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I first have to apologize for the extreme amount of time between posts especially since I stopped right in the middle of a series. I’ve admitted to several people that most of the trip has run together. But I’ll give it a shot here…

It was the final day of our ski trip and to be honest, I was getting a little burned out. As great as the skiing was, my body was getting weary. Louie was extra juiced about all the fresh powder Apex had seen overnight and couldn’t wait to get out to the mountain.

As with the other resorts, you have to take mountain roads to get there. They’re narrow, winding, and usually made of dirt. With the snow overnight, the mountain road was making me nervous. The final nail in the coffin was when we came to a stuck vehicle being towed. We pulled over and chained up the tires right away. Luckily, we only had a few miles left to go and things went smooth the whole way.

It didn’t take Louie long to get suited up and ready to go. I was having some toe/foot/sock/boot issues, so I just told him I’d meet up with him later. I knew I wasn’t going to ski hard that last day anyway. It was as if my equipment had known all along because it was almost an hour before I did make it out on the mountain.

I did meet up with Louie temporarily, but I think we only managed a single run before getting split up again. I came up with a project for the afternoon. Yes, a project on vacation. I decided I’d take some POV videos of me skiing down.

At first I tried to come up with a way to mount the camera to my person. That basically meant positioning the camera so the lens stuck out of one of my pockets. As it turned out, all of the pockets on my jacket were too roomy to get that to work. I had a brief thought about putting it on my boots or skis, but quickly realized that would most likely result in a broken camera. Instead, I opted to hand hold the camera. As you can see, they didn’t turn out too bad. I could’ve probably spent some time editing and cleaned it up more than I did.

There is a funny story about my attempt to be an indie film producer though. Getting used to skiing and shooting isn’t as easy as it sounds. First of all, I didn’t have anywhere to put my poles. Louie was off skiing elsewhere and I didn’t want them to get stolen or taken by mistake. That meant holding them behind my back or off to the side so they weren’t in the shot.

You also have to concentrate on the where you’re pointing the camera. The first time all you could see was the snow and it kept moving around. The next it was a better shot, but there was still too much motion. After a couple more runs, however, I was familiar with the run and how to handle the camera. It was time to make my masterpiece.

I flew down the first half of the hill, made some wide sweeping turns with the camera low to the ground, and then all of a sudden I caught an edge. Clothing flew. The camera included. I snatched it out of the snow bank as soon as I could and wiped it off. The lens covers would not close for a very long time, but after some breathing on it, I was able to clear the lens off (hopefully without any srcatches). The best part was, the camera was running the whole time. Here’s a clip.

It had been three or four years since the last time I had spent a day skiing, let alone on a mountain. Needless to say, getting up that second day was literally a pain in the ass. Nothing a little ibuprofen couldn’t solve.

This time we got an earlier start to our day and got out to Silver Star about an hour or so after it opened. The resort was set up sort of like a little town. There were restaurants, hotels, condos, shops, and gift stores. In a word: touristy. But we weren’t there for the shopping.

Again, Louie and I decided to try and start from the top of the mountain. Once again the day began with a black diamond and then a double black diamond. If you’ve had a chance to see my Flickr set, this is the double black diamond I am talking about. Frankly, it was too much for my already worn body. I was exhausted by the time I was only a third of the way down. From then on, I pretty much resigned myself to staying on the blue squares the rest of the day. It was the only way to not tire myself out for the rest of the trip.

At Sun Peaks, Louie and I mostly stayed together, but on the second day, I could tell I was only holding him back, so we split up quite a bit. It had been a long time since I’d done any skiing by myself and it was kind of nice to just take my time. Bringing my iPod with me turned out to be quite a good idea that day. I found that blasting some death metal while flying down the slopes at 50 mph makes the experience that much better.

At the end of the day, Louie met me at the truck and we headed for Penticton. I still don’t think I can say that without screwing up somewhere. It took quite awhile for us to find the motel we had picked out, but as it turned out, it was in a good location. We decided to find a pizza shop for dinner and as it turned out, there was a “Pizzaway” right across the street in a little strip mall. The place was just a small pizza shop with a few counters and tables to sit at, but they had a great menu. There was only one pizza, it cost $14, was large sized, and you got as many toppings as you want. As the man behind the counter put it, “We ain’t no Dominos.” He was quite the character. After doing some quick looking around the mall, our pizzas were ready and we headed back to the room. It really hit the spot after all the activity during the day. After a quick jump in the jacuzzi and a little Internet surfing, I zonked out. Louie stayed up and waxed our skis. What a nice guy.

