Well it looks like the global economy is finally going in to meltdown. It’s been a long time coming, but yesterday seems to be the final realisation that the house of cards is on shaky foundations. The Aussie sharemarket dropped 7% yesterday, along with significant drops around the world, and it’s now down 24% since its high of November.

I moved my superannuation out of shares and into diversified fixed-interest back in September, only to watch the share market go up by 10%, leaving me worrying that I’d made the wrong decision. Now however, with the market down 17% from when I got out of it, things are looking a bit more rosy. For once I’ve made a financial decision which hasn’t cost me money!

The Financial Times has an article on why the American recession will be hard to shift, explaining that reserve banks’ dropping of interest rates isn’t an instant fix to credit worries.

Interest rate cuts work their way through to the real economy by a number of transmission channels. During the 2001 recession in the US, the most important was housing credit. The rate cuts came at a time when the housing market was already booming. They turned the boom into a super-boom. Inflationary expectations were low. People expected interest rates to remain low. It was a great moment to take on extra debt, and this was precisely what Americans did.

The current US downturn could not be more different. House prices are falling, and have further to fall before reaching a more sustainable level (in terms of the price-to-rent ratios as well as several other measures). Core inflation has been above the Federal Reserve’s comfort zone for some years now. There is no way that either the Fed, the Bank of England or the European Central Bank could, at this stage, create another housing boom even if they wanted to. Housing downturns have a strong dynamism, which is not easy to break. This is not a great time to take on debts, but to pay them off.

What about the other channels?

The corporate credit channel works more slowly. A company faced with an acute downturn in demand for its products is not going to start investing immediately when interest rates fall. At the very least, it would only do so if it expects variable interest rates to remain low for some time.

For that to happen, inflationary pressures have to be well contained, which they clearly are not.

I’m halfway through my snowboarding season, and, in stark contrast to opening day, we’ve had tonnes of snow here. When I arrived back after Christmas the resort looked just as it had last year, with plenty of snow around, and it just kept on coming. Powder day after powder day, sometimes with up to 45cm of light, champagne powder which is a joy to ride. Even last week we got a metre of new snow.

The fun times had to end at some stage, and the last couple of days have been snow-less. A little bit fell today, but it seems that we’ll have to wait until next week for some proper snow.

My riding has slowly been getting better and I can now ride switch properly down steep semi-groomed runs. Next step is to start riding switch in powder and see how that goes. I’m jumping a bit more too, though nothing huge, and have managed a few more 180s, so I’ll have to find somewhere on the hill where I can try a 360 without ricking too much injury if I screw it up.

We’ve got a good crew riding around this year. Myself, Nathan and Floody are up most days, Tom, Dave & Rob are around as well, and Dave & Aaron, who did the course with me last year are also here for two weeks. There’s plenty of others who show up now and again, depending on what days they’re working etc. so there’s always someone to go riding with.

Update: that ‘little bit’ had turned in to 27cm by this morning. Happy days!

Captured while fighting for the Taliban in 2001, and held illegally in Guantanamo Bay ever since with the complicity of the Australian Government, David Hicks was finally freed from prison today

“Right now I am looking forward to some quiet time with my wonderful Dad, my family and friends,’’ Hicks said.

“I ask that you will respect my privacy as I will need time to readjust to society and obtain medical care for the consequences of five and a half years at Guantanamo Bay.

“I have been told that my readjustment will be a slow process and should involve a gentle transition away from the media spotlight.’’

It is widely believed that Hicks was tortured while at Guantanamo, and finally pleaded guilty to charges of ‘providing material support for terrorism’ in order to get out of the place, but since he’s under a gag order until the end of March, he won’t be speaking opening about his detention and trial until then at the earliest.
Hicks is under a gag order until the end of March,

I’ve just uploaded a couple of albums taken over the last month. First up is the World Cup Downhill Skiing from Lake Louise a few weeks ago. It was -20C outside, and these women were hurtling down the hill at 120km/h. We were freezing our asses off just watching them, so I hope they have heated race suits or something!

