Yak & Natter

Unfortunately, one of the party we went snowboarding with last weekend broke his wrist when he landed on it (apparently a frequent novice snowboarder injury)

On Monday evening it looked like:



It now looks like:



More photos

From the Borreguiles I lift

We spent a very pleasant long weekend in Spain, managing 2 happy days snowboarding at the Sierra Nevada. A lack of snow lower down the mountain, but good fun none the less. The Sierra Nevada resort is excellent for beginners and intermediates, but lacks (at least at this time of the year) any really challenging terrain for us.

And whilst on the subject of snowboarding, this is an excellent video clip on how to ride a chair lift.

Jim and Lucy had shown interest in trying snowboarding, and as they own a property in Southern Spain the Sierra Nevada seemed like a good choice.

As beginners this was almost the perfect resort for Jim and Lucy as the Borreguiles area is really well set out with 6 different green runs served by 3 different lifts. We spent a couple of hours getting them started before heading off to see what the resort had to offer us. There wasn’t a lot of challenging terrain available (some areas were closed due to lack of snow or wind) but we had fun none the less.

Favourite run: maribel down to the base

Rod, Jane and Freddie! And some other people…. You too can play spot the “celeb” with the iTunes video.

This evening we wanted some quick, but tasty food, and so decided to give Pompoko, a newly opened Japanese cafe in Church Street, a try. It has a counter service, and the food was delivered really quickly. Richard won on his choice of main course, having the Oyako Don (Soya poached egg with fried chicken) which was really lovely. I opted for the Pork Shouga Yaki Don (Pork marinated with honey, ginger and soya sauce) which was tasty and cooked to perfection, but just not as flavoursome as the Oyako Don. They do a takeaway menu as well, and I can see that this could become a bit of a regular “quick stop” for us.

So, since I last mentioned climbing I’ve progressed well. I finished the course, having a futher 2 sessions, both of which were led by the excellent Ross who taught really well. I’ve continued to attend every week, and so Wednesday evenings will found me in the bouldering area progressing. This evening I had the opportunity to watch a couple of excellent climbers climb elegantly on routes that I’m troubled with. My upper body strength is improving, as is the strength in my fingers but I still have a long way to go to be able to climb with the grace and precision that I’ve seen – still progress is progress and every week I’m managing to achieve more difficult routes.

We went to see Shiny Toy Guns at The Pressure Point this evening. Their track “Don’t Cry Out” was featured on the Follow Me Around snowboard dvd by Mack Dawg Productions and as we loved the sound of them, we trotted off to HMV and bought the album. After a bit more surfing we discovered that they were coming to Brighton as part of their hectic UK and European tour so we headed off, and had an excellent evening, first being rocked by Viva Machine and then being hugely entertained by Shiny Toy Guns. I can’t believe that it has taken me over 5 years living in Brighton to attend a gig at The Pressure Point!

I’m just here to confirm what you already know: the Wii is good. Good enough so that, on a sunny Sunday, with three FA cup games on TV, the family managed to spent 5hr 30min playing games on it. Good enough to cause my father to exclaim “Oh no, I’ve missed the banana“. Mind you, we all said that.

What does it for me is the social gaming combined with the physical elements of the games. But, with my geek hat on, I also have to say it’s one of those landmark things, like the PalmPilot, TiVo, P800, Mac OS X, and probably the iPhone: it’s not that you have to have it; it’s more that you can’t justify not buying it, because of the advance it represents.