It was so deep and soft that I couldn't see on my heal side turns because I was getting face shots. It made me a little nervous in the trees, but it was totally worth it.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Snow!
Loveland's gotten another 30 inches of snow in the past 4 days. After it was super windy Monday, the wind just died and the snow started dumping. We got 16 inches over the 24 hours before 5 am on Tuesday. We've gotten several inches each day since then, too. I had to work all those days, until today. By the end of the stretch, I was more sore from pushing snow than I've been since I quit working out. All the hard work paid off, though. Today may have been the best snowboarding I've ever had in my life. I skipped lunch. It was that good. I found some new runs that I'd never ridden before, and they were amazing. I got fresh tracks all day. Pictures don't really do it justice, but here's one from my phone.
It was so deep and soft that I couldn't see on my heal side turns because I was getting face shots. It made me a little nervous in the trees, but it was totally worth it.
It was so deep and soft that I couldn't see on my heal side turns because I was getting face shots. It made me a little nervous in the trees, but it was totally worth it.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Windy Day
It's an interesting day at Loveland Ski Area. A snow storm is rolling through and supposed to drop 10 - 24 inches of snow. But that's not the unusual part. It's warm (in the upper 20s/lower 30s) and incredibly windy. Gusts at the base of the ski area are probably around 50 mph, which would be common for the top of the ski area. I rode up lift 1 at 8 am and near the top, the wind was blowing the chairs so hard that they were hitting the lift towers. I had to hang on tight. The wind is so bad that Loveland Basin was on 'hold' and didn't open to the public until after 10 am (over 1.5 hours after it was supposed to open). Now, the lift I'm on (the POMA surface lift) and lift 1 are the only two lifts open at the Basin (out of 7 lifts). There is a small mountain of snow growing inside my lift shack from the snow that's being blown through the gaps on the door.
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Saturday, January 15, 2011
Loveland
We had another cold spell in the mountains. The past couple of days it's been in the negative teens when I got to work, and hasn't gotten above zero. On the positive side, we've gotten more snow. Loveland has over 200 inches of snow for the season (that's almost 17 feet!).
Trey & Kaela's Visit
Trey and Kaela flew into Denver for a week long visit on New Year's day, only four days after we got back from Germany. It was really nice to have some visitors and show off the work I've done on the cabin. They got lucky, because the two days before they came in, it never got above minus eight at Loveland Ski Area, both of which I had to work. One morning, it was minus 17 when I got to work. It warmed up for their visit and got into the 20s, which was almost balmy weather for me.
I worked three of the days that they were here, but got two days off to go snowboarding with them. It was definitely fun to have some people to ride with. On most of my days off, I ride by myself, which can get pretty old.
I'll post pictures from the trip as soon as I get them.
I worked three of the days that they were here, but got two days off to go snowboarding with them. It was definitely fun to have some people to ride with. On most of my days off, I ride by myself, which can get pretty old.
I'll post pictures from the trip as soon as I get them.
Christmas
I've had a busy few weeks and haven't had a chance to update my blog. I went to Germany with my family for nine days over Christmas. I flew straight from Denver to Charlotte, NC and met my family there for our trans-Atlantic flight to Frankfurt, Gemrany.
For a while before I moved out to Colorado, my parents expressed concern over me becoming and alcoholic or forming other bad habits. I hadn't seen anyone in my family in several months, so I decided to play a practical joke on them. Before I got off of the plane in Charlotte, I put on a fake lip ring. My family's reaction was priceless. They asked why I hadn't mentioned it before and I could tell that most of them were hiding their true feelings about it. I held up the sharade for about an hour, until we were about to eat dinner (I didn't want to attempt to eat food with it in). The whole time that I had the lip ring in, my mother had been avoiding looking at me and talking to me. She seemed genuinely upset. She barely even hugged me when I saw her. After I took it out, she confessed that she had been thinking the whole time about how she could avoid looking at it and how she would only stand or sit on my left side (the ring was on the right). It was a pretty entertaining eperience.
Our trip to Germany was great. We rented a 9 seat VW van that stuck out like a sore thumb compared to all the small German cars. It was neat because it had a standard transmission, which you just don't see in the United States (especially not on a van). During our nine days we visited Wurzburg, Rothenburg, Nuremburg, and Heidelberg. It snowed almost the whole time we were there (they got over a foot of snow during our trip), which I was greatful for, becuase just as I was leaving Colorado, a huge storm came in that dumped three feet of snow over three days.
I love to visit Germany because it has such a great history and is very old. Some of the cities we visited date back to 1000 AD. Rothenburg is one of the few remaining walled cities and was one of my favorite of the cities we visited. It was also cool because you can still walk up the stairs to the top of the wall walk along it. You can look out the slotted windows that were used to defend the city from attack. There are even houses built into the side of the wall!
I liked Nuremburg a lot, too because it has a lot of more recent history. We visited the Palace of Justice, which is were the Nuremburg Trials were held after World War II. It was very interesting to see the courtroom where some of the Nazi's worst war criminals were tried. I also learned a lot about the history of the trials.
There are a lot of great pictures from the trip on Flickr.
Before I left for Germany, I closed down the cabin so that nothing would go wrong while I was gone. Basically, that consists of shutting off the water and draining the pipes to keep them from freezing. I also turned down the heat in the living room and my bedroom (the only two heaters I had running). I didn't get back to the cabin 'til about midnight, after traveling for around 24 hours and hardly sleeping. I was welcomed by a cold house with no running water. I turned the water back on and filled the water heater, but obviously couldn't take a shower, because there was no hot water, yet. When I finally went into my room to go to bed at 12.30, I realized I had made a big mistake. I have an electric baseboard heater in my room and had turned it almost all the way down before I left. It was about 34 deg F in my room (I have a watch with a thermometer on it that I checked). The baseboard heater works great at keeping my room warm when it's cold out, but lacks enough power to heat it quickly (partially because there is no fan - the heat has to spread through free convection). I got in bed that night with all of my clothes on and curled into a ball, and still froze all night. Getting up for work at 6.30 the next morning was not fun, though at least I could finally take a hot shower.
For a while before I moved out to Colorado, my parents expressed concern over me becoming and alcoholic or forming other bad habits. I hadn't seen anyone in my family in several months, so I decided to play a practical joke on them. Before I got off of the plane in Charlotte, I put on a fake lip ring. My family's reaction was priceless. They asked why I hadn't mentioned it before and I could tell that most of them were hiding their true feelings about it. I held up the sharade for about an hour, until we were about to eat dinner (I didn't want to attempt to eat food with it in). The whole time that I had the lip ring in, my mother had been avoiding looking at me and talking to me. She seemed genuinely upset. She barely even hugged me when I saw her. After I took it out, she confessed that she had been thinking the whole time about how she could avoid looking at it and how she would only stand or sit on my left side (the ring was on the right). It was a pretty entertaining eperience.
Our trip to Germany was great. We rented a 9 seat VW van that stuck out like a sore thumb compared to all the small German cars. It was neat because it had a standard transmission, which you just don't see in the United States (especially not on a van). During our nine days we visited Wurzburg, Rothenburg, Nuremburg, and Heidelberg. It snowed almost the whole time we were there (they got over a foot of snow during our trip), which I was greatful for, becuase just as I was leaving Colorado, a huge storm came in that dumped three feet of snow over three days.
I love to visit Germany because it has such a great history and is very old. Some of the cities we visited date back to 1000 AD. Rothenburg is one of the few remaining walled cities and was one of my favorite of the cities we visited. It was also cool because you can still walk up the stairs to the top of the wall walk along it. You can look out the slotted windows that were used to defend the city from attack. There are even houses built into the side of the wall!
I liked Nuremburg a lot, too because it has a lot of more recent history. We visited the Palace of Justice, which is were the Nuremburg Trials were held after World War II. It was very interesting to see the courtroom where some of the Nazi's worst war criminals were tried. I also learned a lot about the history of the trials.
There are a lot of great pictures from the trip on Flickr.
Before I left for Germany, I closed down the cabin so that nothing would go wrong while I was gone. Basically, that consists of shutting off the water and draining the pipes to keep them from freezing. I also turned down the heat in the living room and my bedroom (the only two heaters I had running). I didn't get back to the cabin 'til about midnight, after traveling for around 24 hours and hardly sleeping. I was welcomed by a cold house with no running water. I turned the water back on and filled the water heater, but obviously couldn't take a shower, because there was no hot water, yet. When I finally went into my room to go to bed at 12.30, I realized I had made a big mistake. I have an electric baseboard heater in my room and had turned it almost all the way down before I left. It was about 34 deg F in my room (I have a watch with a thermometer on it that I checked). The baseboard heater works great at keeping my room warm when it's cold out, but lacks enough power to heat it quickly (partially because there is no fan - the heat has to spread through free convection). I got in bed that night with all of my clothes on and curled into a ball, and still froze all night. Getting up for work at 6.30 the next morning was not fun, though at least I could finally take a hot shower.
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