Wow Whistler Gondola Collapsed

Wow this is crazy I was on this Gondola 3 days ago. As much as I complained about my trip it could have been a lot worse. If you look at the pics it looks like the tower snapped perfectly clean.

Twelve people were injured in the accident, said Ryan Proctor with Whistler Blackcomb public relations, but all had been released from the local clinic by Tuesday evening.

The accident occurred at 2:30 p.m. on the Excalibur Gondola, which carries skiers to the top of Blackcomb Mountain from Whistler Village, which is co-hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics with Vancouver.

First big storm of 08

3 feet in the last 48 hours. More snow Thursday. Maybe another 3 footer by the beginning of next week with storms lined up for post-Christmas too. It's about time we got a storm. It's a great time to get up to Tahoe and enjoy the snow. This is a view from the office with Northstar in the background. I love the snow.

Whistler Trip

Last week I went on trip to Whistler Canada with Ride Snowboards. I hadn't never been to Whistler and was excited. It took a long time to get there, first was a two hour flight to Seattle, then a thirty five minute flight to Vancouver, then a three hour bus ride to Whistler, it doesn't sound like much but with all the layovers and delays it ended up taking about eleven hours total.

It's always fun going on these trips, I see friends from other shops all over the country that I only see a few times a year. The purpose of the trip was to see the 2010 Snowboards and to give input on making the 2011 line. They have a few cool boards coming out in 2010. We were able to ride in the morning, then go to meetings in the evenings. I was really cold with sub zero temps and high winds and fog the whole trip. It was less then ideal conditions. I didn't due much riding due to the temps, so I ended up walking the village and checking out all Whistler had to offer. It is a really fun town with world class restaurants and fun bars and night clubs. I wish Squaw would have built there village more like Whistler. Even with the weather and lack of snow I would still love to come back to Whistler when there is more snow.

Thanks to Ride for putting me up in the Chateau Fairmont and making this a great trip.

Porters Indoor Soccer Season Is Done

Well the season has come to an end for the Porters indoor soccer team. The final record was 2-7, not impressive by any means but we improved a lot throughout the season. We started of by getting are buts whooped and by the end we were holding are own and only losing by a few goals, not bad for most of the team not playing in 10 years. I'm already looking forward to next season.

Thanksgiving Dive Trip

From August 07 Peace Trip

From August 07 Peace Trip

From August 07 Peace Trip

From August 07 Peace Trip

This trip was a nice relaxing time away from work. With the lack of snow we have, it has been making my job a little stressful. I decided to leave the camera at home so some of you might recognize these pics from a year ago. I wasn't planing on doing much hunting but my dive buddy Vic wanted some help so I couldn't resist. I ended up catching at least a dozen Lobster but most of them were short, but we got a few keepers and 14 scallops it will make Vic a nice dinner.

Sorry for the lack of post, not much has been going on just a lot of work. Off to Whistler Canada for a work trip next week. Keep you updated. Lets hope we all get some snow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I wish I was snowboarding but we still don't have any snow :( Sorry for the lack of posts, I haven't been doing much but working. I am off to Ventura tomorrow to go diving for two days on the Peace Boat Yea.

Enjoy your Turkey and football and don't eat to many desserts. Thanks to Daniele, Diane, Ginger and Janet for cooking an amazing dinner tonight, It smells good I can't wait to eat.

Donating Blood

Last night I donated blood. I donate every 2 months. I have 0- which they love since it can be given to all blood types and I am also CMV- which they told me is very rare and is the only blood that can be donated to baby's. I like donating blood it gives me a sense of helping others in need. I recommenced if you have never donated go try it, it only takes about 45 minutes and at the end you get some cookies. Contact your local United Blood Service or Red Cross.

Danielle also donates on a regular schedule and last night she donated Platelets, it was the first time she had. She has an extremely hi platelet and is a perfect candidate, it's a long process it took about 2 hours but they gave here a movie to watch. Not sure about all the technical stuff but what they do is spin your blood as it comes out and they give back the red blood cells and keep the platelets. Your body will replenish your platelets in 24 hrs.

Most patients undergoing a bone marrow transplant, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatment or organ transplant need platelets in order to survive. In fact, doctors are finding that platelets play a vital role in more and more new therapies.

With just a five-day storage life, platelet donations are delivered quickly to the patients who need them. Platelet donors have the satisfaction of knowing that their donation will be saving a life within just a few days.

My brother John is in town doing some work for Porters, so I talked him into going and donating blood with us. He had donated in High school but not since. He did donated and must have been excited because he filled the bag really fast. Thanks John for donating keep it up.

