I wore my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch up at Stevens Pass today. It's cool for a couple of reasons. First, you can export your data to Google Earth and get a 3D view of your routes. More interestingly, I got some hard data on speeds. For years, I was thinking that when I was skiing down a reasonable grade in a full tuck, my top speed would be high 20s, low 30s. Nope. I was routinely in the mid 40s, and hit 50mph a couple of times.

Good thing my new ski helmet showed up in the mail today. I'll be wearing it going forward.

This was at the start of one of those runs. I'm going to need new goggles, though. The strap isn't long enough to go around the helmet.

That's really cool.

I was planning on doing a lot more skiing this winter, but then I bought my new bike instead, which put a pretty serious crimp in the funds. I'll probably get away for a week or so around Easter, but that'll probably be it for the season.

Where do you ski? One of those carpeted hills, or do you have real snow?

This guy's got me beat by 10mph/16kph-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXFOfS4LO80[/youtube]

Real snow. I live in Norway, and have family-in-law over in Sweden, so getting into the hills isn't a problem - there are quite a few really good ski centres within a few hours of where I live, and hundreds of miles of cross-country trails (all illuminated at night, which is handy for after-work training) within a few minutes' train/tram journey from my house. In summer they make for an amazing network of mountain bike trails, too.

I actually only started skiing three years ago, after moving here - I need a new pair of slalom boots and cross-country skis, though, and lift passes are extortionate, hence the ski-lite season. Well worth it to have the Santa Cruz, though.

As an outdoors-y person, I can't think of many places I'd rather live, to be honest.

Must have taken quite a while to set up all those dominoes for that first photo!

This is NOT me:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V2NGuVq5-0[/youtube]