MSP Airport at 14,000 Feet

Yep. You guessed it. This is the airport. Now if you look at the bigger picture you will see a white building that has the “target” symbol on it in the upper part on the left hand side of the airport grounds. Not sure what type of building it is, however our plane came in from that side landing on that runway going up to down (in this photo) directly inline with the little lake in the upper portion of the airport. When landing I witnessed another plane taking off on the right way running “diagonal” to our runway that is on the left hand (of this photo side) of the runway we landed on.

Best Buy HQ - Battleship Looking Buildings

Best Buy is located directly in the middle of this picture. If you look at the buildings that seem like 4 battleships, that is where I am! The building would be the 2nd from the far right building. Altitude is still close to 14,000 feet because we had just past the airport that would be to the right of Best Buy.

All shot on cell phone (without the phone part on).

Waking up at the crack of dawn in NY, I headed towards the Cross Island Ferry at 7am for a 9am boat. This was the fastest way to the Boston area without losing too much sleep to do a lot of things in the Boston area. I wasn’t planning on seeing Jon until later in the evening so I had time to visit a few places before hand.

Arriving at the Hotel in Brockton, MA at the Country Inn and Suites, I checked into my free upgraded room — to a suite — to get my stuff organized for tomorrow. I will have pictures posted later, but this suites is nice with a full couch, king bed, mini-kitchen, and full bath. Located right near the stairs to go down stairs in the morning, this room is perfect. Then it was time to head out for a day/night on the town of Boston, MA and the surrounded area’s.

My first stop was my college, Curry College, where I saw with my own eyes the various improvements to the grounds and the new student center which is the new focal point of the campus. The pictures of the new center do not do it justice because it is gorgeous. Do you have $4 million dollars? You can name the student center of your choosing if you so desire. I also found a number of my teachers on campus to say hi and talk with them for a while. I got to see everyone I wanted to see.

I then headed up to Winchester, MA to visit an old family friend to check out his new apartment and catch up on what has been going on in my life. I stayed to about 6:30pm and at that time Jon was already to head out for the evening. Heading to our usual hangout place for dinner in Dedham, MA — Tahiti — we ordered and sat there for about 2.5 maybe even 3 hours before heading out.

Jon then took me around the area to show me the new stuff that has been put up including where the old Dedham Movie theater used to be, showing me this elaborate shopping center. I did remember that before I left for VA back in Jan 07 that they were starting to ground up and remove the parking lot that once covered the area. Now I understand why it was happening. This place is just like is Park City, UT where everything is lined up including a Bowling alley. The only differences between the Park City, UT and Dedham, MA locations was that Dedham has a movie theater and above parking where in Park City, UT there is no movie theater and it’s all underground parking. Place is amazing! Something I will have to try out once I come back up here again!

Overall it was a great evening and it was so good to see Jon before the wedding because at the wedding he was going to be busy. Tomorrow though is going to be a busy day. First up is the “pre-wedding” event at the mini-golf course and then the wedding followed by the reception.

Till… err… later today… cya!

This experience as brought me to the top stress levels of doing programing full time and I can honestly say it wasn’t as bad as I thought I would get sitting at a computer and typing code for 8 hours of day. Over the past two months working, not only has my code syntax improved, but also speed up in typing code. Before doing code would take a me a while and now I can whip it out real fast and get the correct result 99.9% of the time. Since being there I have caught up on my Microsoft .NET and learned a whole new java script framework called ExtJS.

The 9 of us (now down to 8 because of a promotion at a co-worker’s store) have become really close friends and it’s nice meeting people all over this great company. Being at corporate I have met a lot of the corporate employees and field (district and store level) employees who come up to corporate for a variety of functions.

So I am home for a week and while I am not doing work here at home, I am going to try to get another WordPress plugin released (yay!) and update my blog which needs a serious code makeover with 3.0 coming out very soon! Be sure to follow my twitter feed and anything I post here to keep up to date with what I am doing and what is going on in my life.

Remember the monitor I ordered? After finding out from the local retailer that they did not like that I wanted to order 1 monitor (they never got back to me…), Best Buy Business Division (totally separate from the store level) did sell it. The wait was also unbearable since I wasn’t ordering in bulk, but it was worth the wait. It’s going to arrive tomorrow in my store. Where am I going to be? Minnesota! Do’h! Well.. I guess I will have fun using it during the week that I am here. If it has shipped one day earlier, I would have had it Friday. The model of the monitor is the Samsung P2770HD.

