Sapporo Kokusai is usually the first decent snow mountain to open each year within fairly easy travel distance of Sapporo (about an hour and a half by car), and this year is no different. It's not a bad mountain, and last year I got to ride it a bit more than the previous couple of seasons, so I was able to get out into it a bit more and explore some of the tree lines. I must admit that this was much to the disgust of my right thigh, since my 80kg bulk does not ride too well on a stiff 156cm board through deep powder, and the leaned way back stance that I must maintain to avoid submarining down to my nipples takes its toll. Probably the best thing about the mountain would be the super fast gondolas that never leave you waiting too long to get back into it.
This day has been a long time coming, and because I've been thinking about the new season so much, the internal pressure of when (not whether) to buy a new and slightly longer board has been building to bursting point. For example, last week I had to drive my wife down to the hospital to get her bandage replaced on an injury she obtained battling with a can in the kitchen (she managed to slice most of the pad off of the front of her thumb, blood everywhere), and I knew that we were then pretty close (only 10 minutes) drive away from the Super Sports Xebio Dome (need I say more, its a sports store with the word super in it's name!). So we drove over to take a look at (the second one in three days), or should I say fondle, a number of the boards. There was one I was particularly interested in, but after thorough soul searching, I just couldn't bring myself to buy it. At 40000 yen (AUD$445), it wasn't a super bargain, and it was just a replacement of my current board, only 157.6cm, not the long powder board that I had originally been searching for.
My problem is that even when I really wanna buy something, all these other thoughts keep jumping into my head and getting in the way of the purchase, like, what am I not buying with the money when I buy this? eg. an ipod (still don't have one), or a new hard drive so I can finally have space to do some of the video editing I've been talking about. It's sometimes way too much trouble to be stingy (I prefer the word frugle).
Well anyway, can't get out to the mountain till Sunday, so I expect that I'll be checking out the mountain's website every few hours for the next few days, just to take a look at the mountain camera and current snow depths. The worst thing though, is that Ang can't get on her board yet, because of the risk of doing damage to her freshly healing finger, and it's killing her cos she want's to get out there as much as I do.
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