Even Animals get drunk know and then

Drunk Animals - video powered by Metacafe

Mr. Fix-it

Danielle had class on Saturday, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to straighten up the garage and get the Christmas stuff out. The next three weekends are booked up, so I put the lights up on the house. All of the neighbors said I was making them look bad. We won't turn them on until Thanksgiving weekend, but I am glad that is out of the way. Today, I decided to tackle the task of replacing a tile (that the cats mysteriously broke) and cracked grout in the kitchen. I have never fixed tile or grout before - it was an interesting challenge. The main problem was trying to match our current grout with the colors at Home Depot. So far, so good!

Scuba and Soccer

From Jason's Life

From Jason's Life

This week has been really busy. I was teaching Scuba Diving at the lake all weekend so there went my days off. And by the way I started getting a cold, I was really congested making equalizing my ears fun. The weather didn't cooperate which made for some ocean like conditions in Tahoe, it's good for the kids to learn. All 7 of my students got through the class which made it all worth the effort.

Monday was back to work at Porters.

Tuesday was Veterans day which Danielle had off so I took the day off to chill at home, I needed the rest it helped with my cold.

Wednesday back to work just another day at the office.

Thursday was Porters indoor soccer game in Incline We ended up loosing the game, I actually played my best game of the season but Kevin started in goal and when I took over it was 5-0. I played my heart out and stopped what seemed like 100 shots, they slipped one by 1 on 1 from about 5ft nothing I could do about that, the final score was 2-6. Better luck next week.

Porter's Takes Two in a Row in Indoor Soccer

Porter's Indoor Soccer Team is now 2-3 after last night's win. Next week we will attempt to hit the .500 mark. Danielle somehow managed to not foul at all. Amazing. I played goalie during the second half and only let three goals threw. The final score was 14-9. Indoor is very fast paced and physical - a good time for sure. Hopefully I will have good news to report next week!

Get out and Vote.

Don't let this be you get out there and vote. You still have time. NOW you have 6 hours left.

Setting Up San Francisco Ski Fest

Alex and Alica Getting it done


It's starting to come together.

Danielle and Alica looking cute.

Alcatraz

The crew worn out after a long day.


Today the Porters crew loaded up three huge trucks and headed down to San Francisco for the huge SF Ski Fest. We all met at the warehouse at 5am, the trucks were already loaded and ready to roll. The drive was slow it rained off and on, it took us about 4 hours to get to Fort Mason with one stop.

Upon arrival the eight of us were in full set up mode. We do four tent sales a year, so this sale was a cake to set up. Within the first 4 hours it was looking like a legit sale, we ended up staying till five pimping it out with signs and organizing.

Were now all checked into our hotels and getting showered up to go out. It's always fun to be in SF the city is always going 24/7. This is going great weekend lets hope the sale is a huge success.

Come out to the sale this weekend and say hi. By the way there is a ton of Beer and Wine vendors, it could be fun.

What 3 cats will get you

Nothing good...that's for sure! We went to a nice dinner with Danielle's Grandma and Uncle Jim, who is visiting from Spain, and come home to a broken counter top. It seems that the dish that was sitting on top of the fridge was knocked off and landed onto the kitchen counter. It broke the tile clean off! Damn cats...

Porters Tahoe and Burton's Reno Movie Premier

Saturday was a long day for me it started off spending the whole day at Golden Eagle watching Danielle play softball. I got home at 9:30 changed then off to Club Underground for the Porters Tahoe and Burton Snowboards movie premier of It's Always Snowing Somewhere. Kasey our marketing girl put a ton of work into making this a huge success. We had three bands there Hunks of Metal a local Tahoe band staring Shawn Farmer, Terry Kidwell and Bob Kline, followed by Porters own Josh Hall with his band Cohesion which tore the house down. After the first two bands the movie played and from what I saw it was really good. Then last but not least was the Supersuckers which I have never seen but they are a rocking band, that has been around for 20 years and seem to have a big following. Again thanks to Kasey and the whole Porters crew for another amazing event.

Blood and Guts Softball Tournament at Golden Eagle

Danielle was playing in a Spark's Blood and Guts Softball Tournament this weekend. She got a call Tuesday night from some random guy that got her number from someone else asking if she was interested in playing in a softball tournament. Of course she was, since the season ended a few weeks ago she has been hopping she would get to play. The first game was at 8am and it was cold 35 when she got out of the car. The team must of liked the cold because they killed the team that came all the way from Idaho. The team was hitting well Danielle got a 2 doubles a triple and a in the park home run. After the first game they had a three hour break so she got some breakfast then back to Golden Eagle.

The next game wasn't as spectacular but they still pulled it out in the last inning. After winning 2 if they would have won the next game, they would of been done for the day and able to rest for Sunday. That didn't happen the first inning the other team scored 17 runs and Danielle's team the Big Kids was never able to pull out from that hole. The loss also meant they would have to play at least one more game Saturday if not two.

