Travel Diary

Winter Vacation

I think the choices were some place cold, or some place warm to spend New Year’s Eve this year. The winner was … the cold! The very, very cold!

New Toys

One of the things I brought along was a brand new toy, a 360 degree action camera. It's like a GoPro, but records in an entire circle or sphere around you, which is pretty cool, something brand new. And I was excited because it arrived it right before the trip.

In fact, if that trip hadn't been delayed a few days due to the canceled flights, I would not have been able to use it. So hurrah! Although, I didn't really have a chance to check it out very well, so I didn't know what exactly it could do or couldn't do or what it required – which became very important. And the first day on the trip, I brought it up to the slopes and discovered right away that I could not use it because it did not have a memory card. Did not think to check that out, and they didn't sell memory cards at the slopes.

So that really sucked. I did buy one that night at a local Walmart type store, and I had one for the next day. Thus, the next day I was able to take a bunch of footage.

However (seems like a trend here) it turns out that I had accidentally set it on to time lapse recording, so all of my trips down the slopes were at a massive fast speed, which really kind of sucked. But there you have it. That's all the footage I could get. Lessons learned.

A lot of the first part of the trip, I was quite tired, I guess from the long flight and not enough sleep, so there was a fair amount of time of me just curled up in a ball trying to get some rest. Often in front of the fireplace.

And the cold didn't help, either. I think I get tired more easily when it's colder. Just a weird thing, perhaps to conserve energy subconsciously. I don't know. Viva central heating and fireplaces though.

Drink Up!

Of course, there were plenty of choices for drinks: beer, wine. I even brought port, but we didn't really ever use that at all. Mainly just a lot of beer was consumed and wine and a little champagne around New Year's Eve, of course

Shoveling Is Fun

I actually spent some time shoveling snow. I shoveled the back porch first because we were going to have New Year's out there and they had probably a half a foot of snow and plus, it was great exercise which I enjoyed quite a lot. Just that nice cold air. Ironic because I'm not fond of the cold, but it can be fun exercising in the cold once you have warmed up some. Then I also moved on to shovel the front driveway, and that was kind of helpful since we needed it, yeah, we needed to be able to get the cars out and having snow in a way wasn't helping. So, yeah, got some great exercise

Snowboarding went well. I'd say no real huge accidents. Just a few minor falls. But I also kind of take it easy and don't really take many risks while I do the sport. Though if I want to get better, I probably have to push myself more. But it was fun and very cold on the mountain. I'd say it was probably down to four degrees. I believe I dressed up enough. I think I had four layers on and apparently that did the trick. One layer was even my electric jacket, except it stopped working. Luckily I have two of them, but alas, the one I actually brought on the trip stopped working, so I brought it along for nothing helpful except a little extra fabric. Oh well. Yeah, two great days of the slopes. Got some fun runs in and some, of course, time lapse video and a few photos here and there.

Back on the Chain Gang

Chains are interesting because on the mountain passes, you sometimes need chains and you have to stop the car, put them on and then later stop the car and take them off. And it’s tough when it feels like it’s negative-20 with the wind blowing heavily on the mountain so your hands get cold pretty darn fast – and it's hard to get the chains on and off with gloves on. So a little bit of a dilemma there. But we got past it. It was just a long drive home with about a three-hour delay due to the heavy snowfall. At least it was always moving, just at a very, very slow snow pace.

So Much Cold

It was the coldest I've been in my life, I guess, because of their being up on that mountain with the wind blowing and it was just cold there in general. So it was kind of fun since I broke my cold record, as I think my record had been seven degrees in New York City in 2013. And now it was like four degrees or less, though again, hard to tell up on the mountain. Nevertheless...it was extremely cold.

New Year’s Eve

And finally, we had the New Year's Eve party, which went really well with a lot of karaoke being sung before and after. And then a toast to the new year, so good times all around. It was a great crowd to hang out with for the week. Just kind of nice to relax, and talk, and watch sports, and drink some brews, and bring in the new year. Good times all around. I look forward to next year.