Andrew Underwood

MS Bike Tour

So I’m involved in another fundraising escapade, this time involving riding a bike ride from Leduc to Camrose. At least this time I don’t have to grow a mustache. It’s the MS Society of Canada’s bike tour and it’s to raise money for people who have MS who need help financially and funding for research. Personally I hope more money is invested in the research end of things as I feel the long term solution of a cure is the most important thing. But hey, I’m sure they have struck a good balance, although I’m not sure what it is. It’s a two day thing so you ride, then camp over night, and then you ride back.

Anyhoo, I NEED to raise $250 in order to participate. If I don’t raise it I think you get dragged out of your tent at night and curb stomped and then made to promise not to tell anyone ever. They tell you if anyone asks to just say that you just fell.

So PLEASE for the love of anything decent in this world, go here and donate to my cause. Even if it’s just $5, it’s getting me that much farther away from the curb stomping I hope to avoid.

Racing in the rain brings out the wow, soggy bottoms

The Practice, Then the Race

Well a month has gone by since I was in the Birkie and I said that I would talk about it a bit more. First I’ll backtrack to three days before the race when I went out to the the race area for a 30 km practice ski. The starting location for the race isn’t a usual skiing area. It starts on a lake and then the trail goes into Elk Island National Park. The trail wasn’t groomed yet so I had to find where it started coming off the lake via guess and test. I found the trail head and almost immediately I hit the fence that encapsulates the park. It’s the 8 foot high page fence type to keep the elk in. The gate was closed and I was considering taking off my skis and climbing it.

Right then two park rangers came along the inside perimeter on double track skidoos. They stopped on the other side of the gate I was standing at and came to talk to me. I asked if this was the Birkie trail and they confirmed. Then I asked if I was allowed to come in, to which they replied “Sure, here, we’ll open the gate for you but you’ll have to climb the fence to get out.” That was fine with me so they let me through and stayed there to shovel away some snow around the gate. As I was leaving them one ranger shouted up to me “Oh yeah, you might encounter some Wood Bison on the trail!”

Sure enough, about 1 km up the trail there was a handful of Bison standing right on the trail. At this point the trail was straight and followed the fence. I had never had to deal with Bison before and wasn’t too sure about ‘Bison etiquette’ if you will. The only time I’ve seen Bison before was from the safety of a vehicle. I knew the rangers were going to keep going after they finished digging out the gate so I just waited for them to catch up. I didn’t want to climb the fence to get around them and I also didn’t want to go around them on the inside because the snow was deep and I didn’t want to put them in a position where they would be between the fence and myself. Two minutes later the rangers came up from behind and went straight towards the Bison, at which point they just moseyed off the trail. They only moved enough to get out of the way of the snowmobiles, however. The rangers kept going.

I continued with caution, skiing on the trail that went along side the fence to my left and the bison only a few meters to my right. Luckily the Bison took no notice of me and I continued on not encountering any more as I skied up to the 15 km mark. I had to climb the fence to get out of the park and onto the rest of the trail system. Thus on my way back I had to climb it again to get back in.
It was starting to get dark on my way back and the temperature was going down to -25 C. I was pretty cold and tired and just wanted to get back to my vehicle. When I was about 5 km away from completing my ski I came to a turn in the trail and there were more Bison in my way. Except this time there were no park rangers to clear the way for me. This time I had to climb the fence to go around them.

This was especially uncomfortable since I was already cold and didn’t want to slow down, let alone trudge through the deep snow. Still I’d rather do that than be charged and squished through the page fence coming out in cubes on the other side. I knew I was almost back so I took some time to take my camera out and take a couple pictures of them, even though the light was bad and the the bison were obscured by the fence and some trees.

After climbing the fence twice to get around them I had to climb the fence one more time to get out of the park. A total of 5 fence climbs!

So, now on to the actual race day. My Dad was also entering in the special wooden ski category so we both stayed at my uncle’s in Sherwood Park which was closer to the race than Edmonton. The race it’self was what I expected for the most part. I seeded myself to finish in 6 hours among the mass of other skiers. The mass start was quite exhilerating, here’s a couple of pics from that moment I managed to snap with my phone right before the cannon went off. Yes they used a cannon.

I finished in 5:50, which was about what I was aiming for.  There were food and drink stations every 7 km or so and perhaps I did spend a bit too much time at a couple of them than I should have.  It’s hard to resist spending some time a feed station when you’re being offered a cup of noodles by a cute and chatty volunteer.  Next year I’ll be more hardcore and perhaps race to be competitive.

At the finish line I seem to have gotten frostbite on one of my fingernails and it’s in the process of falling off right now :(.  Also my shoulder was killing my the next day but it was fine the following day.