When myself and Jacqui got to Ireland, Dad took us to visit Newgrange, Ireland’s most important prehistoric site. It’s a burial mound, built over 5000 years ago and oriented to sunrise on the winter solstice.

Jacqui’s brother, Mark, arrived for his first visit to Dublin, so I took himself and Jacqui on a walking tour of Dublin, featuring such highlights as Temple Bar, O’Connell St., the LUAS and Dublin’s oldest pub, the Brazen Head.

Finally, I had Christmas with my parents, so there’s photos of the day’s festivities.

Despite all the travails in getting there, I had a great time in Dublin. It was great seeing friends and family again and showing Jacqui and Mark around Dublin. Mum did a great job cooking up a storm, including my requested dishes of Pork Roast, Beef Wellington and non-baked cheesecake, and Dad made multiple trips to and from the airport without complaint.

Christmas Day was great fun too. Mark had arrived a few days beforehand from the UK, Clíona & Dave came over, along with Dave’s family, so we had a good gang around for dinner.

As for presents, Mum & Dad got me a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens for my SLR which was a big surprise. It’s great for taking photos in low light without a flash, as evidenced by the photo of myself and Jacqui above, and I got quite a few good photos from the day’s festivities. I’ll get around to sticking them up on the site in the next few days.

My travel back to Dublin was a bit of a disaster. The Mountain Perks shuttle was great, getting me to the airport in Calgary a half an hour early, so I had checked in and got rid of my bags a full three hours before my flight. Anticipating airline food, I filled up at the marginally less crap airport food court, bought myself some books and settled into the waiting game.

My flight was due to depart at 1755, but nothing much seemed to be happening at the gate. I was engrossed in my book – Heat by George Monbiot, well worth a read – so I didn’t really hear the explanations… something about cleaning the plane I thought. An hour after we were due to take off we were informed that the plane needed to be taken out of service and they were flying in a replacement from Vancouver, so we’d have to wait another four hours for that to arrive. Great!

While waiting, I finished my book and then realised I hadn’t heard any new announcements about when the rescheduled flight was due to depart, so I had to go looking for someone to fill me in. We finally got going only six hours later than scheduled.

On arriving in Heathrow, the Air Canada representative gave me the details of my rebooked flight to Dublin, so I tried texting Dad the updated arrival time. My Canadian SIM wouldn’t work, and both my Australian and Irish ones didn’t have any credit, so I tried getting online via WiFi. Turns out Heathrow doesn’t have any free WiFi hotspots, or at least none where I was at the time. As luck would have it, I tried to make a reverse charge call – which didn’t work – and as I replaced the receiver a pound fell out of the coin return which I was able to use to place a quick call.

Once I’d made it to the required gate I found out that the flight to Dublin was delayed, so I enjoyed another few hours sitting on my arse. I finally got airborne and arrived in Dublin only 29 hours after leaving my house in Fernie, and only 7 hours later than scheduled! The annoying thing was I arrived after dark, so didn’t get to see Dublin from the air on approach, something which always makes me feel like I’m coming home.

So at this stage I’ve had about a week snowboarding, and it’s been a mixed bag. There’s not a lot of snow about, so most of the time I’ve been confined to green runs, both here in Fernie and at Lake Louise. There was one day in Lake Louise when they opened the back bowls and there was plenty of powder up high, but Fernie has yet to see snow like that. I’m off to Ireland today, so hopefully when I get back in two weeks it will all be covered.

Our place in Fernie is really nice. Warm and cosy, with our own hot-tub out the back. It’s great to climb into after a day on the slopes. I’ve only made use of it twice so far, though once the snow is good and we’re riding for longer each day it will be used a lot more.

