Today is a bit of a weird blog post. I’m posting the winner of one of my contests, while also entering a contest myself!

First up, this is my contest entry for the Cat Skiing at Mustang Powder Contest. I’ve never been catskiing or catboarding before, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to try it out!

The contest asks for a blog post, but I also thought I’d include a video just for fun. It’s a little silly, it was filmed and edited late at night in the midst of chaos. Still, I think I’d be a great candidate to win the contest and I’ve put together some reasons why ( in text, just in case):

- I am extremely passionate about snowboarding and I’m constantly on the hunt for deep, fresh powder lines
- I’d love to take high quality photographs and videos of the catboarding experience; I’ve got a ton of equipment such as a DSLR with fisheye and telephoto, an HD video camcorder/DSLR, and a helmet mounted or board mounted GoPro HD camera which can help capture the experience
- I’m always on the lookout for new adventures!
- I have my AST-1 avalanche certificate so I know some of the basic safety principles for the trip
- I love road trips!
- I’d love to post about the experience on my blog and Twitter

Cross your fingers for me, friends!

ALSO, I thought this would be as good a place as any to post the winner of the contest I held for the Volcom Snowboard jacket!

Congratulations to the winner. Again, please excuse the silliness, as this was even later in the night. Winner, please e-mail me at allie@vancityallie.com. If I do not hear from the winner within 2 weeks I will do a re-draw.

Thanks to everyone for entering!

Last night we drove around to 3 different stores trying to see if we could buy the “That’s It, That’s All” new snowboarding movie with Travis Rice sponsored by Quicksilver and Red Bull. They were all either closed or didn’t have it.

Today, I called every Best Buy, Future Shop, Blockbuster, and all the snowboarding stores on 4th and Burrard. No one had it.

Only a couple sketchy online internet stores had it, and not even many of the big players (e.g. Amazon) had it.

Where was I going to get this freaking movie?

Well, it suddenly hit me at the end of work today that there were Quicksilver stores in Vancouver. AND, it’s a Quicksilver movie. So I quickly called up the store in Oakridge… yes, they had it in stock but they were closing in 8 minutes. Darn. So I asked to see if she could leave it at the Safeway customer service desk since Safeway was open later and I could pre-pay on the phone. It was about to happen but then the district manager gave the ixnay on that.

But, she told me they had a store downtown and I could try them. Bingo! Quicksilver on Granville JUST got the DVD in today so I had them reserve one and I rushed down there to pick it up at 7:30, before they closed at 8.

Awesome, I couldn’t be happier to get my hands on it.

So I made some Japanese udon noodle soup from scratch (mmm chicken broth), with vegetables from Granville Island — leeks, shiitake mushrooms, baby bok choy, some dashi powder, onion, freshly chopped green onions, and enoki mushrooms… I thought it turned out really delicious! (P.S. T&T Supermarket downtown is a great place to buy asian food stuffs like fresh authentic Japanese Udon noodles) So Jay came over and the boys drank beer and I had my udon noodle soup and it was a really good night.

The movie was great — I highly recommend it (PSssst Quicksilver downtown still has some copies). Travis Rice was really ripping it up… tons of great tricks with lots of inverts, corkscrews, grabs, backflips etc… and lots of natural terrain… no park! Nice! Lots of beautiful scenic shots, some gorgeous timelapses, great locations (New Zealand, Alaska, Jackson Hole) and a nice Nelson, BC piece… it was fabulous to see a Canadian snowboarding segment that wasn’t shot in Whistler for once. And catboarding at that… to complement the catboarding trip we have planned in February.. w00t! YES!

Let the snow fall! BRING IT ON.