Daily Updates — Live from Nagano

Zone Rangers [click to zoom]

It would have been a lovely Valentines Day in Hakuba, but the gods gave the lonely Team Mountain Zone East a day without ladies to wish a Happy Valentine's to. It's hard to be stoked for the races when it's 5am and you've got a good two hour drive ahead. So the disbelief we felt when we got to Hakuba that it was raining hard again and the women's races were cancelled weighed heavily on us.

Inspector Hans [click to zoom]

First came the snows, a good two day beating. Zoners enjoy snow because, when the race gets cancelled, we get to perform dangerous, technical course inspections.

Then the skies opened up and drained upon us during the halfpipe and when we thought it was done, it drained some more. Then there was sun, fast races, huge air, and now it's raining again. See where I'm going with this? Me neither, it's coo-coo. At least we got to enjoy the snow when it was new and nobody blames some little Spanish kid cover here.

Brent "Fish on my Face" Brookler [click to zoom]

So Zone Team East decided that the combination of Brent's non-Kosher diet and our lack of local religious practices had taken their toll on our Karma.

Well, maybe it was that Army truck we borrowed to try and gain access to that IOC VIP tent. Hey, if you saw that buffet you would have taken drastic measures too.

"Maybe it was that Army truck we borrowed..."

Karma Palace [click to zoom]

We ended up at the Zenkoji Temple where we burned incense, rubbed up against the monk and rang the sacred bell, all to get our stars back in line. We felt better having given thanks and praise, now we were ready for some conveyor belt sushi.

It's like a diner with a bunch of sushi and fruit and little coffee cartons on a beltway going by everyone's table. So you grab your dinner before it rolls on by. After piles of sushi and an unending stream of green tea, we knew there was only one thing left to do — Go spank the monkey!

The Nagano Monkeys hang out less than a kilometer from the Olympic Snowboarding Halfpipe, but we never saw them smoking so we couldn't make the correlation.

Touch My Monkey [click to zoom] [Monksters Speaketh]

We did watch in awe these monkey's characteristically playful behaviors that some of our brethren snowboarders share. Like when you're swimming at the hotel pool and the bigger snowboarders hold your head under the water. I hate when they do that. We were warned not to look them in the eyes, but after almost an hour I began experimenting with my camera angles. Then this knee-high monkey looked me in the eyes like he was about to rip them out. He jerked at me in an instant and then withdrew. So... I thought it was time to go.

Happy Valentines Day from Zone Team East. xoxox

— Hansu Prozo, Addicted to Mentholatum Eye Drops for The Mountain Zone