WordPress Version 3.01 is at Beta 1. Download, Use (On Production), and Report any errors. I pretty much have taken a back seat in active development, but I stay updated to what is going on.

Movie report. I seen How to train your Dragon in IMAX 3D. The IMAX theater that we went to was 6 stories tall. That’s as big as our building at Best Buy Corporate that I work in. The movie was very cute and funny and the IMAX was definitely the way to experience it. Stony Brooke IMAX… your so outdated. :p

Places been too so far in MN:

• Fogo De Chao: Brazilian Steakhouse
• Mall of America (Temped to go on some of the rides. )

That’s about it! I’ll try to post some updates while I am in MN! Be sure to follow me on twitter (@Bugs5382) as this is the way to follow my musings while I am up there.

I have met a lot of interesting people while I been up here so far including all the people I talked with over the company forums for the past year. The atmosphere here at the corporate headquarters is one of relaxation and tranquility. I have yet to find an area where people are “rushing” to get something done. The place is amazingly fun to work in.

After work we have visited a number of “famous” places in the area already. We went to a restaurant and pub called the Lion Tap where the make this great burgers in either double or single size. I got the double version of the bacon cheese burger. Last night we headed to the Mall of America with the entire team including our boss and supervisor where we when to Famous Dave’s and had a very good time.  Afterwords we all went to play at the mini-golf area inside the mall. On the last hole if you got a hole in one, you would get a free game — and you know what — I got a hole in one! Woohoo! (This mall is huge by the way.) 2 other people completed this feat so we could play a championship round or something.

That’s about it! Talk to you all later!

In yesterday’s skiing, myself and my sister did the power clinic in the 8:45am. I was chipper during the morning. My sister… not so much. So getting to the clinic in the morning I found out that I am going to have the same instructor as I did the last time. This was very cool. His name was Allan Woods. Originally the head of the ski school at the Stowe, VT Ski Resort. Did I mention that he is 78 years old?

Shane, Allan, and Sister

In both of my classes, there was three people, however in this class we had a cool person. After our lesson we waited for mom to arrive tot he mountain as she didn’t want to get up that early.

By the time she arrived though, the snow started falling and the wind was starting to pick up. When we started it was just lightly snowing and the wind was slightly blowing, but a little bit after lunch we got the full brunt of this storm that was creating blizzard conditions and making it feel like -10 degrees on the mountain.

We were going down to another side of the slopes and on the run I was making a perfect left turn, however the wind blew just right and picked me up and put me down onto the run. Luckily I was alright. Sister saw it happen. This fall was not my fault. I was very confused when I got up, but I realized the wind picked me up and left me down.

After doing one section for a number of times because it was covered with tress and kept the wind level down, we finally realized that the weather was too much. We headed down the mountain the easy way, down a run called Homerun. Cheesy. I know. Yesterday’s total vertical feet was 22,584 vertical feet.

Stats. I love stats. In total vertical feet over my 10 days of skiing was 189,803 vertical feet. In other words:

• 35.9475379 miles
• 57.8519544 kilometers

The problem with skiing is that you don’t ski straight up and down. You turn in “S” curves to ski down so the actual amount of skiing is incalculable, unless your hooked up to a GPS system. On average over 10 days I did 18,980.3 vertical feet each day. Lots of skiing.

We ended our trip today by flying back to NY via Salt Lake City International Airport on a 10:15am flight. We arrived in JFK airport around 5pm.With Friday traffic heading back to the Hamptons it took a while to get back. I dropped my car off at the Subaru place before I left for it’s 90,000 miles check up. Everything was good! It was hot this evening being 40+ degrees after being in 10 to 20 degrees weather for over a week.

After dropping at my Best Buy store for a few goodies, I headed to Subway for dinner since I had like zero food in my apartment. I have some stuff just not a lot to make an interesting meal for such a short trip back as I now prepare to head for Minnesota. Utah was just the tip of the ice burg for the weather. This is the last of the Park City Posts!

Stay turned for the regularly scheduled posting starting tomorrow.

Our breakfast was the usual (And this is a complete breakfast for skiing as hard as we did) per person plate:

• One Fried Organic Large Egg
• Bagel w/ Cream Cheese or Toast w/ Butter
• OJ and/or Water (1 Glass)
• 6 pieces of Turkey Bacon (8 for me…)
• 1 Half of Red Grapefruit or 1 Banana

We never had a grapefruit every morning. Who ever had OJ never had a grapefruit. In any case we didn’t get onto the bus to get to the Park City Mountain until 10:15am which meant a 10:45am arrival at the base.

