Andrea Lindsay and Erik Mongrain

Tonight I had a call from Kyla, an old friend from Kitco, asking me to assist to the show of an artist I adore, Andrea Lindsay also a former Kitco employee. She is anglophone and she sings in french, it's quite something, find it for yourself looking @ her latest clip, "Le dernier cosmonautes".

The show was taking place @ Patro VYS a cosy crowded little bar on Mont-Royal and was as intimate as it can get.

Opening the evening was another impressive underground artist, Erik Mongrain. Look up his guitar skills in this clip called "Air Tap"

Google apps: Picassa

Google just keep on releasing state of the art applications. What's more, all these applications are linked together. Google is taking over Web 2.0.

The latest candy I tried was the Picassa photo sharing application. What is so impressive about it, is not necessarily the quick web slide shows, nor the lagging time almost nonexistent, nor the 1Gb free memory space, but the pluggins they make for thick native clients. I just installed the pluggin for iPhoto, my photo viewer application on Mac, and it just works beautifully. I go on my computer, look in my albums for my latest trip, select a bunch of photos and tell iPhoto to send all these photos in a new picassa album on the web that I can share with my friends.

I haven't checked if other big players like yahoo and Microsoft have done the same but they better do it fast because Google will eat em up, Google seams to do everything right, I am starting to think even highly critisized youTube 3Billion$ acquisition might lead to greatness!
Picassa
Download picassa pluggin and uploader for Mac

Vancouver visit with stops @ Whistler/Blackomb

Link to album Vancouver visit @ the Sabourins 007

So I left the warm and sunny Mexico for the rainy and chilly Vancouver with a 3 hour stop in Phoenix Arizona. Dany picked me up @ the airport and we went for a snack!

Vancouver is just such a beautiful city when its not raining. The Canucks had 3 home games during that week so I spent a fair amount of time @ the arena for practices and games. I was even asked for an autograph :) For games it was great, the spouses and friends of the players have a little lounge with free food, wine & beer where they go in between periods and some spend the whole game in there. Watching a game with Coco, Dany and Cindy's 1 yr old daughter can be very entertaining. So they lost against the Wild on Tuesday. After practice Wednesday I was in the dressing room with Sabou and Burrows and he had this funny interview on the canucks website where I tried to get him saying his teammates made fun of his pelican but it didn't work out. That day was a beautiful sunny day so we decided to walk in Stanley park before I left for Whistler at the end of the afternoon.

That next day @ Blackomb, I had the best snowboard run of my life. We got @ the mountain around 8:30 and that 1 run finished like 3 hours later. We went to the highest point of Blackomb ending that with a t-bar, it had been a while... and a 1hr hike in the back country. The scenery was magnificent, the sun was out, it is not often you have a good view like that on that mountain, we were very lucky. Getting up there was a challenge, when went up on Disease Ridge I was exhausted. We had to get around the ridge walking on snow that could just not hold, my hearth was pounding. I never thought getting my leg up in the air, letting go some safe anchor to go forward and find another one, could generate so much adrenaline.
Then we got to the end of the ridge Dede went first were he thought he could find a good line. The great thing about this is the little prick had never been there before, finally we found an amazing chute with incredible powder and more and more. Then we had like 5 smaller runs before we called it a day. I had to be back in Vancouver for the Game against St-Louis @ 7pm, very boring game that the Canucks won in overtime.

Then it was Vancouver tourism and hockey game against Detroit where the Canucks kicked ass. Sunday my last day was spent in Whistler where we caught a really normal day but Dede brought us in a good spot in the back country where we built a nice little kicker with his chica Amelie. Then I headed back to Vancou for my ride home to Montreal with westjet, they rock by the way.

Thanks to the Sabourin's hospitality and Dede's guidance through some fine snowboarding.

Link to album Whistler/Blackomb

Mexico 007

Link to Album Mexico 007

This journey's starting point was just a nightmare. Big storm was pounding on the North East, my flight left 4 hours late for Chicago and I missed my connection to LA. Freaking American Airlines where just a bitch. In Montreal they gave me a reservation for a new route through San Jose Los Cabos(international airport beside Baja California) in case I didn't make it to my LA connection but the suckers didn't take care of rerouting my luggage's and give me a new boarding pass when I got to Chicago. Result: slept for 1hour on an army bed in the secured zone @ the airport and wake up @ 4am to get out of the zone, reroute my luggage's and get a new boarding pass before clearing customs again. I finally got to Mazatlan Mexico 12 hours late. Screw AA, never fly with them.

Although it didn't start quite right, the rest of the trip deserves 5 stars. Simon picked me up @ the airport with Mc, we went to the house, the McCrory's have an amazing setup out there. Diane cooked us some very good wally that were caught in Cosala and we went for a beer at Joe's with Simon with an exclusive Mexican crowd. The following 2 days were spent, on the beach, surfing @ Bruja, visiting el Centro de Mazatlan and driving around town with the newly rented Wrangler Jeep.

On Tuesday, Mc's birthday, we left along highway 13 for a great open air drive south towards the coastal village of San Blas. There we got a beautiful hotel room on sea side and the only other traveller staying there was a guy from Ottawa that runs a Bar in Puerto Vallarta. We went for a ride on the beach and got stuck in the sand. The 4X4 wasn't working very well so we needed a few locals to push this heavy peace of shit out of the sand, it was quite allot fun. Mc tried offering a few pesos to the locals but they didn't want to take it :) The following morning we went to do the highlight of that little town which is to have a boat ride on La Tobara where you can see a few crocodiles, birds, lizards, turtles...

We left that same afternoon because there were too much sand flies and we were bitten like crazy. We drove another hour south on the coast on a beautiful road to get to Sayulita, a little surf town 15 minutes away from PV where we staid for 2 nights. There I rented a long board for a few hours and caught some small waves.

Then we headed back to Mazatlan for a 6 hour drive in the sun which helped to catch a few sunburns. On Saturday I went surfing again but the wave was breaking flat @ bruja so I looked around for another spot and had a hell of a jeep ride in the Nuevo Mazatlan road. I found a spot but I saw a few fins at large which was a little creapy. Later Tom said they were probably just Sting Rays swimming sideways. On Sunday we went on a catamaran to visit the Island and have a walk on top of the mountain where we got beautiful sights of the city and the ocean.

So it was a great little escapade, great food, great beaches, good company and great hosting by the McCrory family. Then was time to head down to Vancouver to see the Sabourin's which will be covered in my following post.