Leaving for two years

I just wanted to let everyone know that starting this Wednesday, the 28th, I will be virtually unreachable via Facebook,blog, and Email. I am going to be serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'll be serving mainly the Mandarin speaking people of the Toronto, Canada area. I'm spending 12 weeks in an intensive language training program, and then I ship out to Canada.

Unfortunately, direct contact with me will be very limited while I'm gone. The best way to reach me is through the mail.

Starting in the first week of July, my address will be:

Elder Chandler James Balkman
Canada Toronto West Mission
197 County Court Blvd. Ste 203
Brampton, ON L6W 4P6
Canada

Another way to reach me is through chandler.balkman@myldsmail.org. However, if you email me at that address, include your mailing address, as I may not be able to email back to you. I can always write back via normal mail.

This is a full, two year commitment. It will be a break from school, and from skiing, and many of the things that I love. I also know that the challenge will be rewarding. I have no experience with Mandarin Chinese, but that's what I will be speaking nearly the entire time.

My apologies to any of you that I've fallen out of contact with over the last few years. I'd love to hear from you while I'm gone, and if you take the time to write to me I'll be sure to hit you back.

In May of 2012, I will be back to normal life, ready to go to school/work, maybe finding some late spring skiing, and picking up everything where I left off.

Best regards to all,

Chandler Balkman

Outrigger Snowshoes

A lot of people will have no idea what I'm talking about here. Recently I made improvements to my outriggers, which I use for skiing, and so here is the explanation so other disabled skiers can get some ideas.

With outriggers, it's really tough to hike in deep powder, so backcountry skiing for me has basically been limited to what I can traverse to without hiking. A friend and I recently came up with a solution.

I use the very popular Superlite outriggers. I thought about starting from scratch and making new outriggers, but for now, I'm sticking with these. First of all, the ski on the bottom is too long for me. I cut off several inches from the tail-end of them.

If you look at the resulting cross-section of the back of the outrigger ski, it's T-shaped. Out of plastic (nylon?) which is basically the thickness and strength of a cutting board, we machined these:

The fit is tight--flawless.

Here you can see exactly where we cut the ski, notice the hole drilled in the rear of the ski:

And with the new basket attached:

To keep it in place, we put a steel .25" pin through the hole that was drilled.

These work surprisingly well. I've hiked in 8" or so of powder and they did great. I would have no problem with much deeper powder. I take these off to ski, and I keep them in the front pockets of my jacket. The pin gets really cold, and becomes really hard to pull out and put in. I might use something different to replace it.

The protruding ski out the bottom is helpful when hiking uphill, because it digs in really nicely to boot-packed holes or just hard snow. Fixed-ski outriggers are difficult when hiking uphill--you usually have to turn them 90 degrees to engage the edge (for grip) and it's really awkward for your arms.

This is simply what works for me at this point.

Skiing

My brother and I finally finished editing footage of me from last year's ski season. Skiing is absolutely my favorite thing to do. This video just shows a small part of one of the best ski seasons of my life.

Chandler Balkman 08/09 from Chandler Balkman on Vimeo.