Burgus Plus world tour

[aho]

^Damn! The jeans are coming along nicely...thanks for the update!

[ranonranonarat]

wow rungo the whiskers look like they will turn out nice! length is also good. hope the cold weather tides over soon!

[Baeyer-Drewson]

Shit is tizzight, and not in a necessarily bad way. Get them updates on, son.

[_Kai_]

Damn what a different fit from me, whiskers started to peek out a bit after my month. Wash did it some good

[rungo]

Well, heres the last couple of days as far as updated goes.

Here's a couple of pics of our local quadrangle at the University of Alberta where I'm currently studying.

Blurry fit pic in reflective windows.

Wednesdays beer was some kind of Japanese IPA, and thats about as much as I could make out from the bottle, aside from not necessarily being the most shining example of the traditional style, it still qualified as tasty.

Thursday was pretty boring for me, but it was pretty warm out, so we decided to do some grilling. We have a lot of cattle out here, so beef/steak is pretty frequent and plentiful; decided to go with a rib steak.

Went out for beers with a friend of mine at our usual spot which is a brew pub that also happens to be the closest bar to my house, they serve up some good beer and food, and the prices aren't so bad (for here). I find myself there frequently. This was the IPA which is their typical seasonal for January-ish (they don't run quite on the month). Sorry for the dark pic, but all I had was my phone, and it is still a bar.

Today it got up to 8C (!), so I decided to wash my car, because I could do it at home. (Its already dirty again). Although I did technically take the jeans off for the washing part, as it was dirty and wet, and still fairly cold.

Currently going with a Primo beer, its quite refreshing.

Really, most of my tour could probably be cross posted with the State Your Beer thread, or, if it existed, the frequent drinkers thread.

[caid]

Butterdome pics please.

[PeterParker]

Nice update.

U of A, you say? You should take the tour jeans to Josh Le and have him swab the jeans for aho, Medine, ranonranonaratand kai's ball sweat. Shame that the jeans have already been washed several times (8)

[ranonranonarat]

haha PeterParker is obviously highly not pleased with JoshLe's antics.

nice updates rungo, it seems like a really long winter this time round happening all over the world with lots of places getting more than the usual snowfall. nothing better than some delicious ribs during this time of the year! cheers.

[rungo]

Ok, not too much happened since the last update, but I have most of what went down, except for Sunday, as I managed to lose my camera, but suffice to say, I watched Green Bay win the Superbowl, and managed to eat a whole host of football shaped snackables and about half a shrimp ring.

Saturday I awoke to this, which was hit right after a little bit of rain during some unusual warmth, which lead to solid ice underneath everything. Its kind of hard to see due to the light, but it was snowing prett hard.

Then I went to my Sat morning bowling (10 pin) league, it wasn't a great week, averaged 197.

Then I snagged some free pizza at the alley, its not very good, but I get a free one for 5 strikes in a row, and free is free.

After I got home I had to do some shoveling, about 4 inches of snow had accumulated by the time I got home. It was the super heavy and wet East coast style cement snow, so that was fun to get over the snow banks.

That night I headed out to the Brewsters again (my local spot), the name might be pretty lame, but they have a German brewmaster named Günther and he's pretty awesome. Went out with my girlfriend, and a friend of mine and his girlfriend. Me and my gf had already had a light dinner, so we split a braised short rib poutine. (Poutine for those not in the know is fries covered with cheese curds and brown gravy, and is a foodstuff which is distinctly Canadian).

Monday I had a midterm, so I ended up grabbing a poutine as a lunch supplement at New York Fries, which, strangely enough, is a Canadian fast food chain which sells fries. This would be a more typical look at poutine. And no, I am not that into, it just happened to come up twice in one week.

Monday evenings beverage was a blueberry beer which at 8%, tastes a lot like carbonated manischewitz, but in a good way (I'm not quite sure how that works either)

[rungo]

Nice update.

U of A, you say? You should take the tour jeans to Josh Le and have him swab the jeans for aho, Medine, ranonranonaratand kai's ball sweat. Shame that the jeans have already been washed several times (8)

Well, aside from being a wad, the result is kind of interesting. As a scientist, I would be interested in, on a far shorter term study, a comparison of jeans from like, the tropics to a cold climate for bacterial growth. That being said, the guy is still a wad. And I do think I've seen him around the campus a few times.

haha PeterParker is obviously highly not pleased with JoshLe's antics.

nice updates rungo, it seems like a really long winter this time round happening all over the world with lots of places getting more than the usual snowfall. nothing better than some delicious ribs during this time of the year! cheers.

The winter here isn't that unusual, really. It has been pretty heavy snow fall comparatively, but its a strong La Nina year, so that means precipitation for me. As far as length and severity of the winter, I live in a very inland 53 degrees north, where it is not unusual to get Arctic air mass moving in from the north. The 'winter' here, is by a wide margin the longest and most prevalent season. Relatedly, it warmed up 20 degrees C today from the morning low to the late in the day high.

