iRide
Zaskoda’s Snowboarding Journal

It sure is nice having Internet access on the mountain. We arrived at our condo in Steamboat a few hours ago. After such a long drive, I had to go straight for the nap. First impressions are good. The mountain looks like fun and I dig the little town. We haven’t gone exploring so there’s not much to report. It was a fun drive up, aside from being rather long. We saw lots of vehicles that ran off the road during the storm. Denver was still a mess with snow plows running everywhere. We really ended up having great weather and driving conditions, all things considered. The only time I really needed to use 4×4 was getting into one of the gas stations in Denver and for the last little crawl into the condo. Attached is a snapshot of Velzy posing in my truck on one of the passes just before you get to Steamboat.

I just finished packing the last of my gear and I’m about to leave the apartment. The plants are watered, the trash cans are empty, the bed has fresh sheets, the kitchen sink is empty and I can’t think of anything I’ve forgotten. A few hours from now I’ll be swinging by my parents and then it’s 15 to 20 hours of hard driving. I hope my new Xterra shows me the same kind of love and reliability as the last one. I’ve shown off a few pictures of trucks in my last two entries - this time I actually took a moment to snap a picture of mine.

They’re calling it a Colorado blizzard. There are some nice pictures over on the BBC News. Tomorrow around 10pm, me and a friend are headed directly for it. I’ve been mulling over road closures this evening. As far as I know, the bulk of the snow has passed; thus I suspect that the roads will be fairly clear by the time we make it in. If my memory serves me correctly, most of Colorado is pretty quick on getting the roads scraped and sanded.

Word of the snow pushed me over the edge. I was talking myself into being happy with the BFG Long Trails that came standard on my Xterra. Upon hearing about the storm, I did what I wanted to do anyway, I traded them in on a new set of BFG ATs. I also intend to pick up a set of snow chains, probably in Colorado Springs. I hope we get a dump of snow like this while we are there.

If you read my journal, you know that I recently bought a new snow tripping vehicle that I keep intending to post pictures of. While on my search for this vehicle, I found a Texas Nissan dealership that likes to sell big trucks. Let me show you them.

The first one to catch my eye was a modified Armada that actually looked pretty sweet. I guesstimated the gas mileage to be around 12mpg. They really struck the right height on the lift and I actually like the chrome (rare for me). If I was the type of self absorbed wealthy fool it took to purchase an H2, I think I would rather waste my money on this thing.

There were actually many modified Armadas on this lot. The Armada is based on the Titan pick up truck frame. They are Nissan’s huge SUV. They normally run upwards of $50k before you start adding mods. I thought this tan one looked kinda crappy. The rear seems to sit kinda low, I don’t like it.

One of the Armadas, you could just live in. Along with all of the standard ‘make it look tough and tall’ mods, they also put a satellite dish on top. Now you can watch pay per view or browse the web while you’re burning enough gas to power a small country.

Finally, one of my favorite mammoth Texas trucks on this lot just happened to be a Ford. It was the first F550 I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if this thing comes stock at this unreasonable height, or if it was lifted. The tires on this rig look like they rolled right off of a semi. There are two steps for climbing up into this creature. It’s nuts. I forgot to look at the price.

So yeah, things really are bigger in Texas.

I just finished installing my snowboard rack. It’s night and raining so I can’t seem to take a very good photo of the truck. Yes, I put the rack on in the rain… I wanted to see if it was going to fit the same on the new truck. A lot has changed between the 2000 model Xterra and the 2006 - but the size of the rails on the roof rack is not one of those things.

This thing is different from my old Xterra - some good and some bad. The new truck has 261hp where my old one had 170hp. The entire truck is just slightly larger, but it feels huge to me. I thought the original Xterra was the perfect size. I feel like I’m riding higher, and I kind of like that. I had an ARB bullbar on my old truck, I miss it. The new one is an automatic where the old one had a manual transmission. Honestly, I still think I prefer a manual, but they’re hard to find in 4×4 models. I was looking for white and ended up buying a black one. The new one will have a hitch, so that’s pretty sweet. It does seem easier to find places to put stuff in the new one.

Anyway, this will be it’s first big trip. I’m still trying to decide on the tires. They’re kinda crappy but I don’t know if I can afford to trade them in. I only get $50 a tire trade in value! However, I did slip on the rain today going around a corner. I kinda sorta went fast on purpose to see if the tires would grip like my old truck. I lost traction in the front on a hard turn and slipped maybe a foot before it grabbed again. The stock BFG Rugged Trails just don’t grab like the BFG All Terrains do.

Maybe some day I’ll mod this one up. I’d love to add rock sliders, heavy bumpers, a small lift, big tires, wench, gps, cb, mp3 player, window tint, rain guards, a spoiler, and all kindas of stuff I honestly don’t really need. They sure look purdy all fixed up tho:

So, I was really frustrated with the web cams on the Steamboat website. It didn’t load well on Firefox and all I wanted was to see some pictures. I tried it out on Opera with much better results. That’s when I found out what all the extra overhead was about. You can actually manipulate their webcams! Push a little button and you can adjust where the camera is pointed for a limited amount of time. If someone else is driving, you get put into a queue. It just almost works too! The feedback has a lot of latency, so it’s really difficult to use. However, the idea of controlling a camera about a thousand miles away is pretty nifty. On the flip side, it sure is annoying when someone ELSE has control of the camera!