United still sucks

I've blogged before on how hopeless United Airlines are.

I've just returned from a one night/one day trip to Washington DC. I managed to use some miles to upgrade to what US carriers insist on calling "First Class", but the experience still managed to remind me how bad these guys are.

In United's defence let me begin by at least admitting that the attitude of their staff has generally improved over the past couple of years. I think they've finally woken up to the fact that their jobs are on the line. I should also add that this is the first trip I've taken in ages when every flight was on time, no connections were missed and no bags were lost (the latter helped by only having carry-ons)!

But the cabin environment and especially the food continue to put United at the bottom of the heap (right at the bottom now that Northwest have been absorbed by Delta). On the way out dinner consisted of a salmon salad which was basically some very sad looking lettuce leaves and what looked like the lowest possible quality tinned salmon. On the way back "dinner" consisted of a ham sandwich on the driest most unappetising bread roll I've ever seen.

Watering the cat

Two things to conclude from this photo: my sister-in-law's cat is weird and very spoilt!

Oxford

We visited Oxford today; lunch with some friends and then a bicycle ride around town which is the best way to see the town, especially the areas around the university colleges. Fortunately we had good weather, not something you take for granted here in England!

What global economic crisis?

If there's a global economic crisis going on right now (not to mention a flu pandemic scare as well) then nobody told the hordes of tourists who overran London this past weekend. Sure it was a three day weekend, but there were plenty of Chinese and Indians amongst the crowds and I'm pretty sure they didn't just pop over here after work on Friday.

We were part of the horde as well (here for a little longer than a three day weekend, on my way back from South Africa). On Sunday we visited the War Cabinet Rooms where Churchill and the British War Cabinet ran the British war effort during the worst of the German bombing. It's one of those fantastic sites where you really have the feeling of walking in the footsteps of history. The fact that much of it was simply closed up on the last day of the war and left that way until the mid-1970's, unseen and untouched, is amazing.

Where's the cloaking device when you need it

Only our homeland security overlords in Washington DC could be stupid enough to think that flying a 747 over New York was a mission that could be kept secret. Or perhaps the cloaking device they borrowed from the Star Trek set didn't work...oh wait, that's science fiction and we live in the real world, but clearly someone in Washington doesn't.

More Pretoria rugby

I attended another Super 14 Rugby match in Pretoria last night. This time it was the Bulls vs the Waikato Chiefs, again from New Zealand. The score was close right to the end, which is always good for maintaining interest. The home team won, which is also good for keeping the crowd in a good mood!

The weather was ideal, until one minute from the end when there was an unseasonably late thunderstorm. Not quite like the awesome summer thunderstorms here, but we still got soaked walking back to the car. It was still a fun evening though.

Thanks to Pieter for the ticket and the company.

Paying an eToll in a rental car

I noticed this sticker on the window of the car I rented today to drive from Steamboat to Denver to get my flight via London to Johannesburg.


(apologies for the quality of the image; due to the slope of the window it was difficult to get a shot without the sunlight behind the subject)

I wish Avis in Australia did this. Sydney in particular is a pain with a rental car because there are toll roads everywhere and all of them are electronic payment only. If you don't have an eTag unit (as you wouldn't as a tourist) there is a process to register online to pay the tolls, but the user interface is lousy and in my personal experience it doesn't actually work; the one time I used it, I received an unpaid toll notice even though I'd registered.

New countdown

The counter at the bottom of this blog page has been updated.

Only 226 days to the 2009-2010 ski season (but who's counting!)

And so it ends

Today was closing day for the 2008-09 ski season here in Steamboat.

I went out on principle, expecting it to be mediocre at best, but I must say despite being a bit damp (being warm enough to rain at lower elevations) it was OK. It's wasn't great, but it was good enough to ski Closet, which is not bad for April 12.

Here's today's track for 10,374 vertical ft.


And here's the consolidated track for the season, a total of 450,000 vertical ft in 35 days of skiing.

Five years

Today we've been living in Steamboat full time for five years (notwithstanding the amount of time we spend on the road, it's our permanent and only home).

We owned a condo here since July 2002, but we were living in Singapore at the time which is even further from Steamboat than Australia.

