Orbis non sufficit
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Zen-ness
I'm feeling very zen at the moment. Back in Australia, hanging out at my mums house. I was burning down a mountain, jumping off 3 metre high rocks, flying through the trees in heavy wind and snow not 48 hours ago, and now here I am chilling in the warm 20 degree breeze coming in the back door. Flying around the world puts things into perspective. We live on such a small and fragile planet; it's astonishing how many people seem to think it is invincible.
I watched a documentary on the Apollo missions on the flight over, it was narrated by the astronauts who took park in them. It mentioned that the 24 astronauts who survived those missions are the only people to have ever seen the horizon curve until it bent back on itself, becoming a lonely blue marble hanging in the vast emptyness of space. The astronauts spoke about how fragile it looked, hanging alone in the black. It was a powerful movie, I had tears in my eyes a few times which doesn't happen much. Seeing the footage of apollo 11 launching into space, the lander reaching the moon, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the alien world, it's powerful stuff. Especially if you can comprehend the enormity of the task, realising that these enormous rockets were pretty much designed with pen and paper. Lots of them exploded during testing.
Especially considering that, for all the technological, computational and mathematical advances we have made since then, it is still so hard that mankind has not sent anyone back to the moon since 1976.
Note, I just found something cool, check this out (maybe you've heard of it already and I'm just out of the loop)
Google Lunar X Prize
Wanna make $20,000,000?
Anyway, thats enough from me. Looking forward to seeing you all again!
Edit: An achievable halo?
I'm feeling very zen at the moment. Back in Australia, hanging out at my mums house. I was burning down a mountain, jumping off 3 metre high rocks, flying through the trees in heavy wind and snow not 48 hours ago, and now here I am chilling in the warm 20 degree breeze coming in the back door. Flying around the world puts things into perspective. We live on such a small and fragile planet; it's astonishing how many people seem to think it is invincible.
I watched a documentary on the Apollo missions on the flight over, it was narrated by the astronauts who took park in them. It mentioned that the 24 astronauts who survived those missions are the only people to have ever seen the horizon curve until it bent back on itself, becoming a lonely blue marble hanging in the vast emptyness of space. The astronauts spoke about how fragile it looked, hanging alone in the black. It was a powerful movie, I had tears in my eyes a few times which doesn't happen much. Seeing the footage of apollo 11 launching into space, the lander reaching the moon, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the alien world, it's powerful stuff. Especially if you can comprehend the enormity of the task, realising that these enormous rockets were pretty much designed with pen and paper. Lots of them exploded during testing.
Especially considering that, for all the technological, computational and mathematical advances we have made since then, it is still so hard that mankind has not sent anyone back to the moon since 1976.
Note, I just found something cool, check this out (maybe you've heard of it already and I'm just out of the loop)
Google Lunar X Prize
Wanna make $20,000,000?
Anyway, thats enough from me. Looking forward to seeing you all again!
Edit: An achievable halo?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
More video time
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Video Ok I havén´t had time to make a real video yet so here is a teaser of me doing a fairly small jump. It was a fairly simple trick, I just kind of tweaked the board sideways as I went over. There´s probably a name for it. ¨Shifty¨ comes to mind.
Yello
To respond to some comments on my video...
Chris: Sorry, the only beer they imported for us was... err I forget what it was, something shit. They tried to make us pie but it was ridiculous american pie, not quality aussie pie.