The next game was at 7pm and the temperature quickly dropped from the high of 75 to about 50 and I was freezing in my shorts and flip flops, I didn't think we were going to be there that late. The next game of the day was good it was back and forth but they ended up losing in the end which meant they would have to be back at 8am the next morning for the game and they had to win.

Sunday morning it was even colder it was 31. The game started off good and they were up by 12 but half way threw the other team most have unthawed and put up 33 runs in one inning this is one of the worst innings I have ever seen. Well this meant the Big kids Tournament was done but Danielle had fun and she got to play 5 games over they weekend. Better luck next time.

Indoor Soccer Game 3

We'll we have lost all three of our games but we aren't getting killed and were having a bunch of fun. I have played goalie all games and done as good of a job as I could with 100 shots coming at you. Danielle has played the last two games and is doing a good job for never playing soccer before. She does have the most penalty's out of the whole team, if not the league. Since she doesn't have all the skill, she just uses a little rough play to get the ball. I'll keep you updated hopefully Porters can win a game.

Fall colors in Tahoe

With the colder temps the trees start to turn and soon lose there leaves. There isn't many Aspen Trees in Tahoe but the small clusters are always beautiful.

Birthday BBQ at the office

Big Johan our C3 sales manager was in California visiting some shops. It was his B-Day so we decided to have a BBQ for him at the Porters office. Our warehouse crew will take any free calories they can get, so they all came over and eat some grub and played a little soccer.

After the BBQ John, Chris, Johan and I decided to go to Java Sushi for a snack. Ya that didn't happen, John can't go into Java without them making at least a dozen rolls, he has a reputation there. I was cool with it, I didn't eat at the BBQ but the others were ready to blow i think they each had 2 burgers at the office about 2 hours earlier. It was a good time as always, Johan is a great guy he had us all cracking up.

Climbing Donner

Yesterday Rom and I went up to Donner Summit for a long lunch of Rock climbing. It had been a few months since I have climbed, so I was excited to get out there. We did 3 different routes and were out there for about 4 hours. I hope I can get out a few more times before the snow fills it all in.

Dinner in South Lake Tahoe

Last night we went up to South Lake Tahoe to go out to dinner with friends Dustin and Jenn with there kids Lucas and newborn Conner and Dustin's parents Rudy and Diane. They were in Tahoe going to a wedding that was outside and the temperature was about 30 degree's burr. Lucas was in the wedding so by the time we went to dinner at seven he was tiered. They were staying at the Horizon so we decided to walk next door to the Hard Rock for dinner. It was good hanging out, we usually don't see them very often but we happen to just see them a few weeks ago when Nate was in town. Lucas is a really smart kid and he's only 3. After a good dinner the kids were getting cranky, so they head off to bed early after a busy day.

Snow on Oct 10th

What a difference a few day makes. Tuesday it was 80 degrees and by Friday the high was in the 30's and it was snowing off and on all day. There wasn't a ton of moisture in the system so we didn't get a lot of snow but it's cold. Saturday is turning out to be cold and cloudy, hopefully this is a sign that a good winter is on the way.

Porters Indoor Soccer in Incline

Today was Porters first Indoor Soccer game in Incline Village at the rec center. Most of us haven't played soccer in a long time, for me it's been about 12 years. I started out as the goal keeper and I did alright. The other team was really good, they were setting up picture perfect plays and I would have three people coming at me. I only let 5 goals go by in the first half but girls count for two so the score at half was 8 - 5 by the way Finn scored all 5 goals for Porters he's are David Beckham. In the second half Kevin played the goal and I played forward, I was getting worked and we were so tired I forgot how much of a workout soccer was. I felt bad for our Girls Jo and Casey they had no subs so they never got a break, they were beat, there were seven guys so we had plenty of subs and we were still tired. Not sure of the exact final score but I think it was 21 - 10 Kevin did great in goal but they had so many shoots on goal there bound to go in, and there girls were really good, so they had a lot of 2 point goals. I ended up scoring a goal in the last minute as did Nicky B in the last half but besides that Finn dominated Porters offense. Lets hope we have a better game next week.

Last Softball Game of 2008 :-(

Danielle's Wednesday night softball team came in first in their division. This week was the beginning of the playoff brackets. The leagues in Sparks don't do playoffs, so initially the team thought it would be a welcomed change. After looking at the bracket, they realized that they had to play the second place team from the division above them. How does the first place team get to face a second place team from a whole division up? Seems pretty crappy... Well, the Wolf Pack team thought they would make the best of a bad match up and try to win the game. Danielle went 2-3, hitting a couple of good shots into right center field. Hitting wasn't the real deficiency here. Unfortunately, the team had a handful of fielding errors each inning that cost them runs. Error after error left the scoreboard lopsided and that was the end of the season. Danielle played left center; however could have been more useful at first this game. Well, softball has come to a close for the 2008 season. Now we are just waiting for the snow to fly...

