Maybe this will come in handy. Via The Goat, via Gizmodo, via Lifehacker. Basically its a solar recharger for your nano for when you are backpacking.

I really don’t know if I would bring my iPod backpacking. It is definately lightweight, but it just doesn’t seem right to let something come between you and the outdoors. However when I am hiking, especially alone, I always get songs in my head, and it would be nice to be able to hike with a sound track. We’ll have to wait and see when the time comes. I am guessing that I bring it next time and see how much it actually gets used.

Well we have been eagerly awaiting with bated breath the arival of Jillians new snowboard, and it arrived today, much to our delight. It is in beautiful condition, without a scratch, and I managed to get the bindings on it without any trouble.  The board is made by Kemper, as you can see.  The boots are Burton and the bindings are Kuu. Here is a picture:

This is fabulous news! Barry Zito signed a seven year $126 million contract with the SF Giants today, and is officially out of reach of the yankees, who are still in need of pitching. Zito, I wish you well accross the bay from Oakland.

When I was younger I used to go to play it again sports, but it has been a while. I wanted to get Jillian boots and bindings, so I called around to the various stores in the area and found out that the one in Cary has tons of ski and snowboard stuff, and the others don’t have much at all. So we went down to Crossroads and stopped in and we got a nice pair of Burton boots that she tried on and fit really nicely, and some bindings that fit the boots like a glove, both used and at a great price.

I am a sucker for that kind of store because I am not all about having the newest and best. I just like something that works well and will last. They have lots of excercise equipment that is in great shape but people traded in because they don’t use it anymore, and they have equipment for all of the major sports like baseball, football, hockey, etc. They also have as much new stuff as used, so if you don’t find something used that you like then you can probably get it new. If you are thinking about going out to Dicks or another sporting goods store, give play it again sports a call first and see if they can hook you up for half the price.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  We had a lovely time with the families, and there was much gift giving, mirth and happiness.  I am pretty excited over Jillians gift of an iPod Nano to me.  Its the red 8GB model and it is super small and sturdy and holds about 48,000 minutes of song.

The latest news is that I got Jillian a snowboard on ebay and it should be here in time for us to go snowboarding next week.  We are going shopping today to take advantage of sales, and we’re gonna see about getting some boots and bindings for her while we’re out.  Y’all have a great post Christmas laze.

Here is a great suggestion for CBS

The snowboarding videos are finally finished processing by Google. Here are the links:

Jillian snowboarding very early in the day, but still doing fantastically

Jillian’s little trick

Jillian around the middle of the day trying a harder slope

Jillian towards the end of the day on the harder slopes, cruising along

Check ‘em out!

Check out these little guys. Man’s best friend has always been his flashlight, and now these give his flashlight arms and legs. Friends are so much more friendly when they have arms and legs. I would like something like this for my camera. Kinda like the GorillaPod, but not quite so bulky. I predict that pretty soon benders will be put to work all over the place. Looks to me like they would make a great stocking stuffer.

Today steep and cheap is doing 100 deals in 24 hours. That means every 15 minutes or so they put a new item up there. Some of the things they have had so far (which i missed) were $130 snopwboard boots for $30 and coats and watches and sunglasses and other stuff like that discounted heavily. They also sometimes put climbing shoes, sleeping bags, tents, and lots of other outdoor equipment that you would normally buy at backcountry.com. Keep an eye on it today, and remember every 15 minutes that you don’t check steep and cheap you are missing out on some incredible bargain!

Jillian has wanted to learn to snowboard for a while, and I bought a snowboard off eBay in August for cheap, so both of us were eager to get out on the slopes early. It was a 60 degree day and only 6 slopes were open at Beech Mountain in NC, but since I was going to be teaching Jill all day it didn’t matter that the black diamonds were closed. Since it was a Monday there was hardly anyone there, and we didn’t have to wait in lines for the lifts even once. One of the greatest parts about skiing is being surrounded by mountains and being on top of one of those mountains so you can see out over everything. Here is a shot from the top of the easy slope:

As you can see even though it was warm there was plenty of snow with no dirt patches, and it never got too slushy. Since it has been really cold at nights they have a good base layer and I think that makes the difference.

So ever since I learned last year i have been thinking about how to teach someone how to snowboard. Since I didn’t have anyone teaching me I learned by trying a lot of different things and I figured out what is the best way to start and how not to teach. Even though i had it in my mind how i wanted to teach her, I wasn’t so sure that it would be as easy as I thought. It turns out it was pretty easy to teach, and she picked it up very quickly. Much more quickly then me. I spent the whole first day being thrown on my butt or my face. Jillian only had one hard fall, and she spent the whole day in control and having fun. Here are some great pics of her cruising down the hill:

The best part was that Jillian was having fun the whole day, and we spent the whole day actually snowboarding. When we got to the top of the hill she was always the first one to be clipped in to her board and ready to go, and we literally stayed on the mountain till the lifts stopped and they kicked us off. This picture was taken by a ski patrol guy at the end of the day who made the deal with us that if he took the picture we would leave:

I took lots of videos of Jillian snowboarding, and I’ll be posting a couple of the best ones on Google and putting the links here, so heads up.