Wow.. what a place

At dinner tonight, 3 of us came up with the same opinion of this place at the same time. Portillo is like a cruise ship. You are in the middle of the Andes mountains, with Argentina literally feet away. You have an assigned seating time and an assigned table. Your waiters know you all be name (although mine is apparently trying to hunt me down to sign my dinner receipt).

The skiing is pretty amazing. It isn't Lake Louise in terms of the amount of skiable acreage, but it does have lots of places that you can traverse to and hike if you wish. It is spring here in Chile and I just had on of those amazing ski days. We ran 4 ski races this morning and finished by 1:30pm. That was about perfect considering it was -17C at 9am and once the sun cleared the mountain it was well above 0c about 10:30am.

This was a FIS race (pre world cup), but we had racers from the World Cup. I got to listen to the like of Robby Dixon, John Kucera, Frank Borque, Manny and others rib each other about who was going to beat who. Even the forerunners were World Cup ranked.

I then spent the afternoon at Tio Bob's (again). A bunch of us just sat around and watched the sun move to the west. What a place for an office.

Tomorrow I hope to get out in the morning for 1 final day of spring skiing. We leave for Santiago at 1pm, with a flight at 7pm. I arrive back in Toronto early Sunday morning.

Sometimes you just have to admire the view

It isn't often that you get to have a quiet day at a FIS ski race. Today, was one of those days.

After sorting out our final wiring issues this morning, we had a wonderful lunch in the hotel.

The afternoon stated by meeting Randy (the TD) at the lift. He wanted a few pictures for a business card he had in mind. 2 Lifts later (including the weirdest and fast 4 person poma lift you will ever try), we were standing in untracked powder. It snowed 5 days ago and we are still making first tracks. We are above 10,000 ft, there isn't a cloud in the sky and there is no wind.

Randy was even kind enough to capture some pictures of me skiing. Yes, it does happen.... with poles even.

Next, we had to detour to Tio Bobs for a beverage at 10,338 feet. For about an hour, we just enjoyed the view and watched those that climbed much higher than us who are still skiing untracked powder.

You will notice that my good friend James was here just about a month ago.

Day 2 here in Chile

It is a good thing that we get here days ahead of the race. After all, how difficult can it be to hook up 6 wires and start a race. The hill management (all great people) tell us the wiring is fine.

As Dick and I start working on the configuration, we find the wiring is ok, but has issues that most people would not notice. The morning is spent visually inspecting the splices in the cables which show up as sore thumbs with the Megger test equipment that is on loan from Precision Timing in Canada (thanks Ted).

The course area does get hit with avalanches from time to time. We have to dig in 2 places to check the splices, as there is 'cross talk' between the cables. This requires moving meters of snow. The first one is down 2 meters and in 1 meter.

Still chasing a problem, the 2nd looks to be at the finish area. We dig down over 2 meters, move some rocks that have been put there by an avalanche and then open the cover to the wiring vault.

Have a look at the gallery for today.

You can see the view of the actual course, and another shot of the road. This is the only road into Argentina. The trucks line up for days to get over the mountains, and this is just the start of it.

The weather for today looks great again.

What happened to the Big Dipper

I have arrived in Portillo Chile to assist with the timing at an Alpine Canada FIS race. Last night, after 20 hours or travel, I walked out of the hotel (at 9350ft or 2850 m ASL), looked at the clear sky and couldn't find the Big Dipper. Doh... Oh, that is the Southern Cross.

Then, this morning, after waking up at 5am, and walking from the Octagon over here to the main lodge (where the Internet is somewhat better), I noticed the moon was in the North. Doh, again, I am at 33 degrees South Latitude.

Yesterday (make that Sunday), I left the cottage where the weather was amazing (for the first time all summer), drove home and packed. It was sunny and +25C in Toronto. I was on the midnight flight out of Toronto to Santiago Chile. 10 hours in the back. Good thing the guy beside me decided to bolt for another seat, as that got me 2 seats to myself.

Arriving in Santiago, where it was (spring) and about +13C and drizzling was a shock. I met up with Garry from Alpine Canada, Dick (part of our World Cup timing team), Richard (a GPS guru that is GPS mapping the runs the Canadian athletes take, and Randy who will be the TD for the event.

We find out that it has snowed for the last 3 days up here and that the roads are closed. The road is also the only truck road to Argentina (remember that when you look at the pictures). When the road is closed, the trucks line up for miles in the valley waiting for the road to open.

