. A new dream has been born: I'm going to become a dot-com millionaire!

With this dream, however unrealistic it may be, my motivation has returned. New trip reports should appear on the site every day or two for the foreseeable future, while I fill the backlog of trips from 2008-2009. These new trip reports will make the billions of people on this planet who care about wild, isolated, steep skiing visit $ki$ickne$$, click on the ads, and make me filthy rich so I can ski all the time and post more awesome skiing content!

Note how in this model, the chain of events is the following:

More SkiSickness content => more money => less need to work => more SkiSickness content.

This is a positive feedback loop! I had fallen into the trap of thinking like this:

More SkiSickness content => less time spent doing work that must be done => less time to ski => less reserves of experiences and photos to create SkiSickness content.

More posting, less skiing has been replaced with more posting, more skiing in SkiSickness 2.0. Now I can take over the world like The Brain!

Please use the open, anonymous comment feature available here to tell me how low I've sunk. Or how your cat's tongue feels like sandpaper. Just type something - there's plenty of room in the tube.

Recent addition:
Steep sickness on Mt Rainier's Edmunds Headwall

CIAO