{"id":1022,"date":"2011-03-21T21:08:57","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T21:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2011-03-21T22:05:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T22:05:26","slug":"crashing-through-the-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2011\/03\/21\/crashing-through-the-block\/","title":{"rendered":"Crashing through the block"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a bad case of blogger&#8217;s block lately, brought on by a double whammy of: 1) the worst cold I&#8217;ve had in years (which is also my third cold in 2011, ugh), and 2) News Paralysis &#8211; the state whereby anything I might hope to write or do seems inconsequential and indeed pointless compared to the events unfolding on my TV screen and on the news websites I seem to keep obsessively refreshing. I&#8217;ve had a couple of posts brewing in my mental drafts folder, but musings on the Harper Government&#8217;s slow but steady erosion of Canadian democracy, my liking for post-apocalyptic science fiction, and humorous lists of my latest pet peeves, all seem horribly insignificant and\/or inappropriate right now.<\/p>\n<p>There are two possible ways to deal with this situation. The first is to write something incredibly deep, meaningful, and significant, to prove that I still can. The second is to post a video that&#8217;s about as trivial, inconsequential, and insignificant as it gets &#8211; but also 100% AWESOME. Guess which one I&#8217;m going for?<\/p>\n<p>After watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/british-columbia\/story\/2011\/03\/19\/sp-mls-tor-van.html\">the Vancouver Whitecaps&#8217; fantastic MLS debut on Saturday<\/a>, we stayed tuned as the network switched to coverage of the Crashed Ice final in Quebec City. Crashed Ice is like a cross between ski cross, speed skating, and the luge &#8211; competitors strap on skates and some padding and hurl themselves down an icy track with jumps, bumps, hairpin turns, and 45<sup>o<\/sup> slopes &#8211; all with the gorgeous old city in the background. It&#8217;s sponsored by Red Bull, and one participant stated &#8220;my favourite food is meat&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s that kind of event.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the 2010 highlights:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Red Bull Crashed Ice 2010 in Quebec City - Crashes and Finals\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z_XfBh9PEXQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The 2011 highlights aren&#8217;t on YouTube yet, but the official video is available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redbull.com\/cs\/Satellite\/en_INT\/Video\/Highlights-of-Red-Bull-Crashed-Ice-Canada-021242978427204\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As AWESOME as the real event is, I think my favourite part was when four ex-pro hockey players took on the slope &#8211; and proceeded to skate almost as badly as I skate on regular, smooth, flat ice. It really brought it home what a tough event this is &#8211; I just hope it makes it into the Olympics!<\/p>\n<p>Right, hopefully that&#8217;s broken my blogger&#8217;s block. Off to try and think of new post ideas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a bad case of blogger&#8217;s block lately, brought on by a double whammy of: 1) the worst cold I&#8217;ve had in years (which is also my third cold in 2011, ugh), and 2) News Paralysis &#8211; the state &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2011\/03\/21\/crashing-through-the-block\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,41,19,43,37,40,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-meta","category-personal","category-politics","category-sport","category-videos","category-whining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}