My taxi will be here in 3 hours and I will be flying over to Blighty! I finally bnanged out a couple of emails to people to see if they aer around next week so here is hoping. As you can guess I will not be updating this as I will be in the country but if you wanna call you can get me at my parents, I may be skype enabled at some point!!

Oh, as I am on holiday, I am drunk on scotch! *hic*

Well it is Thursday here and I am on my lunch break . . . What can I say, well in 1 week I will be boarding aplane to come over and see all you muppets in person ;)

Bike: Well I went for the LX rear derailleur, XT 8 speed cassette, XT rear V-brake, Forte rear wheel+hub, continetal town and country tires. $200 . . . Next month will be the LX crankset then next year will be new hardtail frame (Kona probably) and fron shock. . . But that will be in the spring.

Erm . . wot else . . not much . . . As you may know I had a hard drive failure last week and lost all my music . . I have 60% of it back now . . . mumble-mumble . .

Spurs won 2-0 the other night, much better performance, new signings fitting in well, Michael who??? ;) TOns-O did you send me texts??? I did not get any . . . mmmm . . we need to talk about that one!

Neeeedddd foooooooddd . . . .

Well, I had a good weekend! played Poker on Friday, won some money :) got drunk on good beer and better Scotch, cycled home. On the way I stopped to watch some drag racing too!

Saturday sucked . . . Spurs lost 2-0, I had to change the front deraileur on the bike $33, could only find a flipping Shimano XT one, talk about over kill . . .

Lost ALL my music on my computer, computer then crashed grrr. . . had not beer . .

Sunday was good, got a lot of the music back, watched some Ricky Gervais and got lots of homey things sorted (bills and cleaning). I went for a bike ride too, bought some new earphones (drunken tantrum saw the last ones die) and I ended up on a nice beach, reading a book for an hour or two. I then cycled home to drink some beer and watch some Shakespeare.

What a lovely day!

Today sucks, it is a Monday so no surprise! I am playing "real" Poker tonight. I decided I have to go play one real game in my life and tonight is an oppotunity. I will let you know what happens . . .

Oh, and Tons-O your comment was usefull. Reaaally Useful!!! I am going for a Meadows pass, it is the best resort. The others are not as good no matter how convenient they are. . . . Besides, Skibowl is cheap I can always go there off the cuff!

Time for lunch!

I Have a new favourite problem . . .

Meadows lift pass is $550. If 4 of you team up and buy your passes toegether by the 5th November you only pay $400 each.

Timberline and Skibowl have teamed up. You can get a pass for both resorts for only $400.

What do I do?


I love Meadows.

Skibowl is 1 hour away.

Timberline is open 12 months of the year.

But I love Meadows . .

Answers on bottle of scotch . . .

The choice for female hygene throughtout California and Oregon.


New Clorox sanitary wipes, sometimes there is no alternative . . .

I f**king hate spammers. Hate some twat spam a political comment on my blog . . . as a result if you wanna post a comment you have to be a member and I will moderate the comments. . . I am pretty pissed about it but I rather that then someone using my blog as a political forum . . . grrrrr . . .

I really need to get a Flickr account on something, loading photos on here is a pain. So here is a teaser from the weekend and I will post more on another site when I awake enough to drive the interspaz . . . .



The SFO contingent help Christa on stage, this is not Rockstar ladies!!!!! I bet you were singing Bon Jovi weren't ya?!?!?

The Duet of the night?

What you have to appriciate is Dave could hardly stand, or see and did not know th song he was singing . . .

But he still got his lovin!

Never did find out what was so funny, I reckon it was something Ben said . . .

Freaky hang over camera fun!

So from the last Thursday thing I went on:

I know this needs to be rotated, I fogot! But how cool, a Ninja bake sale . .

This girl is 15 years old and messing with fire Poi at the Clown house . . .

Typical Alberta house . . . Jazz band jamming on the porch, really good!

And the day at the beach with Chris and Dave, that hunk of junk is a Chevvy Impala. Avoid at all costs . .

Righty, I am now back in Portland after a long old trip . . . Highlights are few and far between but I will have ago!

If you are ever looking at coming to America, please do not go to Orlando. There is only one reason to go to Florida and that is the Kennedy Space Centre, so unfortunately I will be returning for that very reason! I can I justify my comment about Florida? Well, it was hot and Humid . . . That is all you need to know . . . Oh and full of little shits from Manchester. . .

Onwards to the next destination . . . Las Vegas. What a hole. The best thing about LV is the view flying in, it its very impressive. I think I can handle the place for maybe 1 or 2 days but then I would go crazy . . . The only gambling that took place was when I was checking in . . . 45mins of mayhem ensued before giving up and going to bed. I returned to the desk in the morning to try and resolve it and left with a bill that looked correct. When I checked my bank balance today I have not been charged correctly for the room. In fact I have been fully refunded . . .