The previous day was a filled with travel for both Louie and I. We both ended up sleeping in a little. We also both wanted to stop and get some breakfast. I’ve heard decent things about Tim Horton’s, and there happened to be one close, so we checked it out. It turned out they only have 2 breakfast sandwiches bacon or sausage. I went for the sausage, but Louie got all amped up about the bacon, but was let down when he found out it was really what we Americans call Canadian bacon.

With our stomachs pleased, we got on the road. After driving for a little over half an hour towards some mountains we realized we hadn’t seen any signs for the places we were going. Louie pulled into a gas station to find out where we were and came to find out we had missed a turn back near Kamloops and had driven 50 kilometers in the wrong direction.

Now headed in the correct direction, we made our way past the outskirts of Kamloops and on to Sun Peaks resort. The whole time we were driving, there wasn’t much snow on the ground. We were both relieved to see several vehicles headed the other way with snow on them. Soon enough, the snowbanks began to get deeper as the road got windier and more steep. We pulled into the parking lot late in the morning, but ready for some action.

After getting our free lift tickets (thank you Warren Miller), we headed for the lifts and straight to the top. Louie conned me into checking out a double black diamond and against my mind’s better judgment, I hurled myself down without too much trouble. After that, everything seemed to fall back into place. The skis I had rented, were a little slower than what I was used to with my racing skis, but it still felt great to be gliding down the mountain.

I’m not too sure when it started, but all of a sudden some clouds started rolling in further up the mountain and pretty soon it was snowing. By the time we got back up towards the top, it was zero visibility and it was snowing like crazy. We couldn’t have asked for better on our first day out. It snowed the remainder of the day and we got some awesome fresh powder skiing in.

After a bite to eat on the way out of town, we made our way towards Kelowna. Oh, but not before a quick stop at the dollar store and EB Games next to the restaurant. Though I didn’t buy it, the greatest find was some “2 Fast 2 Furious Shampoo.” Yea, because when I think 2 Fast 2 Furious, I think great hair.

The motel we found in Kelowna had wifi which made us geeks happy. Though, by the looks out their outlet situation, they didn’t plan on 2 geeks staying in the room. Still, being able to go through the day’s pictures and video was nice. As a departure from our original plans, we decided to get up earlier the next day and do Silver Star all day instead of trying to make it to Big White later in the day. That turned out to be a great decision.

Over the weekend, I attended the annual Renaissance Festival with my family. Pictures have been uploaded to Flickr. I was reminded of one thing; My family can’t be together for more than 10 minutes without fighting about something. This past weekend, we all got together to celebrate my birthday and of course, words were flying.

These are just some of the observations I made on Saturday. I can’t stand the music that any of my family listens to (most notably, Nickelback) and they can’t see why. My mother is the most cautious person on the planet which causes her to be the worst back-seat driver ever. I wasn’t even driving and she was making me go nuts. She can also dish out as much criticism as she wants, but you can’t criticize her. My dad really is a fun guy to hang out with when his nagging wife isn’t around (sorry Mom, but it’s true). Hannah’s crocodile-like teenage angst is still alive and kicking. Any quick movements will set her off. Brenna will expect you to go along with any activity she plans, and will get angry when you don’t go along with the plans, but would rather spend time with her boyfriend than do any activity anyone else plans.

They’re family, so I have to love them, but it’s probably good that we don’t spend more time together.

I finally found some time to go at my photos from Warped Tour last week. I only photographed 2 bands as Rick got the only media braclet slapped on his wrist and he didn’t bring a camera. The ones I did take turned out OK.

On Friday, I was surfing around some band’s Myspace pages and I noticed a show happening in Buffalo, MN. In case you are unfamiliar with Minnesota, let me tell you Buffalo isn’t a hotbed of musical activity. Rarely do artists ever visit any place other than the Twin Cities. I was floored to find a show happening in Buffalo.

There was a simple explanation for this freak occurrence, however. Sonshine, a 3 day Christian music festival, was taking place not too far down the road and almost all the bands had played on Friday or Saturday night there. It was probably a no-brainer for them to only drive an hour or two to get to their next gig. Besides that, this was the first ever show at The Vault. I’m sure they wanted to kick things off with a big show and this was their golden opportunity.

Anyway, there were a few bands I’ve wanted to see for awhile (Means, Nodes of Ranvier, and War of Ages namely) and it was only $15 to get in. I couldn’t pass it up.

I showed up about an hour late and to my surprise no one had even played yet. In fact, it was another 45 minutes before Of Sound and Fury took the stage. After I was there for a short while, I found out about the grand opening part. Let’s just say I could’ve shown up a little later. Of Sound and Fury wasn’t that great and it was a full hour before Death Sentence played their first note. Most of the wait was due to the one and only sound man becoming the one and only lights man. And my lights man, I mean unboxing some utility lamps and running some extension cords from the back of the place. The track lights they had at the front of the homemade stage weren’t too impressive either.

