Hi Gary! Well, thanks for the well wishes, wishing you and everyone else up here a fanblatastic season yourself! Looking forward to hearing how the 82s go for you. I've missed your wildy humorous writings! Nice to see that some things never change!
Me in computer hybernation? LOL, I wish! I'm on that damn thing pretty much daily. As for our season, over here nothing really gets going until mid November, and that depends on the season, usually not till mid December, though the BC folk are out by mid November at a coupla places. Right now there's not enough snow to ski on anywhere, it's only been the last week or two that anything's fallen.
As for me, I can't really think about that stuff until the weather starts FEELING like winter. I lurk on the snowjapan.com forums, occasionaly drop into the PMTS forum and, now that it's cooling down, I'll pop in here when I can, but that's about it. I don't know when I'll test out my refurbished boots yet, but that's all right - I'll definitely get out there and am looking forward to finally being balanced properly in them (to remind y'all they worked on them to accomdate my larger calves). Might still need a bit of work, but they're going to be light years away from what I'd been dealing with! And yes, the booster straps are now on there too. Even without the canting I'm sure I'd be skiing better with the boots that will no longer push me forward or pull me back. Now all that is going to be pilot error only, there's no more excuses for me! Now I'll finally get a chance to ski those Legend 4800s balanced. I like those skis at any rate.
The next acquisition will be a fatter powder ski - Hakuba gets deep snow, and it's usually a little on the wet side, well, compared to Hokkaido, so it's heavier. I'll never forget trying to wade thru thigh deep snow. That's frequent up there. I'm not sure if I can justify it this season (many other things I need to spend money on), but we'll see..... I may have some work up there this season, I'm not expecting mega pay, but it should at least cover my skiing and travel expenses and hopefully a bit more so that I can justify staying up there a little longer, instead of staying in town to work.
I'm going to see if they have cat tracks here, if not I'll get some from Harold sent over. But even still, I know I'm not going to get around to doing that until early december at the earliest!!! I'll send the skis to be tuned around the same time I think.
I'll know in a few days if I'm getting sent to Vegas performing for some electronics convention in early Jan. I don't think I'll get it, but hey you never know, in which case I'll be in that neck of the woods and depending on timing might be able to slip off somewhere for a turn or two.
I've also been painting a lot this year and getting quite serious about it, even though I'm still in the early stages. Even started a painting blog. I love it and it's part of my longterm plan for eventually not having to live full time in a nasty dirty big city for work...... but that's starting to get quite off topic....
Well I will definitely let you know where I wind up skiing, and of course, the very least I can do is let you know how the boots go - thanks to all the help you and the others have given me over my boot saga the past few years!
So yeh, happy skiing to you! When's your first venture out going to be?
Julianne