Last night I fired up Microsoft Movie Maker for the first time and put it to work on the videos and photos we took on Tuesday. After cutting and scrapping and taping everything together, I threw in some Guster, and I am pretty excited about the outcome. You can check it out on google video here.

For the video above I got some additional pictures off Ian’s camera. Unfortunately I don’t have any shots of Karissa and only one picture of James, but I am going to be getting pics off Karissa’s camera this weekend and then I can add them into the compilation video.

This was my first time using Windows Movie Maker, and I really liked it. It was a piece of cake to throw the video together. The interface was simple but provided plenty of functionality, it was fast and made the job easy. I would highly recommend it.

The only problem I had was that my camera takes mov videos and Movie Maker doesn’t support that format since it from Mac. I downloaded 4 different video converter programs but the first three I tried were all bulky and they required that you buy it or else they put an ugly banner on your video. However fourth time was the charm when i found this little program called “Audio/Video to exe.” I think it was made by students for a class project, and it is super simple and fast and totally free, and it converted the videos perfectly. I would definately recommend it if you need to quickly convert from any one video format to another.

We welcomed in the new year with snowboarding and skiing yesterday, and had a great time of it. We were originally planning on going out to Beech Mountain again, but Sunday night they closed all the trails at Beech due to lack of snow. Sugar still had a fair number of trails open, which basically added up to one long run from top to bottom and one easier run to one side. We stuck to the long run all day, and had a good time despite several negative factors: it was crowded, by the end of the day there were dirt spots, and the snow makers were going all day and were very noisy. The awesome thing is that despite the negatives no one broke anything, we were on the slopes all day, and everyone had a really great time. Here is a pan I made last night of the view from near the top of the lift (you can click on it to see it full size):

Here is Jillian taking a break

She was getting the hang of switching from one edge to the next, and fell a lot, as can be expected, but she just kept getting back up and stayed on the slopes from sun up to sun down. Here is a video of her switching from toe side to heel side. I didn’t take a lot of pictures this time (though others did and I will get them up here when i have them) but I did take lots of videos. Here are a couple that Ian took of me:

swoop

carving to the jump

Ian, Brad Kinnison, Karissa and James all skiied. I don’t have any videos of Karissa and James, but here is one of Ian skiing.
Also, last but not least, here is a great one that starts out of Brad Kinnison and Ian skiing, but turns into Brad Hicks tumbling. It pretty much gets all of me, with two shots of my face, one of my sweatshirt, one of my board. Classic google entertainment.

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:

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.

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!

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.

It has been one whole year since my first post to thebradlands, December 15th, 2005. I would like to thank my mom and dad, for bringing me into this world. Also my producer/ providor/ spellchecker/ factchecker Warren Myers. Of course I’d like to thank Jillian who has stuck with me through thick and thin and has helped me with my Spanish. And lastly all my fans who have made it fun for me to write knowing that you care enough to check by and read. Blogging has been a great way to vent my excitement in lots of different areas. Hopefully reading has energized you, and thebradlands has been an instrument to get you excited about life.

Here is a link to an online museum of Burtan snowboards starting in the stone age of snowboards, 1977, when the first snowboard was experimented with, all the way through to modern times. Check it out. I am excited about going snowboarding this year, and I think we are going to get a trip together for mid January. I dunno what to do till then. Maybe pray for some snow and take my board out on the nearest hillside to wait.  UPDATE: Or I could watch snowboarding videos on google video!  This one is absolutely amazing and is just a little more evidence that CA is the outdoor capital of the US.  I wanna go!

Ok so a little while ago I said I got a snowboard, but I haven’t shown any pictures yet.  Here are some pics that I took tonight.  Enjoy!