I’d never heard of Death Sentence, however, most of the crowd had and the hardcore dancing was in full force. They played 5-6 songs and were out. After Death Sentence, the set changes got a little quicker, but in between bands I still had time to get my bearings in the surrounding area. As I stepped outside, I noticed 2 cops talking to someone who seemed to be in charge. I figured they had a noise complaint already, but it wasn’t the case. Actually, there was some sort of no loitering law in Buffalo which was being violated by concert-goers standing outside. Lame, I know, but the simple solution was to have us just walk around if we were outside.

No Wings to Speak Of were up next. Before they even started playing, I noticed a familiar face. The vocalist was once a member of Foreknown, a band out of Duluth that I’d seen probably 4-5 times up on the Iron Range. I really like Foreknown, so I was hoping this new band would have a similar sound. Not quite. Still, they were tolerable and were into it enough to make for a good set.

I have to admit, at this point my memory of who played next gets a little fuzzy. There were 14 bands in total at this show and I may have mixed up the order a little after this. I’ll say that Children 18:3, a recent singing of Tooth and Nail Records, was next. If I was to judge them on looks alone, I would’ve walked out without hearing them play a single thing. The lead singer/guitarist had black eye makeup on. I’m talking way more than just guyliner. He was trying to imitate a raccoon or something. The bassist chick looked like something straight out of an 80’s hair metal band. I can’t say anything about the drummer other than he was with these 2 clowns (literally) on stage. While their music wasn’t to my liking, a more punk oriented White Stripes you might say, their musicianship was impeccable. The drummer was what first caught my eye. He was twirling his sticks between eat hit and not missing a beat. Their guitar player could just shred and the bassist girl wasn’t half bad either. Even though I didn’t like their music, I could’ve watched the drummer play all day long.

At that point I had to pee and I was getting really hungry, but there was no way I was going to risk missing any of Means. I’ve taken quite a liking to their debut and they were probably the band I wanted to see the most out of the whole lineup. My only gripe about their set was its length. It could’ve been twice as long. They were every bit as good in person as I’d hoped. After their set, I made my way to the merch area (which you had to go around to the side of the building and up a narrow ass flight of stairs to get to). As it turned out, they were at the end of their tour and out of all shirts in my size. I was told they’d be back in the fall with It Prevails and Across Five Aprils; a must see show.

A local band, Venia, was up next. I’d heard good things, so I checked em out. They were pretty standard hardcore/metalcore, and I probably could’ve skipped them without disappointment. In fact I took off as they were finishing their last song to find a bathroom and some food. I found a Subway which also had a bathroom (obviously). I returned to The Vault to find xLookingForwardx on stage. Another straight edge, hardcore band that I could’ve skipped.

After another extended set change, For Today began their set. They played through their set and also played the only encore of the day. I’m kicking myself for not buying their 3-song demo because they were really good. Both of their guitar players were absolutely crushing. Ironically, it was one of those guys who gave the longest “I love Jesus” speech of the day. I politely kept my mouth shut when he exclaimed how he, only a year earlier, “hated God,” but then “felt the warmth of Christianity in his heart.” The sub I ate earlier was clawing it’s way out in protest, but I kept it quiet.

At this point in the day, I was pretty exhausted having head-banged my way through 8 bands already. I took a seat at the side of the stage and watched Call to Preserve and Seventh Star do their thing. They had these not-so-comfortable bench seats on one side of the wall, but it was better than sitting on the floor.

Feeling somewhat rejuvenated, I was ready to go all in for War of Ages. They did not disappoint. They opened with my favorite song on their newest album, “Strength Within.” They continued ripping through another 3 songs before their vocalist had his little “Jesus talk.” I had all but closed my ears when he started to talk about how his father was the leader of a white supremacy gang and a drug dealer. I thought to myself, “OK, this guy has my respect now.” I more than showed it through the rest of their set giving them as much energy as I could muster.

Burden of a Day and Nodes of Ranvier were still set to play and by that time it was not quite 10PM. I sat there debating on whether or not I should stick around and ultimately, I decided if I was going to make it in to work the next day that I should leave. It killed me to miss Nodes of Ranvier but, but I valued my rest more. Besides, I had seen enough bands for my $15 and Nodes would surely be back another time.

I, of course, brought my camera with me and managed to get some sweet shots of Means and War of Ages in addition to a few of No Wings to Speak Of and Death Sentence.