Brads in town

Today our buddy Brad came up from the Bay to just chill out for the weekend. I worked for a few hours this morning and then he picked me up at about 11. We head to Kings Beach and had lunch with Danielle at Sancho's, the food wasn't bad. After lunch we head to Porters Truckee store so Brad could do a little shopping. After a few hours there Brad walked out with a new K2 Turbo Dream, Burton CO2 and some pants, I wasn't expecting him to get all decked out with new gear, he is going to be happy with that board, I have one on order for myself. After shopping we came back to the house to chill before we went out to dinner at Sushi Moto, which was really tasty. As we were heading home from dinner we decided to stop at the Grand Sierra and race at the Go Cart track, as usual Danielle was talking crap about how she was going to kick our buts Ha. I started out in front and never lost my lead, better luck next time, I have to gloat she always wins.

Snow is coming

It looks like we are going to get some snow over the weekend. There is a cold front dropping down from Alaska bringing high winds and cold temps. It is going to mainly rain at the lake and below with a little snow Saturday. Any moisture we get will be great it is very dry out there. Lets hope this is a good sign for a great winter.

Barack Obama Rally at UNR

Today I attended the Obama rally at UNR. I went by myself but meet up with Danielle, Kathy and Alica from work. There was a huge crowd it was counted at about 12,000. As you could assume a lot of his speech was about the federal bail out and his views on it plus it triggering the worst day in the US stock market ever. He talked about his plan to keep more jobs in the US, ways to get Americas youth smarter by hiring better teachers and paying them better. Using more natural resources for energy. He was very funny and made a few jokes about college students being broke and having to eat pizza every night, also talked about ways he is going to help students lower there student loans. Overall it was a really good speech and the crowd was fired up. As you can see there were a few protesters but only about 6, they were a little out numbered. All I can say is make sure you vote. We need a change and I think Obama is the best person to do it.

Dad's new dog Boo

My dad looks real manly with his new dog Boo. J/K dad. This is the new dog my dad and the family got. It is actually really cute, and hyper it runs around the house and never seems to poop out. They have it pretty much house trained in 2 Weeks not bad, my dad thinks he is the dog whisper.

Reunion with Old Friends

After a long night out we awoke early to go to breakfast with my dad, Danielle was moving a little slow. We went to this great family ran place by his house in Fremont, it was short visit but good. Then we brought my sister Ginger and meet Danny and John at my grandma Margret's, I try to at least swing by there whenever I am in town, it means so much to her.

After Grandma's we were off to Cluck U Chicken in Santa Clara, well it's not even named that any more but to me it will always be Cluck U. One of or best friends Nate was in town , he set it up with a bunch of us to get together and visit like old times. There was a ton of us there, I will ramble us all off, Daniele and me, my brother and sister John and Ginger, Best friends Danny and Nate with his wife Susan and Daughter Natalie, His brother Dustin with his wife Jenn and there two kids Lucas and Conner, There parents Rudy and Diane, Good friend Brad, Good long lost friend Mahriya and her fiance Andrew, old friends Chris and Sebastian and a last minute drop in of Danielle's parents Dave and Diane. Wow I think I got everyone, If I some how forgot you sorry.

It was great getting to hang out with all the old friends. Nate is busy in his third year of Medical School. Congratulations to Dustin and Jenn for having there second son Conner, Danny is going to San Jose State to finish his Bachelors. Ginger got her license. Mahriya and Andrew are getting married in June. Brad and Justina are also getting married next summer. There was a ton more I talked about but I don't want to write a novel. It was great seeing everyone and hope we can do it more often.

Danielle's 10yr High School Reunion

Over the weekend we went down to San Jose to attend Danielle's 10yr Milpitas High School Reunion. It was at Gordon Biersch in Downtown San Jose. Danielle was a little nervous to see her classmates most of them she hasn't spoke to in 10 years. She had nothing to worry about, she was looking really good. After a few minutes went by the people she was talking to she couldn't remember who they were, that made here run to the wine to calm her nerves. When everyone put name tags on that helped a lot. I was happy to see a good friend Kyle, that I knew through working at Oshman's. He is busy working as a Police Detective in Salinas, CA, Kyle and his girlfriend Yolanda are going to have there first baby, they were extremely happy. In the end I think Danielle had a lot of fun catching up with old friends. After the reunion we went with my brother John to a club Temple were the last drink of the night put Danielle over the edge, we danced for awhile and had a great night,

In Milpitas

As we were leaving Reno we saw the Mystery Machine and had to take a pic. They were parked on the side of Kohls and it was really smokey inside, wonder what they were doing?



When we got to Milpitas we went to lunch at the Happi House with Diane and John. Danielle and here mom went to go get a manicure so me and John went to the Driving range, John is hitting good, me like normal all over the place.