Not quite a powder day...

...but still pretty good. We had six or seven inches of new snow in the past 24 hours, enough to cover the hard pack (and the snow was heavy enough to stick - there are times you don't want our wonderful light, dry Champagne Powder).

Buddy's was a good as I've ever seen it - perfect packed powder, virgin corduroy. While it was a little wind blown in places, especially on the Storm Peak face, there was some nice soft stuff in the trees, especially Twilight, Shadows and Typhoon.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 19,460 vertical ft and a season total of 139,200 vertical ft (or 13.9% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

Resort Broadband

My current internet service provider is Resort Broadband, a local Steamboat company.

I previously had a Comcast cable internet service, which was great when it worked. The trouble was when you had an outage you were just one of a million customers talking to someone in a call centre somewhere. The last straw was when I had an outage on a Monday and they told me they could send a technician out on Saturday!

Contrast that with the experience I had today when my internet service went out. I was able to talk directly to a technician (Kim, who just happens to be an Aussie) who diagnosed the problem and called me back within half an hour to let me know the plan for replacing the faulty equipment causing the problem and it was fixed within two hours.

Update: I spoke too soon. These guys have five customers in the off season and five hundred during the holidays when the tourists are in town. So my 1.5M service runs at about 100K when the visitors all come in from skiing in the afternoon and start checking their email. Right in the middle of my working day.

Thin pickings

It's another beautiful day in Steamboat and yesterday they opened a whole lot more of the mountain, so I made the most of it and explored some of the runs that I haven't visited since last season. It was fun, but it will be a whole lot more fun with a decent covering of snow. Rolex in particular was interesting. I've never seen moguls with Christmas trees in them before!

I hope that the snow that's forecast for this tonight turns into a good old fashioned winter storm.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 18,052 vertical ft and a season total of 119, 740 vertical ft (or 12% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

Lighting project

Today I replaced this very ugly original fitting...


...with this rather more attractive one

Builders use ^*%# like the original fitting to save money, even though the difference in cost at trade prices is probably four dollars, which is exceeded by at least ten times by the value of the labour involved in replacing the fitting after the fact.

100K

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 15,160 vertical ft, which takes me past 100,000 ft (101,688 to be precise) which seems, at least psychologically, like the first significant milestone on my way to my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft.


For my first nine days I'm averaging a little over 11,000 ft, at which rate I'd need to ski another 80 days, however based on my stats from last year I expect my daily average to increase as the season progresses, so I should hit the target around 75 days.

Boot test

It's a beautiful sunny day here in Steamboat. However my primary purpose of skiing today was to test out my new boots a little more so I could take them back to the shop for some adjustments. Unfortunately my feet a quite wide in relation to their length so it takes quite a bit of work to get ski boots to fit.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 7,470 vertical ft and a season total of 86,528 vertical ft (or 8.7% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

New boots

It was a beautiful bluebird day today and the mountain is virtually deserted.

I bought new ski boots yesterday. For the first run and half I was worried that I'd wasted my money, but as the boots moulded to my feet and the pain subsided, I could feel the transfer of weight to my edges like never before.

There was no additional terrain open to ski today so it was mostly a matter of breaking in the new boots on familiar territory, although I did head over to the Sundown Liftline and skied the upper half. Hopefully they'll open the Elkhead Chair soon so that the rest of the Priest Creek basin is accessible.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 12,130 vertical ft and a season total of 79,058 vertical ft (or 7.9% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

Day 6

The weather forecast for today was for it to be cold, so I waited until noon to head out and added a few extra layers. I didn't need to because it was a beautiful day and while the powder is gone, the snow is perfect.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 11,790 vertical ft and a season total of 66,928 vertical ft (or 6.7% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

Unexpected bonus

There was nothing on last night's weather forecast about snow overnight, so I had planned a slow start this morning. Fortunately my wife Marie looked out the window about 7.15 am and uttered my favourite words - "it looks like a powder day."

It obviously took a lot of people by surprise because there were only 20 people in the gondola line when I arrived around 8.20 am.

A quick run down Rudi's and Blizzard and then up on the BC chair. I couldn't believe it when none of the dozen or so people in front of me on the chair took BC Liftline, leaving me with first tracks.

Then it was up the Storm Peak Express and across to Shadows which I've been dreaming about skiing again all summer long. Along with Closet it was a little wind blown but still soft and deep around those beautiful aspens and largely unskied.

Triangle 3, Cyclone and Bar-UE Liftline were also good, but the deepest untracked snow I found was on the skier's right of Sunset. I also found some deep soft snow in the trees to the skier's left of upper Twister, and Hurricane was pretty good too.

Despite all the snow this week, there's still a few hazards out there because the powder hasn't really had time to pack down, especially around Bar-UE Liftline where I spent some time digging for my ski which detached after I got a little too close to one shrub and Typhoon where I did a really cool (but totally unplanned) rail slide along a fallen tree trunk.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 17,060 vertical ft and a season total of 55,138 vertical ft (or 5.5% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

An offer I can't refuse?

I just received this very attractive email from United offering me unbelievable deals on a skiing holiday.


Lots of places I can choose from, including Steamboat.


Hmmmm, maybe it's an offer I can refuse. It seems a bit excessive to fly from my house to the lifts!

Powder chaser

Today was one of those days where there's a few inches of new powder on top of the previous day's big fall and you go chasing the leftover stashes. I found some good deep snow on the skiers' right of Tornado and likewise on Cyclone (including face shots), all over Triangle 3 (great because it was closed yesterday) and in the middle section of the Bar-UE Liftline.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 11,268 vertical ft and a season total of 38,078 vertical ft (or 3.8% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


Hopefully we'll soon have enough snow to open more of the mountain. As much as I like some of these runs, I'm itching to ski some of my other favourites, especially Shadows and Twilight!