Yes I talk about the weather a lot, when it changes this often its usually a fairly major impact on your day, and sometimes is the most interesting thing thats happening. When I lived in England, the only time I think I talked much of the weather was how much people were complaining the one time it snowed, and the other time was when we experienced one of the biannual sunny days in the peak district.

Butterdome pics please.

I'll try to snag some later on. Interestingly enough, you can now buy Butterdome butter dishes at the UofA bookstore.

[caid]

I'll try to snag some later on. Interestingly enough, you can now buy Butterdome butter dishes at the UofA bookstore.

I just spent a half hour on google trying to find one of these butter dishes, but apparently I have no searching skills. Please do get some pictures. I miss that place, but not enough to make a trip to Edmonton.

[rungo]

Alright, gonna do a short-ish update consisting mostly of beer, but really, that comprised most of the interesting part of the last week as I was bogged down by 3 midterms and an assignment. Fortunately for me, today was the first day of reading week (spring break) and on Monday I will be south bound to Montana, then will spend the rest of the week skiing in various locales, I hope it will make for some more interesting posts, or at least more interesting scenery.

Dogfish Head pumpkin beer, which has been chilling in my fridge for a while, still pretty good, but the spice blend isn't as nice as some of the local stuff, so I think thats why its been around for a while.

Neat fireplace type thing they have in the Students Union building at the U of A, they only seem to turn the fire on when its below -20C, and this time was no exception.

It was pretty warm for a couple of days (about -2 to 0C ish), so me and a friend took a walk/hike through one of the city parks. This is a couple of pics of the river valley that runs through the city, the park we're in is basically right in the middle of the city. I would have taken more pics, but the trail had turned to solid ice from the warming, and was more concentrating on not falling off the 20ft cliff thats below where these pics were taken from, also avoiding the copious amounts of deer poo on the trail (not pictured).

After walking refreshment. Good flavor and bitterness.

Spend a considerable amount of time staring at this. It probably could have helped more than it did.

Steak again, threw some fried mushrooms on it for good measure.

[rungo]

This beer is pretty alright, although the strength of the flavor is a little meh, for what I paid I'm not particularly disappointed.

Didn't manage to get any pics of the Butterdome itself, but did grab a pic of the Butterdome butter dish. Caid, if you want a proxy shoot me a pm, these things are only $10, I'm sure I could work something out.

Tonight I went out to a place called Da-de-os, which is a Cajun restaurant in Edmonton. It may not look it due to the lighting, but this is one of the best sandwiches I've ever had, blackened catfish po'boy with sweet potato fries and coleslaw. Definitely a place I would recommend.

Local brew, tastes more or less like an amber ale, I got this for free so no complaints.

Grabbed a quick fit for posterity, I think I'm getting fatter again.

Probably be about a week before I'll have solid internet, but I hope to have some good travels, and hopefully some interesting posts to be made once I get back.

[_Kai_]

nice update, fire looks like a dog fox thing haha looking forward to skiiing update.

[rungo]

Ok, after a significant delay of antibiotics and bed rest from strep throat/chest infection/sinus infection, the tour (documentation) continues!

I'll start with the start of the trip, which was an 8 hour drive to Montana (I sort of apologize for most of this whole thing being driving pics, but the scenery, especially in Banff is spectacular) (I'm also going to apologize for the size of most of these, as my camera is pretty poor, and the detail is small in some instances)

This is from the Canadian side of the border just before Cardston. Table Mountain (the large, table in the middle there) approximately marks the border between Canada and the US latitude wise.

First view of the US. As you can see, its a day and night transition in landscape features.

Highway 89 was closed, so we had to backtrack and take 464. We guessed there was an avalanche base on the storm the previous day. This was what some areas of the highway looked like with snow drifting across. Somewhat harrowing when faced with the prospect of having 2 directions of traffic having to pass in the drift zone.

Heres what it looked like in one of the drifts.

Unfortunately, I lost the town pictures and the first day of skiing, some sort of file corruption or the like. Not really a major loss, but kind of a bummer. If interested I believe you can street view Whitefish and Kalispell on Google Maps.

We had to hit up the Famous Dave's in Kalispell. May not be the most unique for those Americans with us, but after skiing its a cheap way to a very full stomach of some tasty bbq.

Needless to say, it was a massive portion of ribs and brisket. My waitress actually congratulated me upon my completion of the entire meal.

This was the conditions in which we were facing at the top of the basin. The second day was much like the first, except it was considerably colder. About 6" of fresh both days, compounded by the wind, which ends up depositing more on the north face of the ridge. The first day was about -5C as a high, with minimal wind, the second day was a high of -18C, which as Northern Canadian skiiers we were more than prepared for, but due to the wind and exposure, the main ski lift had a wind chill of about -45C with head on winds. Because Whitefish is entirely tree skiing however, once away from the exposure of the lift, there was almost no wind to be seen.