Birthday skiing

I only went out today because I like the idea of skiing on my birthday. I didn't expect it to be great, but it was probably the worst day of the season. We had a warm day yesterday and then the spring slush froze hard overnight, and now it's not warm enough today to soften it again.

So only 5,102 in vertical ft in 45 minutes. That's my least vertical of any day this season. But you know what they say; the worst day of skiing is still better than the best day of whatever...

Abysmal user interface design (but that's not the surprise)

Here's an example of abysmal user interface design. That's not surprising; I see this crap every day. But this is from Apple! (it's part of setting up the "Genius" service in iTunes)


Is the second box for your password or does it have something to do with AOL? And what on earth does the red arrow mean?

This could easily have been fixed by putting the two radio buttons to select whether to use your Apple iTunes Store ID or your AOL ID across the top horizontally, keeping this selection visually separate from the entry of your user ID and password.

Cream cheese

Today's post is not about food; "cream cheese" is an attempt to describe the texture of the 6 inches of new snow that fell overnight. Whatever you call it, in my five seasons skiing this mountain, I've never seen snow quite like it. Usually with conditions like they were last night - the temperature around 30F, the humidity higher than usual, and windy - what we end up with is cement; heavy, sticky and very tiring to ski. Today's snow was definitely crusty, but somehow it wasn't all that hard to ski. In fact it was an absolute hoot.

With the wind, the gondola was still closed when I arrived at the base around 9.30 am, so it was the Christie Express and then across to Thunderhead. It was a little slow, but so much better than the days only two seasons ago before the Christie Express when a closed Gondola meant an hour and a half to get up the mountain.

When I jumped on the Storm Peak Express the word was that Sundown was closed, so I skied Closet with the intention of traversing through Rainbow Saddle back to Storm Peak. But when I hit Duster and saw Sundown running I knew I had to head down that way and ski the trees some more. Almost exactly like Wednesday, from there it became Sundown Express, ski the trees, repeat (six times). The Priest Creek face is the best tree skiing in the world, so who can blame me!

Here's today's track for 17,980 vertical ft in 2 hours and 53 minutes. The final verdict; a better day than I expected and much better than April 4 has any right to be!

Close but no dice

Monday's declaration as the best day of the season stands, but only just. There's been another two feet of snow since then, but the difference today was that it was a little windy and not so cold overnight, so the snow was heavier.

I was in the gondola line at 8.10 am anticipating a big powder day. I began with a traverse from the top of the gondola to the lower half of Whiteout. Days like today make skiing the big bumps seem like cheating.

Then it was onto the BC chair for fresh tracks down Sunnyside. And then, unlike Monday where I circulated on the Pony Express, today it was the Sundown Express. Ski the trees. Repeat. Six times.

After that I decided to head down, but couldn't resist a couple of circuits on the Thunderhead Express. I'm glad I did because the best run of the day was in the trees to skier's right of Ted's Ridge where the snow was untracked and waist deep. Whoa!

Here's today's track for a total vertical 21,498 ft in 3 hours and 10 minutes.


Update (21 April): Just uploaded from my phone (self-portrait). Here I am waiting for the bus after skiing. Looks pretty wintery doesn't it?

Best day of the season

There's nearly two weeks left in the season, but awesome powder days are rare in April, so at the risk of being premature, I'm going to declare today the best day of the 2008-09 season, at least for me (since I missed so much of this season I won't be so bold as to declare it the best day, but I don't care about those days I didn't get to ski...)

The 5 am report said 15 inches (yes 15) of new snow overnight. Unlike many Spring storms it was cold enough to give us the true Champagne powder we love and crave.

On a powder day I usually start on the Pony Express. Today I started there and continued there. When it's deep the run underneath the chair is just awesome, so today I did it three times in a row.

I didn't ski many trees today - I twisted my knee slightly on Thursday so I was trying to take it a little easy - but I didn't need to because there was plenty of fresh, deep stuff out in the open.

Here's the track for 17,952 vertical ft in 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Travel plans go bad

I was supposed to travel to DC today to attend a meeting with my bosses tomorrow morning.

Things started to go south when American Airlines called me this morning at 4 am to tell me that my flight via Dallas/Forth Worth had been canceled. They managed to rebook us on a flight via Chicago, but with only 80 minutes connection time between flights.