Fernie hasn’t changed much. It’s still almost the same as last year, with not too many new buildings around the place. It’s nice being back for a second year and recognising faces around town or the slopes. I met Dave, who is one of the owners of NonStop, at the launch of the restaurant attached to their new lodge. They’ve 110 people arriving on Dec. 26th to start their various courses this season! Yesterday, after finishing on the hill, I bumped in to all my instructors from last year, who were preparing for the arrival of this year’s crop.

It’s hard to leave now that I can hear the avalanche bombing, and there’s 10cm of fresh on the ground!

We’ve been given a short, sharp welcome to winter since arriving in Banff, as the temperatures have fallen all week. Our rental car has an outside temperature readout on the dash, so one of the idle amusements of the drive from Vancouver was registering each new ‘all-time’ low. When we arrived in Banff we’d hit -7C… yesterday we awoke to -22C, and on the drive to Lake Louise the thermometer bottomed out at -29C!

Last night we went to the Banff Hot Springs to rest our weary muscles after a couple of days snowboarding. The water temperature was 39C which was a bit weird. The pool is outdoors, so we’re soaking in this toasty water, while icicles are forming in our wet hair. On the 300m walk back to the car park, I realised that my board shorts, which I was carrying in my hand, had frozen solid. The picture above is Nathan’s free-standing shorts. Anna & Nath are worries that the whole winter is like this, but I’ve assured them that these temperatures are infrequent in Fernie

Monday dawned, and with it our last day in Vancouver. Myself and Nath were up early to drop our boxes off at the warehouse for their journey home by sea, then it was back to the apartment to load up our rental 4×4 for the journey to Banff. A mild panic ensued when we realised we’d never get all our luggage in to the car, but Greyhound came to the rescue and we shipped a few bags direct to Fernie. Once that was done we waved farewell to Vancouver and set off on the Trans-Canada Highway – destination Banff.

The first part of the journey was uneventful, cruising through the suburbs and out through the fertile Fraser Valley. Beyond Hope (yes, that’s the town’s name) the Coquihalla Highway started to get icy and we got our first dose of snow. It didn’t last long, and we were soon back on dry roads, with Kamloops, our overnight stop, rapidly approaching. No sooner had we checked in to the hotel than it started snowing, and it kept going for most of the night, allowing us to have a brief snowball fight after dinner.

Tuesday morning saw us back on the road, in much worse conditions. The graders were still out clearing up the overnight snowfall so the going was slow. We stopped in Revelstoke for lunch, being greeted by a local, Carol, as we walked along the sidewalk, who insisted on showing us a nice place to eat. We also took the opportunity to check out a model of the new ski resort opening in December: 1800m of vertical and 12-18m of snowfall per year! Sounds promising.

The road from Revelstoke to Golden and then on to Lake Louise is one of the most spectacular I’ve driven on, lined with 3000m+ peaks with snow sheds protecting the road from the slide paths of regular avalanches. It’s also dangerous, with the stretch between Golden and Lake Louise dubbed the most dangerous road in British Columbia. Anna’s a very nervous back-seat driver, and the icy conditions only increased her stress levels, so I thought it prudent not to tell her in advance of the road’s status.

However, when we’d made it to Lake Louise I congratulated her on having survived B.C.‘s deadliest road, only for us to get held up in a traffic jam 20 minutes later. We were stuck for three quarters of an hour, before being allowed to continue. Moments later we passed an horrific accident which was still being cleaned up. A small car had had a head-on with an 18-wheeler, ending up with the front half under the truck’s cab, and the other 30m away at the side of the road. We’d heard that someone had died, presumably the car’s driver. That accident was the fifth since leaving Kamloops that morning, with three cars and an 18-wheeler having slid off the road at various stages, so we were pretty relieved to arrive safely in Banff that evening!

Bloody hell Cragislist is fast. I was selling my 22" LCD monitor as I didn’t want to ship it back to Oz, so I put the ad on Craigslist at 12:40 and within an hour a guy had come to check it out and bought it. Pretty impressive.