Heres the POV of the top of the pow fields, if I wouldn't have had skis on, I would have sunk to about waist level (which I incidentally found out the one time I surfed a turn into a tree well). My ski setup is a pair of OG Moment M1 which are 130-105-119 @ 186 running length (182 actual) mounted with PX12s if anyone was interested.

This is some of our tracks through the more open fields. Times were good.

Me making turns in the pow. Snow was great, wasn't quite champagne super light, but was well light enough to make for awesome skiing, had a good feel underfoot.

[rungo]

And to continue on...

Some more fresh turns.

Its always hard to really capture in an image, but we spent some amount of time in the steeps, this slope is probably pushing up on 40 degrees, which is some pretty steep terrain.

Chilling with Jesus on the mountain.

My friend making some sweet turns. (more gratuitous ski footage)

The scenery was fantastic (I'm in there too, in the middle more or less)

Back in Canada, the characteristic silhouette of the Canadian Rockies on a clear night at twilight. Its a fantastic sight.

Travelling through Banff National Park on a cold, cold, but very clear morning. My car has a thermometer that tends to read a little high, and it stops reading at -30. We were thrilled when it started registering again, as we decided to head westward to Golden BC to ride Kicking Horse because it was supposed to be 15 degrees warmer than in the Banff area.

Castle Mountain from the Trans Canada.

Theres some lakes along the road that tend to have some open water throughout the whole winter, mostly due to water movement through as the 'lakes' are really just streams that come into an area of flats. The cold fog was coming off heavy.

Just another nice looking mountain view.

[rungo]

Coming through a newer section of the road that the decided to cut through the mountain. Theres a bridge thats 130 meters above a river on the other side of the tiny canyon. As you can see, even a fully warmed car, with defrost on full was incapable of keeping frost from the windshield.

In the center of this pic you can see where the runs at Kicking Horse have been cut out of the front side of the mountain. It also gives perspective of where the restaurant located at the peak of the mountain is located (more pics later).

Yeah, one lane (with two way traffic) wooden bridge with no traffic signals heading up to the mountain, thats how we roll. (Still comes across as safer than English roundabouts, the English never did seem get the hang of intersections).

Pic off the backside of one of the peaks. Some good steeps...well, pretty much everywhere, that pretty what they got at the Horse.

It may have been cold, but the views were fantastic.

I think this gives a feel of how steep it was (it was steep), skis leaving the snow every turn, this run also ends with a cliff option.

The holy mogul field of all knee destroying glory. We attempted to ride a zipper line down at least part of it. Needless to say, but we did not make it exceptionally far before the fierce burn had taken hold in the calf and thigh area.

More views. I'm pretty sure this one mostly explains itself.

The bar at the Eagles Nest. Voted best view from a bar stool. On the right day, the view from that bar is unreal.

[rungo]

More restaurant views. You can just make out the mountain peaks through the glare.

Looking like the muscles have taken some kind of beating.

The food at the restaurant is phenomenal. This was my buddy's meal, which was a halibut po'boy sandwich, with presentation and shit, supposedly it was delicious.

And my meal, probably the best burger on my leg of the tour (and maybe the best on the tour, this is one of the best I've had anywhere). A half pound Alberta Angus beef burger with Maple Smoked bacon and some other crazy fixings and sauces that are nothing short of an amazing taste sensation. The fries....they were something else. I decided to ante up the extra $3 for their so called Truffle Fries, and damn. They use a thinner cut fry, which is topped with a light chive, and some kind of hard Italian cheese (I forgot the exact type) and then drizzled in truffle oil. Dear lord was it amazing. Although, I suppose you have to like the taste of truffles for it to be so.

Additional burger food pornography.

This is almost identical to the view you get from the bar, although its slightly off to the left (same direction of view), so from the bar, you catch slightly more of the basin. There was a wedding up at the lodge the day we were there, and they were doing the pictures outside. It was cold as hell to be out there in wedding garb, but for the clarity of the day, it would have been unbeatable. Plus, you wouldn't have been outside for that long in total.

As were were traversing along the backside of the mountain to get to the outside basin, more picture views were found. I'll probably throw some of the ski maps into the collection of what-have-you curently with the jeans, so if any interested party wanted to do a cross comparison of where the pictures came from. Its probably doable with online maps as well, but if I remeber I'll pen in some key routes on the paper map.

Thats all for this set, and unfortunately due to my illness, I couldn't get to an Oilers game, and now they're on a 5 game road trip, so that won't happen. I'll still head out to West Ed and get a few more pics here and there before the end of the week. I'll send out PMs to see who'll get them next hopefully today, and we'll get these off to new and magical places.