Our driver tells us that we might not get up for days (I also find out later that they were looking into a Helicopter to get us up to the resort-I am clearly travelling with the right bunch). So, he tours as around Santiago (6 million people) and then drops us at a small 'mall' where we see many of the same stores that you find in Canada. I'm surprised to see a Brooks Brothers, Starbucks (no surprise there), North Face, TGI Fridays, and more.

Lunch is at a local restaurant (check out the one menu item). I passed on that choice. It also starts with a Piisco Sour (sp?). Something like a Margarita. Wow, that hit me like a ton of bricks. We also toured around and a long stop at a Chilean Wine store.

We meet up again with our driver at 3pm (he stayed with the vehicle to keep an eye on things). We find out that the road should open at 5pm and that we need to be at the road block by then.

The road is the main truck road into Argentina. 2 lanes (sometimes). The drive reminds me of parts of Texas with Cactus all over the place. We start to see large truck lines, all of them pulled over waiting for the road to open.

Right on time, we arrive at the roadblock. The Chilien Police are there is apparently this is also the last check if you are driving into Argentina. He drives right up to the front, gets out, talks to the Police and tells us we have to wait for 10 to 15 minutes. 2 minutes later, we get the go ahead and are the first to bug out up the mountain. Pretty damn cool. You don't want to be behind all those trucks.

28 switch backs later (I think). I took 2 pictures. 1 looking up and 1 looking down. You get the idea. If you are thinking of cycling this down, you will need more than 1 set of brakes. We are now at the top of the world.

Paul Kristophic (PK), meets us at the door. Rooms are handed out. Dinner is at 8:30 (they do eat late around here). I'm asleep by 10pm (sometimes waking with a start as the air is a little thin). Tuesday, at 5am I decide to walk over to the main lodge and hog some Internet so that I can upload some pics and write this blog.

Some cool links:

Some of my pictures have GPS data inbedded in them. You can click here and see some of the pics from this trip in Google Earth. (Dad, it works for you too....).

The entire gallery is here.

Today, we get the lay of the land with towering peaks above us.

The last week - and the Beer Store

For the last week, Carolyn and I have been up at the cottage enjoying the 'weather'.

It hasn't been really hot, but that isn't too big a deal as it means that sleeping at night is much easier.

On Tuesday, we got slammed with a storm that took out the power for 28 hours. That required me to hump it back to the city to pick up the generator. The internet came back up on Thursday for a few hours, then died again. Looks like a tree fell on the internet cable 2 days after the storm. We got that fixed on Friday by noon. Not a big deal, but when you have over 10 guests, most with a laptop, they all want online.

Today, we wanted to take back a ton of empties to the Beer Store (yes, in Canada, you have to go to The Beer Store). Since we were both up early, we needed to know what time it opened in mega city of Bobcaygeon.

Carolyn was going to call, but I stopped her claiming the information was on The Net! A quick search of TheBeerStore.CA web site shows that you can search by name. Cool... Just enter Bobcaygeon and away you go.

Here are the results... It is right up there near Hornepayne. About a 30 hour drive away. Last time I checked, there was only one Bobcaygeon in the province of Ontario.

Well, at least they had it in the right province. I wonder if they have a drinking and driving problem here? 30 hours each way for a case of beer. Wow!

Then, last night produced a great lightning show. One of those thunderstorms that you only get once or twice a year.

All I had to do was commute to the end of the dock, set up the camera, and watch the show while the sun set.

Hobie boat racing

This week, I have been invited to be the photographer at the Hobie 16 North American Championships here in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Today is Saturday and we had a pretty windy day. The gallery can be found at here.

Near the end of the day, I had an unscheduled swim in Lake Ontario. My friend Sue K. from Syracuse was having some issues righting her Hobie 16 after flipping (pitch poling actually) her boat.

The end result was that I ended up being the one photographed. Jeff, the other profession photographer on the boat kindly provided me with some of the photos he captured of me.

The organizing committee kindly got me a room at one of the local universities. Now, the room is a dorm room and pretty plain. BUT, the Internet ROCKS. For those of you who know what those numbers mean, have a look at this:

That is about 50 times faster than you can get anywhere in Canada. Depending on when I run this test, I have seen download speeds up to 45 mb/sec. Normal high speed internet download speeds for Rogers Cable is about 1 mb/sec.

I imagine that number goes way down when the dorm is full of students.

Pretty cool!!

Canada Day Fire Works 2009

If you get the chance to be in the Kawarthas for Canada Day, you need to make sure you watch these fireworks. These were taken from the boat while moored in Bobcaygeon.

The gallery is this link.

Or, it is best as a slide show.