It's been 31 days since my last fix

My last powder fix that is. Actually no, it's been zero days since my last powder fix! The 5 am report said 5 inches at the summit but it was more like 7 inches by 8.30 am and 10 inches in the trees. Shadows and Lights Out were fantastic and Twilight was even better.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 13,933 vertical ft and a season total of 240,273 vertical ft (or 24% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).

Big food, little exercise

It's amazing what five weeks back in Australia with lots of eating and very little exercise will do for your conditioning. Not good. Although I could use altitude adjustment as my excuse for taking it so easy today. But having set out to take it easy and just cruise around on the groomers, I couldn't resist Shadows!

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 10,482 vertical ft and a season total of 226,340 vertical ft (or 22.6% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).


Because I've missed the last five weeks I'm now a long way behind my total at this time last season (375,639 ft) but I missed a lot of days late in the season last year while I plan to ski pretty hard from now on, so I'm still pushing to make my goal. Let's see.

Homecoming

The downside of living in Steamboat is that it's tough when you have to leave. The upside of that is that it feels fantastic to come back. I've liked most of the places I've lived (Manila was 'interesting' but I don't think I could actually say I liked it), and there's several cities in various parts of the world where I've spent enough time that when I return I immediately feel at home, but I've never had the same feeling that I get when I come home to Steamboat.

That's a long winded way of saying we arrived back last night from a month in Australia and it feels great to be home. It's especially tough being away during the ski season, but at least I didn't miss a lot of snow.

So now I can continue to work on achieving at least one of my resolutions for 2007, to ski a million vertical feet this season. My other resolution was to spend less time on planes, but given that I've already done 11 flights and 13,000 miles since January 1 I don't think I'm doing so well on that one!

Time for George to fall on his sword

Once again George W. Bush blames those who don't show him absolute loyalty, removing the commanders who disagree with his desperate last roll of the dice "troop surge".

There's only one commander who deserves to be relieved of his command and that's the commander-in-chief who so willfully and arrogantly led the United States into this unnecessary and disastrous war.