"HOLY SHIT! THE ROOM IS SPINNING!"

Yep, I am in Kentucky, waiting for my plane to arrive. I just spent the last few days at a Society for Rangeland Management conference pushing our companies services on anyone who would listen. During the day at least. Last night we had a "business" dinner with the sales reps from "Large Chemical Manufacturer X" with much of the "business" being how many drinks and how much heckling can you handle. Over dinner I watched how large corporate reps woo their customers and got stories of how they used to woo their customers. I heard tales of contracts being closed with gifts of hookers and new cars, and other much shadier promotions (this is no more however!). Throughout this meeting I was mostly quiet, retorting to their constant heckling with the occasional jab back, and I just watched and listened. With this job, there are two very different sides I am finding. One is an average, out-of-college job with menial work that is sometimes stimulating and fun. The other is a side of work I didnt expect to see for a very long time; its the large corporate good-ole-boys type of work where you dont really do anything except bullshit for an hour and then with 5 minutes left you say "ok, so we are good on the agreement to sell "product X" exclusively?" and the drunken ass who just drank $150 of the corporate wine says "Suuuure!" ...And another $400,00 deal is born, based on a few drinks and a pair of box seats at a Nascar event. I tell ya, not being a fan of Nascar, I am going to be a hard sell for these corporate reps, whenever I reach that level.
My favorite moment from possibly the whole time I have been at this job happened last night. After a few drinks at the bar, we were seated for dinner at a table in a room that was very slowly rotating on the 27th floor of the hotel(think space needle adjacent to a skyscraper). We all noticed the room was moving after several minutes as the windows and walls slowly changed orientation. Meanwhile Barry, who has the highest yearly sales(in millions) in the company every year (and is one of the good ole boys), is drinking merrily away. About an hour and a half into dinner(the room has done at least 1.5 rotations by now) Barry smacks the table and says, "I KNEW IT! The room IS spinning!" Everyone stared at him for 2 or 3 seconds in silence, and then there was laughter for the next 10 minutes of so. Secretly I had the same thought about 10 minutes into dinner when I realized the room was rotation, but I'll be damned if I was going to be the first to point out the room was spinning. It is good to know that I now have ammo on some of my superiors. I'll keep that on in my back pocket.

Now I am going to fly back to OR and enjoi the 400+ inches at Meadows. Schwing!

MLK Weekend

This weekend was the first OMC Sunriver weekend in 2 years and it was a smashing success. It was great to see a hottub full of nekkid people in the snow once again. Sat morning we XC'd in to Paulina falls to look at the ice accumulation and hopefully be able to TR some of it. Greg and Rob started in an hour before the rest of the group and I heard him over the radio saying something about an ice fall and climbing on a thin, broken ice flow. When we got there, the magnitude of the ice fall was apparent. Greg had lowered off and climbed one ice curtain, and then let Rob have a go. Rob lowered and then half way kicked in on the same area that greg had been on, and the WHOLE thing went. The pictures below say it all.

This morning someone put a post-it on Rob's back that read "be nice to me, I almost died yesterday"

The rest of the climbing (on a much more stable climb) proved to be incredible.

2 gud 2 B tru

The house was bunk. There were $35,000 hidden repairs the inspection report showed. Oh well, Colleen and Ben and I picked out 10 more to look at this weekend to look at. We'll find one.

Snow Day!

Reading Keith's blog last week got me all amped up for boarding this season. Before I left for CA the snow just wasn't happening though. On the drive back however, I was in snow from the Oregon border north. At Siskiyou Pass, I talked myself out of sleeping in the truck and riding at Mt Ashland in the morning beacuse I had to study for an upcoming test for work. Talk about inner turmoil!. Then driving north the weather just got colder and snowier. I spent 2 hours between the Rogue River and Eugene flip-flopping between "Dude the powder is going to be EPIC!" and "No, you have a job and a house now Ian, you have to embrace responsibility and study for this test at some point before taking it." (at this point you get one guess as to what my choice was.) I finally broke down in Eugene, checked the snow phone and called around to see who would go to the mountain with me. Jesse finally gave in and we drove back to Eugene in the morning to catch the Willamette Pass ski bus.
WOW, WHAT A GOOD DECISION!
Everything about the day was perfect. We rode top to bottom all day, hit a ton of different runs, and managed to get knee deep freshies on just about every run. Just in the time we were there we got another 5 inches or so. We figgered ok, last run, lets go destroy ourselves on this little double black over here. I mashed the hill and look up and dont see Jesse anywhere. Looking... Looking... Then he comes shooting out of the trees with a delerious laugh of satisfaction and we ended up taking 3 more runs in the steepest, best, untracked secret run on the whole hill. We rounded out the day with a pitcher of Jubelale in the bar and promptly passed out on the bus ride home.
The 2008 season is upon us!

Oregon Trail

As much as I hate the facebook apps and invites, one intreagued me recently. It was for Oregon Trail on facebook. I was really hoping it would rekindle those awesome memories of the old game, but it didnt. This version is lacking in its interactiveness. Mostly, it involved me pressing the "continue walking" button a bunch. It was a little more adult than the old version though. You can steal from other parties, Colleen got explosive diarrhea, Alyssa was desperately in need of water, Chubb wanted a cigar, and if you got sick of someone in your party, you could eat them! I like that part. The disturbing thing is that the leader on all of facebook currently has logged something like 50,000 miles on this game. Averaging 20 mph/day that is 2500 clicks on the "continue walking" button. Say it takes 5 seconds to load each time, that is 209 minutes playing the game. Then you factor in hunting and shopping at trailmart outposts and you have lost a lot of your life to another pointless facebook app. ...Just like me ranting about this on my blog.
After christmas my fam went to SoCal to meet Col's parents. For the first time. This is a moment we have both been dreading for a looooooong time. Fortunately it worked out very well. My dad and liddle bro Fritz became fast friends with Bob Pallari over a game of golf, while I showed them all how horrible I was at the game. I hit a glass door(miraculously didnt break) on a house near the course along with a number of other inanimate objects. Seriously, I need to stick to climbing. The only climbing highlight was getting to scramble the small rockpile below on top of San Jacinto Peak near Palm Springs.