Skipping on to something more interesting I got to spend a full day in San Fransico! A Saturday in the bay area, how cool is that! So obviously we (Dave, Chris and myself) dug out a map, marked all the sights to see in downtown and jumped in our rental car . . . to go surfing. Like I am going to spend a day in 90 degree heat walking around a city . . .

We went to Half moon bay, not to Mavericks but to another part that is where surf schools are held. We took our boards and proceeded to get beaten up my mother nature for our sins. The problem was the waves had a lot more power in them then you get in the UK, so although I was aiming for small breaks (3-4 feet) you ended up with the front of the board plunged into the water and being thrown off. I did catch a big wave by accident . . . Trust me, it ended in an accident. It looked like it was going to be a nice 3-4 feet, but I did not realise how far out I was. I caught it nicely, realised I had picked up lots of speed and I was way to forward on the board. I tried moving back on the board but it was too late, the nose got pushed under, I slipped off and I was rolling under the waves in the foetal position being hit by my board . . .

We stayed out for a few hours and then dropped the stuff off back at the rental place. We got invited in for a BBQ which was nice, just hanging out with the surf shop owners, was really cool!

The rest of the trip was pretty non-descript, except for the atrium at the Marriot I stayed in. It was huge! As soon as we walked in I wanted to go to the top floor (10^th or 11^th I think) and throw a paper plane into the atrium to see if I could make it spiral down. They other guys did not think it was a good idea so I did not get a chance to do it . . Boo hiss . . .

Another point of note is I have once again done my best to prevent the “squid end of the universe” scenario arising by having Calamari for 6 straight days . . . . If you do not understand, I am not explaining.

I am now back in Portland and I have a top few days in fornt of me. I think the Timbers are playing on Friday night. This means I have to get my bike fixed so I can cycle to the game.

Yes that’s right, I have broken the Wal-mart special already. Not sure if I have mentioned this on the blog yet but a couple of weeks ago there was the Portland beer festival. It was on the Friday before I was travelling for work and the idea was if I got all my stuff packed and sorted then I would go meet the guys for a quick jar. SO I got there with about 10mins to spare, downed a couple of beers and went bar hopping. When the end of the night drew in and the guys were making their way to cabs/trains etc . .. they were walking and I was on my bike. We crossed a road and when I got to the pavement on the other side I did not realised how big a step up the curb it was literally 18”. So I got the front wheel over it, but the back did not make it. This meant I got flipped over the handle bars, landed flat on my back, much to the amusement of all the people I their cars.

Still, a least I was not damaged (unlike from the break dancing competition the week before . . . . .) the damage to the bike was the chain came off and the derailleur’s are out of alignment . . .

Tonight I am off to watch Talladega nights (saw a snippet last night, really funny!). It does mean I am going miss the Timbers play tonight, but they are at home again next Friday so I can watch them then. Not doing to good at the mo . . .

Saturday I am heading up to Timberline for some long over due snow action. For $43 I get to play on the snow from 7:30am to about 1pm. I am really looking forward to it. I will get some piccies so you guys can see what it looks like up Hood in the summer. Full report to follow.

Christa is having a party on Saturday afternoon, Hawaiian themed, so it is snow in the morning and then boardies in the afternoon!

Sunday is the Portland bridge ride. There are something like 8 bridges in Portland and they all get closed off for this big bike ride. I am think about doing in, but it is a 7.5 mile ride to the start, then 24-35 miles of riding (depending which one you opt for) then another 7.5 miles home . . . not sure about it at the mo . . .I may be too hung over and just need a good sleep in!

Next Thursday is the Vans international event in the Rose quarter. Why is this important? Well, Snowboard rail jam. Yep, lots of snow and stuff to motivate me! I will be taking a camera and I let you know how it goes.

So as you can see the next week or so is going to be a lot of fun, I have lots of snowboarding, bike riding and football to look forward to! Not to mention that I am going to be back in the UK in a couple of weeks, more info on that to follow later!

Oh and Tons-O. I have changed my link format, I prefer the things to open in the same window, but as you asked so nicely I have tried to make a change for you!

Oh, Looks like I will be around for ManU V Spurs, we need to make some plans . . .

You have to love the x-games! So many highlights it is sickening. I mean, DOUBLE backflip on a moto-cross bike . . . Back flip over a 100ft jump on a skate board . . . It was amazing viewing.

One thing really stood out for me. Colin McRae. The man, the legend. He is just the most spectacular rally driver I have ever seen. I am pleased he did not win the x-games rally gold, silver was much better. Silver was better because we got to see Colin do what he does best, go all out no matter what. That is a fine libe to be on. When it comes together he is unstoppable, but sometimes is can go wrong . . . I doubt a rally event would ever be complete with out a Colin crash!

Here is the vid

X-games interview with Colin