Sean: Lol, I better refrain from drug smuggling I think. And yes, I had several beers for you guys :) Maybe not 6 though. Yep, riding down the mountain with ones ipod blazing is all the rage around here, you can get helmets with headphones built in (such as MY helmet, however as I have no ipod-like device they are currently pretty useless). Yep, people screw around in their cars in the ice all the time, I´ve seen people doing 180s and such in the car parks. Can´t really do burnouts, or at least nothing really burns when you do them. Lol, thanks for fixing my lights, it probably would have taken me months to do it :)
Erin: Yes, I feel I have improved somewhat from mt buller :p. I would be really pissed off if I hadn´t :). And yes, black runs rock. At sierra anyway, lots of cool rocks to jump off. I don´t think I´m allowed to bring sandwichs back with me :p
Rest of you: Sorry I got lazy :p, but sure I´ll try and teach you dudes to snowboard if we do a trip, we´ll definately do something march 1st, maybe not a big party just hang out and i´ll show you guys photos or something. You guys all rock, I´m looking forward to coming home really, it´s getting a little repetitive here and I´m too poor to go exploring too far. Went to Northstar resort today and yesterday which was cool and got some neat new videos which I´m gonna try and do something with.
Also, I saw a cool tv show yesterday, ¨Mind, body and kickin moves¨. It´s a martial arts type show where some english dude travels around finding people with awesome skillz. There was an Iaido master cutting some stuff with his katana, it was awesome (including arrows fired at him) and he did a disarming move against a live blade using his bare hands. There was also a tai chi guy in china who threw the english dude around a park and some qigong practioners who did cool things like have a board with many nails stucks through it placed on their chest and then run over by a guy on a motorised scooter, bending metal poles with their eyeballs and standing on lightbulbs without breaking them. Good chi control.
Thanks for the birthday messages too guys, was nice to hear from you all. I spent the day at northstar riding around, man that place is big. Sierra is steeper, but northstar has way better parks. I rode in the superpipe, it was a bit freaky. Fun tho. I then went to a local pub and got drunk with one of my housemates, where I also met a bunch of people from sierra. Was pretty fun.
To respond to some comments on my video...
Chris: Sorry, the only beer they imported for us was... err I forget what it was, something shit. They tried to make us pie but it was ridiculous american pie, not quality aussie pie.
Sean: Lol, I better refrain from drug smuggling I think. And yes, I had several beers for you guys :) Maybe not 6 though. Yep, riding down the mountain with ones ipod blazing is all the rage around here, you can get helmets with headphones built in (such as MY helmet, however as I have no ipod-like device they are currently pretty useless). Yep, people screw around in their cars in the ice all the time, I´ve seen people doing 180s and such in the car parks. Can´t really do burnouts, or at least nothing really burns when you do them. Lol, thanks for fixing my lights, it probably would have taken me months to do it :)
Erin: Yes, I feel I have improved somewhat from mt buller :p. I would be really pissed off if I hadn´t :). And yes, black runs rock. At sierra anyway, lots of cool rocks to jump off. I don´t think I´m allowed to bring sandwichs back with me :p
Rest of you: Sorry I got lazy :p, but sure I´ll try and teach you dudes to snowboard if we do a trip, we´ll definately do something march 1st, maybe not a big party just hang out and i´ll show you guys photos or something. You guys all rock, I´m looking forward to coming home really, it´s getting a little repetitive here and I´m too poor to go exploring too far. Went to Northstar resort today and yesterday which was cool and got some neat new videos which I´m gonna try and do something with.
Also, I saw a cool tv show yesterday, ¨Mind, body and kickin moves¨. It´s a martial arts type show where some english dude travels around finding people with awesome skillz. There was an Iaido master cutting some stuff with his katana, it was awesome (including arrows fired at him) and he did a disarming move against a live blade using his bare hands. There was also a tai chi guy in china who threw the english dude around a park and some qigong practioners who did cool things like have a board with many nails stucks through it placed on their chest and then run over by a guy on a motorised scooter, bending metal poles with their eyeballs and standing on lightbulbs without breaking them. Good chi control.
Thanks for the birthday messages too guys, was nice to hear from you all. I spent the day at northstar riding around, man that place is big. Sierra is steeper, but northstar has way better parks. I rode in the superpipe, it was a bit freaky. Fun tho. I then went to a local pub and got drunk with one of my housemates, where I also met a bunch of people from sierra. Was pretty fun.
