Activities, activities

Brandon and Sam stride out on the cross country track.



Having been a snow lover since the age of four, I am always willing to take part in any snow related activity. The past couple of weekends I have been partaking in a spot of cross country skiing and snow shoeing and obviously the usual... snowboarding.

Sam and I were first introduced to cross country skiing on our first ever date 5 years ago, back then there was more on our minds than refining our styles! However, the honeymoon period is now over and this time round we concentrated on perfecting our technique. Our downhill skills still need to be worked on, everytime we get to a steep hill we assume the extreme"snowplough" position in the hope of being able to stop. Unfortunately we still wipe out at the bottom of the hill.

Snow shoeing activity number two, again this is a sport I tried out in Canada. This activity opens up a whole new world, places that are blocked off by snow suddenly become accessible with snowshoes. Sam and I trampled around the rice paddies and walked down to the beautiful watering hole. More on that later...

Back to snowboarding, on Sunday thanks to Sam's media "contacts" he managed to blag two free tickets to Ski Jam to watch a rail contest. This rail is no ordinary rail, it's apparently the longest in Japan. The snowboarder who managed to stay on for the longest got to 47metres, unfortunately we arrived just as he was hitting the rail so didn't manage to capture it on film. I was impressed with all their efforts even the ones who fell off it at the start.







See me glide.




Snowshoeing a sport thought to be popular amongst people named Sam.


A rare sighting of the male Sam, note the preditary pose.

The longest rail in Japan.