Oh do the fun times begin once we arrived at the base. Back up to the previous night…. there has been two people in the Cole Sports and Ski Shop in Park City that helped out me, my mom, and my sister.

Vic, Mom, and Kyle with the Pies

Before mom and sister arrived in Utah they had already contacted Cole Sports and Ski Shop to get their skis picked out before they even arrived in Utah. Kyle and Vic of Cole Sports in the Park City store really helped out. Mom already knew Vic from visited Park City back in 2006. During out stay it happened to be Vic and Kyle’s birthday, so mom had decided to make them birthday pies. So last night we baked the two prepared — two homemade dough — apple pie’s for them. All the pies mom bakes has some sort of “writing” or “symbol” so with two pies she wrote there names on them. The “K” in Kyle’s name was the hardest according to mom. Imagine if Vic did change his name to “Vick”. Oh my. More problems than my mom needed. So after doing this little presentation we headed up the slopes.

Today was a weird day on the slopes. The weather kept changing from sunny to windy to windy with snow. To say the least it was going like this all morning on the slopes. By the time we got on the mountain in some places fresh powder of 4 inches was on the ground. Perfect for finding those hidden spots where you could get some fresh snow under your skis and ride the wave. But it also meant you could get some beautiful pictures of the areas around the lifts while going up the lifts.

Up the Pioneer Lift: Blue Slip Bowl Area

Very pretty I might add. (Video will be linked later once my sister uploads it to YouTube.)

So the day ended pretty early for us around 3pm because I and my sister were both very tired from the day. Heading back to Cole Sports we found out the pie’s were not gone and that it was very good. I can speak to this very easily.

To do this we had to ditch mom after lunch to ski hard and fast to take the flagstaff mountain lifts up 8 times to go 25,000 vertical feet. We only got in 7 rides up before the lift closed so we ended up doing the ski school lift once to get the extra feet needed. While we were coming back down from the flagstaff peek, we caught up with mom who finished our journey.A lot more things happened other than the 25,000 vertical feet. Myself and my Sister even did the all important Nastar race to add to our collection of medals won over the year. This year at Deer Valley I did the Yellow side first at a dismal 24.56 — earning me nothing. Do’h! Next time down though I did the Green course which after watching someone up close was the faster course did it in 23.07 — earning myself a Bronze medal. Woohoo!

Video of My Bronze Medal Win (Delayed due to Technical Difficulties.)

When you’re a kid on the ski slopes you always hope to be in the number one chair in the lifts. So today was my first visit up the Lady Morgan peek via the Lady Morgan lift. As we are heading into the line, a gentleman in front of us dropped something. We had to stop for a second and grab his item. As he was not getting on the chair, we decided to go. We past chair number 60 — mom’s age — but took the next chair. This happened to be chair number 1! In some random act we got to be in chair number 1 on the last day at Deer Valley. It will never happen again. We even skied 5 of the 6 “ride-able” mountain peeks at Deer Valley. The 6th dinky Little Bald Mountain was nothing more than a glorified catwalk in which both mom and sis refused to go to again the last time they visited it.

After ditching mom, we learned that someone almost 10 year older than me tried to pick up my 60-year-old mom. He was looking for “Cougars”. Oh geez. This happens all the time. I swear.

Two more days of skiing of Park City and that’s it. I will be flying back to New York for a few days before I fly right back out to Minnesota for work. Until next time…

1. Beautiful Landscapes
2. Great Skiing
3. No “Crowds”
4. Massive

Today instead of taking the bus, we rented a SUV for the day to drive to the mountain. This was a new experience for me as I was the designated driver set forth when I was back in NY before I left on this little trip. Not new in driving, but driving in Utah and in ski cloths for most of the trip.

Back in NY…

*Ring* *Ring*

“Hi Shane. We need your driver’s license number.”

“Why?”

“Oh. We are renting a car instead of taking a taxi to Snowbird.”

“Oh. Why you need my license number?”

“Cause your driving.”

*faceplam*

Besides the obvious that we drove, the skiing was pretty good. So back to the day..

