Had some friends down from Belgium this weekend, and after their 8 hour drive down, they hit the snow jackpot. I hit the Belgian beer jackpot as they brought down a fine selection of Belgium’s finest beer. Took them out to the Belgian bar in Salzburg in the evening for some more Belgian beer (after the local Austrian Brewery of course). Did you know Belgium has over 135 breweries producing more than 700 different beers? Neither did but I like beer so I was impressed. They were impressed with the snow too so we showed them around a couple of the finest Spots for snowboarding in Salzburgland.  Took the GoPro Camera out for a couple of runs and finally got some nice snow and sunshine. Will try to put together an edit this week.

Benny welcoming Kenson to Sportgastein.

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We are a clever, ambitious species who for hundreds of thousands of years (or more depending on the model) lived off of current/recent solar flows. We eventually puzzled out how to access stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. The population and growth trajectory that ensued eventually latched on to a series of assumptions/rationales that would fuse into the system a belief that more is better and that there would be unlimited substitutes for finite natural resources like oil and water. The change from using solar flows to the energy gain contained in a barrel of crude oil was and still is, indistinguishable from magic in the larger scheme.

Eventually (1970s), some cracks in the assumptions underlying this model appeared. Real wages then peaked in the early 1970s and have been declining ever since. Globally, though the poorest people in the world earn more than they did a generation ago, the fact that over 2 billion people don’t have a toilet doesn’t really sound like an equitable global playing field. Oil peaked in the world’s largest oil producer (USA) in 1970. In 1971 we discontinued the gold window and the worlds economic system had no natural tether to real assets. Without such a monetary speedbump, debt skyrocketed over recent decades and became every bit as important driver of economic growth as cheap energy.

Continued..

What a brilliant camera the Leica M8 is. Had a quick play around with it today and it is really quite superb. Such a nice change from my usual point and shoot, but kind of tricky to use. It is also hard to get people to stay still for long enough for you get them in focus and sort out the aperture settings! Anyway, few of the test shots below.

Munich Ispo was as hectic as usual, so many brands and products on display, I tend to get fairly jaded quite quickly as I walk around. It takes a lot to stand out nowdays but there was some really cool stuff as always hidden amongst the noise. You could tell a lot of companies were playing it safer than usual with the quantity of products and the amount of really new stuff. Most was just variations of old products, styles and whatnot and there was little in the way of innovation.

Overall though, there is perhaps no better place than Munich Ispo to see whats what in the world of skiing and snowboarding design and I found the trip really rewarding.

I have about 2 gig of photos, so below is a selection of the ones which stood out as I went through them. Might post some more later this week too.

Lib tech make skis now with the same magnatraction edge as the snowboard I have. Would love to try them out.

More photos below..

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We caught the first lift and some fresh tracks before work. Forgot me hat though.

I took the camera out for the last run on the top bit you see in the photo above, just held it in my hand riding to take some video so it’s a little shaky. Funny how that slope, which is pretty steep, looks kind of flat in the vid. Anyway, I made a (quick) short edit, starts slow but speeds up.

A colleague of mine at kiska found this car a few years ago and after a small photoshoot we got to talking about it’s history.

Despite looking like a wreck, this is one of the most desired classic 911’s amongst collectors because it’s a ‘72 2.4S, which was the only year with the oil filler cap on the right rear quarter panel.
The story behind it’s demise and rediscovery is a bit of a mystery. In 1976 it was put in a barn with only 48k KM on it. It was left there until 1986 at which point it was moved outside. Soon after this a tree fell on it and crushed it. My colleague found the car in Milan in 2008 in a terrible state along with the passport of this mysterious girl still in the glove box. The girl who owned it was only 18 when she got it and nobody knows what happened to her or why she hid the car away in the garage.

You know when you are a kid and everything seems massive and then often, years later you see the same thing and it just looks really small?
That never happened to me with the mountains.

On that note, for some reason it seems fitting to say BIG UP to my brother and Flo, who are getting married today, on a remote beach in Fiji!
Best of luck to the two of you’s!

Set off this morning with no destination in mind really, eventually settled on Sportgastein which we had never been to before, just over an hour away. It had only one lift, but it went all the way up to 2650m and offered loads of offpiste. The most I have seen in 2 years here actually. I dont want to make all of you green, but it was kind of epic, the snow, the mountains, the sun and the light were so good, really made me feel alive : p

Hit some nice wide open lines, some tree lines, some windlips, some drop off’s and a few cliffs. It was quite cold, -12.5 degrees at the BOTTOM which meant it was tricky to take photos because your hands lost feeling pretty quick. We ended up blowing every jump photo due to malfunctioning fingers, but a few of the others came out ok:

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I have lost count of the times over the years when flicking through a magazine that I have ended up getting sucked into a Blotto photo. Taught me a lot about Composition, action and light. My bro posted a link to his site and I ended up going through the whole thing so thought I would post it too.

From Sunday.

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My good friend Tibor started his own blog.

http://jeremyjones.net

An interglacial, which we are in now, is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature that separates glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene interglacial has persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago.