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.

Let get to it! Categories marked with a * mean that in that category I never saw the movie so it’s usually based on speculation vs. seeing the movie-

• Best Actor* – Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” — $
• Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds” — $
• Best Actress – Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side” — $
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role* – ??? – I have no idea!
• Best Animated Feature Film* – “Up” (Pixar) — $
• Art Direction – Toss up between “Avatar” and “Nine” — $ and % (Avatar Won)
  • Seen ‘Avatar’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’
• Cinematography - “Avatar” — $
• Costume Design* – “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” — %
• Directing – “Avatar” — %
• Best Documentary *- ??? – I have no idea!
• Best Short Documentary* – ??? – I have no idea!
• Film Editing – “District 9″ — %
• Foreign Film* – ??? – I have no idea!
• Makeup - “Star Trek” — $
• Music (Original Score) – “Avatar” — %
• Music (Original Song) – ??? – I have no idea!
• Motion Picture of the Year – “Avatar” — % (Major Fail)
  • Seen ‘Avatar’, ‘The Blind Side’, ‘District 9′, ‘Inglourious Basterds’
• Animated Short Film – ??? – I have no idea!
• Live Short Film – ??? – I have no idea!
• Sound Editing – “Star Trek” — %
  • Seen ‘Avatar’, ‘Star Trek’, ‘Inglourious Basterds’
• Sound Mixing – “Avatar” — %
  • Seen ‘Avatar’, ‘Star Trek’, ‘Inglourious Basterds’, ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
• Visual Effects – “Avatar” — $
• Adapted Screenplay – “District 9″ — %
• Original Screenplay – ??? – I have no idea!

A lot of these movies this year I never got around to watching, but that’s because of work. With 10 nominations for Best Picture it’s really hard to nail down the best picture, but a safe bet is Avatar. In sound editing and mixing Star Trek and Avatar should both be winning awards. This movies I play in my head all the time and the sounds are so distinctive that’s it’s really hard. I guess why the Oscars are ‘The Top Award’.

After the Oscars I will update this post with another symbol that indicates that I got it right or wrong. You can view the complete list here. Thanks for tuning in!

UPDATE 3/8/9 at 1am: After watching the Oscars (more about this later btw…) I was a bit off this year because of the limited number of movies I watched. So now that some movies won (i.e. Hurt Locker) I gotta watch it for sure. Anything marked with a “$” is Right and “%” is Wrong.

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.

1. Hell
2. Bottomless Pit
3. Place of Torment
4. Wretchedness

Place answer here: _____

You pick one? You are correct! They are all possible answers in this version of the SAT.

What a difference 24 hours is in terms of the location of where we are skiing. Today was pure bliss. Nothing short of perfect. Weather again was perfect. Sun, Little Wind, and above 32 degrees that it was steaming hot on the mountain when skiing down. As you might have guessed, we skied Deer Valley today. It was a much better day than skiing at The Canyons yesterday.

This mountain is groomed for perfect skiing and perfect skiing conditions. Let go over some of the fun facts that I learned while on the mountain:

• No Snowboarders – This is a double win for no snow that is scraped down.
• Limited Amount of Tickets Sold – Less people on the mountain.
• Organized Lifts – are spread out so you can take any number of runs and they all go to the same place.
• Food – Was most tasteful. Lots of variety. I got the Chili Turkey. Yummy.
• Foot Rests – Even on the older lifts (which there wasn’t that many) even had foot rests welded on.

Deer Valley: Bald Eagle Mountain Top - Sis, Mom. and Me

Overall a much better skiing day. Lunch had a funny side as well. Mom could not get her skis in her ski bindings after lunch. She’s been having this trouble the entire time I been here except for one day she got it. I did get sunburn on the tip of my nose. The only flesh I expose usually during the ski down even during sunny days and on the way up the lift. I do though got to get my boots changed or modified since my left ankle and shin keep being in pain for the entire day. Can’t be this way for Snowbird mountain on Monday! In total today myself and Mom skied 20,490 vertical feet. Sis did an extra run at the end of the day after both mom’s and my legs could not do anything more.

We are heading back to Deer Valley tomorrow, so I’ll have no idea what to post for tomorrow since I don’t think there will be anything to complain.. only rave. Till next time…

Back to the main point of this days adventures. Today’s mountain sucked big time. As my mom would call it: All System Failed. But lets start from the beginning shall we….

We got up, ate, and headed to the bus. 15 minutes later we arrived at Canyons Mountain. We got the tickets and we proceeded up the Cabriolet lift. This is something you take up to the main skiing area so it’s not factored into the vertical runs. After getting to the “base” of the mountain we headed for the Gondola. We were happy up the gondola and then came the first sign of bad trouble.

We wanted to get to the Tombstone Express lift. There is only one way a single blue run called Chicane. This run had 1,000 people on it coming from all different directions and people were not obeying the ski-right-of-way rules and regulations that are just basic common sense for skiing or for short: Skier Safety. We went up the lift to see if we can get away from everyone and that really didn’t work. We tried a few runs of this lift only to be unsatisfied with results. We then decided we need to try another part of the mountain.. the right “new” side called Murdock Peak.

Getting over was quite a chore. You had to take a lift that brings you over because you can not ski over a cliff. So once we were up we took an unexpected lift up called the Sunset Express lift and we did the run that was right next to it. Nothing to fancy. Again there was a lot of skiers on the run and to many slow pokes as well. So by this time we are pretty much done with the mountain. After riding up the gondola to have lunch at the top, we find out the reason why from a snowboarder in which we shared our ride with: Most skiers on this mountain are not tourists, but locals because it’s a much “rugged” terrain. I had it all backwards in the morning after our first run.

So the greatest part of this day was heading off the mountain for me. Total vertical feet was 13,385. I will not ever visit this mountain ever again. On a side note, we went to the main street of Park City today and went out to dinner and we had a blast.

Tomorrow is Deer Valley and I expect better results.

Recap of 2/24/10: Mom was sick. She did not ski, so it was just myself and sis. We did all groomed runs in a very windy and snowy day with very little viability down the slopes. Even in the very terrible conditions we did 18,885 vertical feet. We ended early as well since sister’s foot was getting cold. So left me lots of energy. I was very bored all evening until I went to bed.

So today I started very early as I mentioned up top. Since it snowed the night before (and it was still snowing when I arrived at the mountain) there was tons of snow on the ground. We are taking a good 7 inches on the base and 10 inches at least on the tops of the peeks.

With my lesson in the morning having virgin snow to ski on was a given. Two runs we went down, it seems liked we were the first ones down minus ski patrol. One was called Vista. Yes. Same name as the worst operating system from Microsoft, but a very gorgeous run with lots of snow and trees.

After my two-hour lesson, I took two trips up the payday lift to ski some blacks while waiting for mom and sister to arrive to the mountain. At this point they have just gotten up, and I been skiing for 3.5 hours and I am already starting to get hungry. I had some power bars on the mountain while heading up the King Con lift.

At lunch, we ended up at a special spot. Sorry. Some secrets stay with the family. At that time though, I have a great picture of me having ‘Helmet Hair’.

Helmet Hair during Lunch

So we ended the day two hours after lunch because the mountain was already started to close down.

My vertical feet today was much higher than mom’s and sisters. With my runs the vertical feet was 10,484 and with mom and sister the vertical feet was 13,414 (Sis went up one time quickly at the end). So today’s total is 10,484 plus 13,414 equals 23,898 vertical feet. Woohooo!

Tomorrow we are heading to the Canyon Mountain to get more variety. Till next time..