[ranonranonarat]

thanks for the updates rungo, they are phenomenal and i really enjoyed the pictures from you thus far. never had a chance to ski nor see in real life, snow, and those scenic landscapes are really breathtaking. i'd bet my ass off that the real thing must look pretty fucking fantastic.

oh and being the burgus world tour, THAT BURGER IS HOLY. makes me want some REAL food right now instead of chinese all day long. couldn't have asked for a better leg and im glad you took these on to share with us your trip. thanks so much! will return to rep!

[rungo]

Getting on with my final entry here.

Went to West Edmonton Mall, formerly the largest shopping mall in the world. It contains such things as an indoor amusment park, an indoor water park and a hotel. Standing next to the coaster.

You can look down from the mall into the water park. (people seem to be getting pretty fat by the look of things).

Standing next to the hotel lobby. (My gf was taking the pictures, so the process wasn't too thought out).

In the coridor of marginally fancier stores. Supposed to approximate like, a movie set idea of an unspecified European street. Doesn't really get the job done, but the space is occupied by management offices, so I supposer it could look worse.

Cutting out of what will become the official tour coaster.

And the coaster complete with adornment. (its burned into the leather)

Hitting the coaster and the jeans patch with some Obenauf's. Without it if you spill on the coaster they tend to warp (experience) and the patch was looking a little dry.

The results. The dark spotting on the patch goes away in about an hour, and relatedly, we probably won't have to oil it for a while, as the Obenaufs is pretty resistant to soap.

Dogfish Head.

The coaster in action.

[beatle]

that leather coaster is awesome

[rungo]

Decided to have a go at cutting out a bracelet to throw in with the goods, my xacto blade broke and I didn't have any new ones, so I busted out my hunting knife.

The end results. It came out ok, Its a little rough, but thats kind of the nature of my work at this point.

Comparison shot of the tour jeans with my most worn pair, and my current pair. Flathead F380 to the left, 5507xx in the middle and tour jeans to the right. The Flatheads have over 2 years of wear (unfortunately too small now) the Skulls are about 8 months.

Back comparison shot.

Final fit pic front.

Final fit pic back.

And now the jeans are off, I didn't do a wash as per ah longs request, as he wanted to wash them, so I packed up the bundle and off they went. As a note to anyone future and whoever threw in the State Dept zippo, theres a flint in the hole at the bottom of the batting if anyone wants to use it. I put one in, but took it out for transit purposes. The jeans were actually sent off last week, and they're almost to their destination.

Now off to Long, and hopefully another solid leg of the tour!

[_Kai_]

Hey Rungo, great last update, enjoyed your posts.

Thanks for putting in the flint in the zippo. This was a zippo i stole a long time ago when i was a kid. I took the flint out while cleaning it because it was fucked up. Hope someone will put it to good use now that it has a flint and a clean wick.

Looking forward to long's post

[ranonranonarat]

nice coaster you made! too cool. i almost forgot about this tour, we need to continue the madness with more updates with ah long whos next! +rep for you! also, the roping on these are turning out super nice! i love how it looks at this point even with only a few months of wear!

[ah_long]

just got back from Beijing yesterday and I received the jeans with all the goodies, I'll post pictures tomorrow...

[ah_long]

So... here are the pictures as promised, Rungo has sent me a piece of soap along with the Jeans and they are going to a wash tonight (more pictures on that later)..

Now for my leg... my activity will mainly be in Canada, my boat should go on water in a week or two, so expect some fishing with the Burgus. I'll be going to Shanghai @ the end of the month, and the Burgus would be coming with me.

Now off to the pictures:

[_Kai_]

looks good, looking forward to your updates!

[ranonranonarat]

so happy to see the burgus plus jeans again! they dont look like they've faded particularly much but they look great still with a nice and dark hue. the excitement of more pictures on this tour! looking at the burgus pocketbags and my name that i've written on and aho's silkscreen, it brings back lots of memories and of course the contents that came along in this trip! lovely stuff, can't wait for more updates from you ah long!

[ah_long]

today they went into the wash, and drying as I type this

Picture 1: Initial Soak

Picture 2: The awesome soap that Rungo sent me, love the aroma, but I also love the cleaning properties of the Samurai Thunder Soap (they leave a very crisp and fresh feel, and I also love the soap being grounded to granules)

Picture 3: So I ground the soap bar

Picture 4: Mixed it up with thunder soap, it's now rocky mountain thunder soap

Picture 5: first you sprinkle it over the jeans

Picture 6: then you use your palms and rub it in

Picture 7: first rinse

Picture 8: second rinse

Picture 9: hang dry, smells great

And that's how you wash a pair of jeans

[aho]

Damn! I've been MIA for quite some time but it's a pleasure seeing these jeans back in action....love the past updates and have repped where I could (particularly love that coaster)....Looking forward to those updates!