Lesson 1: A guarantee is “not actually a guarantee”

Burton has their ‘W48’ policy, which on their products and their website states they will inspect your warranty claim and have your board on its way back to you in 48 hours. After enquiring as to the status of my claim 2 days after the tracking indicated Burton had received my board, I was told “it’s not scanned into the system yet” and that “the W48 isn’t actually a guarantee, but it means they’ll try to get to it as soon as possible.” I figured a statement in their policy was a guarantee, but apparently not.

Lesson 2: Persistence pays off

__I tried being patient and giving ’em an extra day leeway before really laying into em. The guy I got the next day was actually a lot more helpful. I mean, it wasn’t exactly helpful to hear “it hasn’t even been scanned as received,” but this guy actually offered to chase it up for me if I could supply him with the tracking number. After doing so, I checked my email later to find my board has now been processed and they are now shipping me a brand new, 2011 model (my one was the 2010 model). Cannot wait to hit the slopes with it.

It also looks pretty badass:

Lesson 3: Press button, receive bacon, eat bacon… then profit?

Bathroom graffiti; no longer just phone numbers advertising a "good time"

Lesson 4: Irony

We hadn’t had a good snowfall at Cypress in over a week. The past 7 days have been so wet and warm that we were pretty much down to ice (ie. terrible riding conditions), so it was welcome to see it puke snow all day yesterday with a sweet 20+ cm covering of fresh powder. Working during the day, I planned to go out riding after my shift but in the meantime I had a ton of shovelling to do… The very snow I was so happy to see was the same that I stumbled over, resulting in pulling a muscle in my groin. Please make your best masturbation/”that’s what she said” jokes, I’m sure I haven’t heard it a dozen times already.

On the upside, I came home at a reasonable time to cook myself a nice dinner… I settled on the leftover soup from the carton.

Lesson 5: The time taken to organise a holiday is inversely proportionate to the time spent actually being on holiday.

I tried to dedicate today to further organising my travel for this year. In a bit over a week I’ll be heading to Portland, Oregon for a fly-by visit with Bee to go see the Thursday Full Collapse 10th anniversary show and eat donuts, among other things. I’ve been working on this trip on and off for a couple weeks, there’s not really a ton to sort out but I’m trying to get back into the music writing thing (read: trying to score free tickets) by emailing around to managers, publicists, publicists’ assistants etc to try and get on the door. I still don’t have a definite yes on that, but it sounds promising. Either way the 15 year-old in me is pretty excited to see the show.

The other thing I’m doing is getting stuff together for Asia/Russia/Euro trip with Damien and Dave. Damien’s been the super organised travel agent for our group, the amount of research and booking he has done is insane. Despite the amount of organising work he has lifted off the rest of our shoulders, Lesson 5 still holds true:

  • This morning I went off to ICBC to transfer to a British Columbia driver’s licence simply because my Australian one will expire around the time we were looking at hiring a car in Ireland. Even though research indicated it would be as simple as handing in my Aus licence and paying $31, I was told upon arrival I’d need a driving record too… an expense and time-consuming activity not really worth it just for the sake of renting a car for 2 days…
  • Visas are a bitch to apply for. I’ve literally dedicated all afternoon to just filling out the forms and gathering all the information and documents I need, and I’m still nowhere near completing any of them. A lot of it has to do with ambiguously worded questions or specifications for supporting documents… such as an original letter of confirmation of accommodation booked (“no emails”), even though the accommodation was booked online and confirmed by email. It means there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, contacting various consulates and embassies to figure out just what it is they want supplied, and how to do so. I’m not looking forward to the part where I have to mail off my passport and be without it for 2-3 weeks at a time.

Lesson 6: North American animals are such scabs

The raccoons get a pretty harsh rep as pests for eating pretty much anything they can get their grubby little claws on. Everyone seems to forget the ‘cute’ little squirrels and chubby mice, or even the ravens. All 3 of these guys have tried to scab food from me at one point or another. The squirrel even bit its way through my Black Wolf duffel bag, the (cute) little bastard.

Lesson 7: The only way to rock something completely unfashionable is to wear it with confidence