Awesome

I’ve recently been embracing the reading of blogs/websites and have come across 2 which are really good…

First is Things Bogans Like

An extract….

Twitter

In the past 18 months, the new bogan has belatedly made the switch from MySpace to Facebook as its social networking website of choice. This has caused trendsetters to start making the switch from Facebook over to Twitter. Once the bogan realises that there are celebrities on Twitter, and that no interaction on there is more than 140 characters in length, it will be unable to resist the appeal of broadcasting its every move to its friends via its phone or computer. Even better, the 140 character limit is something that bogans have been training for for years, via generally unintelligible text message abbreviations. The trendsetters, meanwhile, will migrate elsewhere, galled by the flood of tweeted rubbish that the bogan will bring.

The other is called The Crabby Traveler

An extract

What happens when you put a man on a mountain with terrific snow?

Going into Easter weekend, I was watching the weather. The plan had been to do some cycling in Alsace, which I’d done last year. Last year, with Easter a little later in the year, I stayed in Otrott and did some great rides through rolling hills with blooming trees. It was fantastic, and I was nursing my back and checking things out since I’d not ridden a lot since I’d crashed in January.

This year…well, it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. Reservations had been lined up for a hotel, but Tuesday I was looking at the forecast and it wasn’t looking so fine for cycling. Calling for snow, I decided I’d better rethink things. I began checking snow reports in the Alps at various resorts, then looking for available rooms. It wasn’t looking so good, but finally I found something, booked it for three nights, then cancelled the Alsacian hotel.

The drive to Dornbirn Friday was nothing but painful. Starting swiftly from Wiesloch, we cruised at typical Autobahn speeds south. It wasn’t long that we were on the A8 when the trouble began. Now it was raining non-stop, but compounding matters the traffic got nasty. And it stayed nasty. The drive should’ve been about 3.5 hours, maybe 4. It took 7. I was so weary by the time we found the hotel, and crabby in case you were wondering.

However, Saturday things were quickly righted. Take a look at the posted pics. Blue sky. Fresh white snow on the Arlberg. Once on the mountain, I looked around. Here it was, Easter weekend…and no one was there. You’ll see that on some of the pics. I couldn’t believe it! I did a run, then another and returned to the car to drop an unnecessary layer. We then slowly made our way down a couple of runs to St. Anton. That’s where the people were. And a lot of them. Mostly, it wasn’t a problem. Except when two or three groups of ski students were taking up the entire run. Argh.

It’d snowed all night, so the runs weren’t groomed. The blue runs, which should’ve been kind of boring for me, were actually tough due to the moguls that were buiding up. I dug it though.

Sunday turned out to be a gray, overcast day and tough skiing due to the lighting. We’d decided to ski out of Lech, a rather posh town over-run by rich Russians and others who can’t help spending loads of money. I kept trying different lenses — orange, rose — but nothing was helping. But it was better than being stuck in traffic. And it was enough fun that we decided to ski Monday before heading back.

What a fantastic idea that turned out to be. I’m not sure I’ve ever skied in better conditions. It had snowed overnight again, and Easter Monday was a brilliant blue sky, amazing snow, and we went back to Lech and went to a high up run. Scoping it out from the chairlift, I saw a red run that looked cool. So we gave it a go, and it was the best! Challenging, not any ski students, and we ended up skiing there all day. It was that light powder, and there was a good stretch with some fun moguls. Wow it was terrific! I skied it really hard, and finally we called it a day. And paid for our pleasure with a nasty drive home, through a whiteout in a construction zone right after Stuttgart that had me gripping the steering wheel and hoping for the best. I learned Tuesday there’d been a 60 car accident in Austria, so I felt pretty lucky.