Update: I forgot to mention that it was much colder today than yesterday. It was about 10F (-12C) when I went out at 8.30 am "warming" to 15F by the time I finished at 10.30 am. Also, check out this picture of yesterday's action from the front page of today's newspaper.

Powder day

Two days ago it was like spring, but today it's definitely like winter, the very best of winter. A major storm rolled in last night and brought with it 8-12 inches of Steamboat's famous champagne powder.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 11,530 vertical ft and a season total of 26,810 vertical ft (or 2.7% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


I followed a pair of instructors down BC Liftline for first tracks and was embarrassed to fall on my second turn, but I felt a lot better when one of the instructors fell a few turns further down. Most of the rest was tracked up by the time I got to it because the normal quota of powderhounds was squeezed into about 10% of the mountain, although I did find some very nice lines on Hurricane which only opened later in the morning.

It's still snowing and forecast to continue well into tonight, so it should be more of the same tomorrow, only better!

November spring

The conditions on the mountain right now are like spring skiing which is fine, except that it's November! Today was much like Friday only a little bit more. Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 9,020 vertical ft and a season total of 15,280 vertical ft (or 1.5% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


And now, since it's already Monday in Asia, I need to get to work.

Back on skis

Steamboat's 2006-07 ski season opened yesterday and today was my first day out. Unfortunately all the snow we had in October and early November has melted because it's been so warm the last few days. They've done a great job with snowmaking but it really needs to snow in the next few days.

While there's not a lot of people here it was still a little crowded since everyone was packed into just a few runs. Upper Buddy's was nice and the bumps on Whiteout and BC Liftline were surprisingly good - perhaps because the warm weather had softened them.

My skiing was also much better than I expected given that once again I failed to stay fit during the summer and that I'd only got off the plane from New Zealand yesterday.

Objectively today was only one star, but it's so good to be back on skis that subjectively I'd have to rate it four stars!

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 6,260 vertical ft.

Incompatibility

If you want to understand the key to programmer productivity (and any other task that involves the manipulation of a large number of inter-dependent ideas) read Joel On Software.

What it comes down to is this - interruptions are really, really, really bad for productivity when you are doing this type of work (because every time you are interrupted you need to reassemble all the ideas you were holding in your head in exactly the relative positions they were at the point you were interrupted). The lack of interruptions is one of the main reasons I like working from home (the other reasons are being close to my espresso machine, my wife and the ski lifts, but not necessarily in that order).

However when I'm visiting one of my company's offices I usually end up working at a cube in what we call a 'business centre'. The idea is widespread in big consulting companies now and is usually referred to as 'hot desking'. It's driven by bean counters who believe that it saves money which on the face of it is true because you can squeeze a lot more people in the same amount of space. Of course it's only a saving if you completely ignore productivity, which in my experience is about 25% of what it is when you have a quiet private space (like my home office), at least if you measure productivity in terms of producing the stuff that we deliver to clients and actually get paid for as opposed to 'busy work'.

But someone in our office in Wellington, NZ has taken the concept to new levels of stupidity because the 'business centre' is also the coffee break room. Try preparing a presentation to a client to close a multi-million deal while a dozen people are taking their lunch break around you. I really wonder how the guy that came up with this can justify taking a salary.

I love snow but...

..this is ridiculous. I'm in Canberra, Australia where the summer solstice is a little over a month away. I lived here for most of the 1980's and it snowed twice. And yet right now it's snowing!

Storm warning

The snow we had earlier in the week was well on its way to melting when a major storm moved through Colorado last night.


That's about eight inches here in the valley which usually means at least a foot and a half on the mountain. If only the ski mountain was open, today would be a powder day!

We will be in Australia and New Zealand for the next few weeks, so at least I won't have to watch it snow while I wait for the ski season to start!

Snow and sun

It's been snowing the last few days in Steamboat. The great thing about the weather here is that you still get plenty of sun.


And if you can find yourself a spot in the sun and out of the wind, you can sit outside in a t-shirt quite comfortably. Really.

Talk is cheap

Very cheap. I've posted before about my VOIP phone service which gives me unlimited calls in North America and Western Europe for $21.95 a month and three cents a minute to Australia.

Well Lingo has just added New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and yes, Australia to the list of countries covered by the free unlimited calls! That's right, I can call my family on the other side of the world every single day and it doesn't cost a single cent extra (but Mum, that doesn't mean that I'm actually going to call you every day, OK?)

As well as my Lingo service which has an adapter which allows me to plug in a normal phone handset, I also use Skype on my laptop which has the advantage that I can take it with me on the road. For $4 a month Skype also provides me with a virtual phone number in Canberra, Australia which allows my client and colleagues there to call a local number to contact me wherever in the world I am.

To give you an idea how clueless the traditional telcos are, Qwest (the incumbent carrier in Colorado) is now offering a VOIP service in an attempt to compete with the likes of Lingo before they completely lose all their business. Not only is the monthly rate higher, but for that you pay five cents a minute for calls within the US and nine cents a minute to Australia. Doesn't really compete with free does it?

Shopping trip

We took a trip on the weekend to Glenwood Springs to buy some furniture and to the Home Depot at Avon (near Vail) to buy some new light fittings. It reminded me once again how beautiful Colorado is and how lucky we are to live here.

We started out taking CO 131 south to join Interstate 70.


Then we followed I-70 through Glenwood Canyon.



And then back to Avon where the aspens were at their peak.



Sure it was a 250 mile round trip, but are your shopping trips this scenic?