We got picked up by Enterprise Rent-A-Car fairly early. They were a bit late as they forgot our address. Oh well. Nothing to bad. Packed up all the gear, headed back to the Enterprise office, switched the gear to our KIA SUV Rental, set the G.P.S., and headed out to Snowbird which was only 15 miles. It still took a good 40 minutes accounting for the fact that I also had no idea where we were and I was in a vehicle I was completely unfamiliar with. Arriving we parked at base of the mountain and changed fully into our ski gear.

First thing to do: Tickets, Sun Screen, and Tram Ride. Did I mention that there was no wind and perfect sunny skies again? 360 degrees of great view.

I like to remind people who visit this mountain “blue transverse” are really “black transverse”. This mountain is considered just like Aspen Mountain — Experts Only. There greens are really blue runs — one green here is even close to a double blue. (Click here for more videos from Snowbird.)

On the Magic Carpet "Lift"

After getting to the top we found a family just like us that wanted to take pictures. So we took there’s and they took ours. Being new to this mountain myself, I had no idea what run to take. We took a nice easy/med blue to a lift that was really a “magic carpet” that brought us back to the back bowl of this mountain. Mom said we had to experience it for ourselves to really enjoy the trip. Let me tell you it was great. Skiing down to the bowl was fine.

After another ride up to the top from the bowl, we took another trip down looking for more steepness. Reason for this post title: The mountain even during the busy time does not feel like there is a lot of people. The mountain is huge so you hardly ever see any other people on this mountain.

On top of Snowbird Mountain

Instead of staying in one section we visited all the sections to check it all out. This mountain’s black were just a little too much for this trip.  In the future if I get back to this mountain, I’ll do more blacks, but these blacks are only large bumps and it’s very steep. I would really need to be in great physical shape in my legs and upper body strength to be able to do this mountain correctly because one wrong turn you’ll end up with a large pin in your shoulder.

In any case the mountain was good. Very expert only mountain and something that I am, but just not enough time to explore the mountain in only one day of skiing. You need at least 2 days for full exploration and then you are set. There are not a lot of guides on this mountain since the land is in a National Forest. Today’s total in vertical feet was 14,756. Tired!

Tomorrow is our last day in Deer Valley. We are heading there early so we can do at least 25,000 vertical feet.

]]> http://bugssite.org/blog/2010/03/02/where-in-the-world-is-the-average-skier/feed/ 1 http://bugssite.org/blog/2010/02/28/day-2-of-paradise/ http://bugssite.org/blog/2010/02/28/day-2-of-paradise/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:04:00 +0000 Shane http://bugssite.org/?p=720 Today was the 2nd day of skiing at Deer Valley. Even though we only did a half day of skiing, I still clocked in 15,490 (Not Official) vertical feet. Today I started out by waking up super early only to find out that everyone else was exhausted. This helped me also a little bit as I was able to get some work done, help my ankle “heal” up a bit (More on this later), and rest me up for tomorrow’s trip to Snowbird Mountain.

Once we got the to mountain we gathered out skis and poles from the complementary ski storage area which was free of charge to all visitors. We then headed up to the Silverlake Lodge area. Mom and Sis went to take a few runs while I went to Cole Sports, the place where I rented my skis (Even though I got them from the Park City Resort Store) to figure out why my left ankle and shin were all messed up.

After they measured my feet, they realized I had one size too big of a boot. Do’h! That would for sure cause problems because I would have so much wiggle room for my feet to move. After getting re-booted and the skis were adjusted for the new boot, I headed back to the lifts and headed up to meet Mom and Sister awaiting for me.

Mom and Me on Bald Mountain

Doing my first run of the day in the new size boots felt like a blessing. With Snowbird Mountain tomorrow, I will be able to turn and navigate correctly without having my shin hurting. Now I know how Lindsay Vonn felt before she won the Gold in the Downhill Event. So we skied lightly today, but doing close to 20,000 vertical feet is still a lot of skiing in 3.5 hours. We didn’t have to stop for lunch so it was pretty much a go up and down day. We stopped once on top of the Quincy Lift into the little hut (Heated and Running Water… Not really a “hut” per say) to chow down on some energy foods and a trip to the restrooms. That was all the major stopping we did today. Mom even got back into her skis once we were done. It was amazing!

Anyway, I leave this mountain today (We come back one more day on Tuesday) with still high marks on the mountains accessibility, lifts, runs, service, etc.

Being goofy on Flagstaff Mountain

Tomorrow is Snowbird Mountain. This site has a special meaning to our family so I will enjoy it thoroughly.