Build up stupid

Upon seeing huge snowflakes falling past our apartment windows last night, Kyla, Allan and I went outside. We made our way to Churchill Square and decided to start rolling snowballs. These snowballs turned out to be more cylindrical shaped than anything else. The cool thing was, since the grounds are covered in smooth cement it made rolling them really easy and they gained mass and volume very quickly.

What else could we do with our cylinders besides build a snowman. We had to cut two of the cylinders into sections to lift them up to the next level. I had to stand on a garbage can to put the head on.

In the end it was over 10 feet high and covered with all sorts of designs and mathematical equations. Despite me carving a huge PLO into the front, it was gone when I walked past there today on my way to class. The whole grounds had been bobcated I suppose. At least there are pictures, and this video.

Riding the Wave down a big hill

I really should have thought ahead and bought new wheels for my wave board before I came down to the Crowsnest Pass. Heading to the mountains, it was sure to get lots of use. Unfortunately my wheels were already pretty worn and starting to split. I decided to tackle the big hill on Allison Road anyways and have my Dad film me while my sister drove. On the way out I warned them that my wheel probably would break, and a probably would fall, and I probably would be OK. All of this actually did happen, and here is the proof, edited into a short movie. So here you go, seafood is served:

Street Surfing The Wave

Last weekend I went down to Calgary to visit my friends Top and Jared. Top had this really cool board that was sorta like a skateboard but only had two wheels. There are 360 degree rotating wheels on each end with a torsion bar in the middle. The interesting thing about it was that you could just wiggle to propel it so you never had to put your feet on the ground. I tried it and it was loads of fun so I had to get one. You can check out their website for a cheesy video. Also, I have another another vid and more weekend pics, and more street surfing videos. I’ve riden it so much over the last three days that I’ve already worn down the wheels quite a bit. I think it may be due to my very agressive carving on the really steep parts of the city. Places like the hill going down to the high level bridge, or the hill on Saskatchewan Drive that connects to 99th st on the south side of the river.

sorta like a skateboard but only had two wheels. There are 360 degree rotating wheels on each end with a torsion bar in the middle. The interesting thing about it was that you could just wiggle to propel it so you never had to put your feet on the ground. I tried it and it was loads of fun so I had to get one. You can check out their website for a cheesy video. Also, I have another another vid and more weekend pics, and more street surfing videos. I’ve riden it so much over the last three days that I’ve already worn down the wheels quite a bit. I think it may be due to my very agressive carving on the really steep parts of the city. Places like the hill going down to the high level bridge, or the hill on Saskatchewan Drive that connects to 99th st on the south side of the river.

Here’s a video of Top riding it:

And a couple of me riding it:

Upgrade

I just upgraded my blogging software Wordpress to the latest version.  I hadn’t upgraded through the last few releases since I couldn’t be bothered.  The new version has cool features like category modification on the fly.  It was really easy to upgrade, the hardest part was copying over the new files… but that more tedious than hard… and all that involves is a single click and drag.

In other news Peter and I ran the stairs on the river valley for an hour yesterday.  These are the stairs you can see from the LRT bridge, on the west side of the high level, north side of the river.  There were a few others doing the same thing, including this one guy with huge thighs.  He looked really weird, like it was the only exercise he ever did.

Disposition

I was just out running down into the river valley. It’s dark but not really cold so it was nice. On my way back I tripped over an election sign wire that had been left in. They had taken the sign off but left the big shin high hoop firmly planted in the ground. Being night time I didn’t see it, they should really take care to clean up their election pollution better!

Celica Burnout

I found this video on google videos that is labeled “Burn out”. It’s a new Celica, the thing is that when he does it the wheels don’t seem to spin. He sure gets alot of smoke though and I’m guessing the poor guy think’s he’s awesome but really he’s just totally frying his clutch.

In the spirit of keeping blogs up to date, here’s this hour’s update

I’m entering this year’s Birkebeiner, a 55k classic cross country ski race. My Dad will be entering again in the new special wooden ski category. I haven’t raced for a few years so, also I’ve never gone that far at once before. I have two pairs of skis up here in Edmonton and am just waiting for the snow to fall.

Mostly I’m seeing this as a race to live, as I must make it to the end alive. Freezing Canadian temperatures, wild moose, and crazed cow bell wielding spectators are all hardships I’ll have to face to keep from expiring before I reach the 55km line. Imagine pressing on through bitter wind as you pass frosted corpses of your fellow racers. Then realizing their frozen, stone like faces probably don’t look too different from your own. Your only sense of dimension comes from the “swoosh, swoosh” sound the front of your ski tips make as you break trail through the white out blizzard. Yes, if I can keep from being one of hundreds to perish along the course every year, I’ll not complain.