That's important because the inbound flight from Chicago was delayed by 80 minutes. I've done this plane trip caper a few hundred times before, so I knew immediately that even if they made up a little time on the turnaround, we'd be left with less than half an hour of connection time in Chicago. Even if by some miracle we made it the chances are our bags wouldn't and there's nothing worse than doing a 9 am presentation with nothing to wear except the smelly shirt and jeans you wore on the plane the previous day(yes, that's the voice of experience as well). So we made the call about 2 pm not to even bother going to the airport.

What is one to do in such circumstances? Go skiing of course. I was on the mountain by 2.20 pm skiing the foot of additional powder that had fallen overnight. Since I started very late (and skied hard yesterday on the assumption that I wouldn't be skiing today) I only managed to stay out for an hour and forty five minutes. Even so I managed 11,117 vertical ft. Basically I did four circuits on the Sundown Express skiing the trees and then I ended with my favourite lower mountain run, Vertigo.


So today was a complete bonus, not only because I was supposed to be traveling, but also because when my Mum called just before Christmas with the terrible news that my Dad had cancer, I mentally wrote off the rest of the season (and I'd only been home from South Africa and Rome for a week at that point). But as much as I love the powder, I'm with Inigo Montoya on this one:

Inigo Montoya: HELLO! MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA! YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIE!
[Inigo corners Count Rugen, knocks his sword aside, and slashes his cheek, giving him a scar just like Inigo's]
Inigo Montoya: Offer me money.
Count Rugen: Yes!
Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that.
[He slashes his other cheek]
Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please...
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want...
[Rugen knocks Inigo's sword aside and lunges. But Inigo traps his arm and aims his sword at Rugen's stomach]
Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch!
[He runs Count Rugen through and shoves him back against the table. Rugen falls to the floor, dead]

Real powder

After yesterday's psuedo-powder day, as forecast today was a real powder day. Another five plus inches on top of yesterday five and colder temperatures meaning drier snow set it up perfectly.

And the other element in the mix? There's nobody here. I didn't get out until 9:45 am and I still got fresh tracks everywhere and even by the time I finished at 1:15 pm there where still plenty of unskied stashes to be found. It was probably the least crowded powder day I've ever seen.

It's hard to say on a day like this what was the best run of the day. The trees to skier's right of Rolex were good enough to try twice so that probably wins, but it was all good. Christmas Tree Bowl (double black diamond) was definitely the most exciting!

Here's today's track. 22,907 vertical ft.

Almost powder

By the standards of late March, and compared to the weather we've been having the past week with maximum temperatures around 60F (16C), today was pretty close to a powder day with the temperature around freezing and 5 inches of fresh snow overnight.

That's not enough snow to cover up the hard pack on the groomed runs, but certainly enough in the trees, especially if you picked the spots where the wind usually blows the snow into deeper drifts. So today that meant Triangle 3, Shadows and two slightly different runs through Twilight (2:20 and 2:40 trees if you like).

Rolex was terrible - a thin covering of snow in big, ugly, crusty bumps, but I found a glade of aspens to skier's right of the bottom half of Rolex that I've never skied before for some reason and it was pretty good.

Fortunately the forecast is for it continue snowing tonight, so there's a decent chance of a real powder day tomorrow.

Here's today's track. Something went screwy with my GPS - the additional corrected track is in yellow, and ignore the track circled in magenta. Total vertical of approximately 13,000 ft.

Snowshoeing Howelsen

Marie and I snowshoed the Nordic trails on Howelsen Hill today.


It's not as pretty as Spring Creek or Rabbit Ears, but it's right there in town meaning you can easily take a one hour walk at lunch time, which is exactly what we did.


As you can see, it was warm - t-shirt warm.

Airline customer service

I recently had an interesting (positive) experience with one airline's customer service which contrasts with some similar experiences that were handled poorly by other airlines.

Back in February I was on a flight from Johannesburg to London with British Airways (on my way back home to Steamboat) when the in flight entertainment system failed completely. Those of us in business class received in flight shopping vouchers to the value of £75 (roughly $US108) whilst the economy passengers received £25. The interesting thing is it was an overnight flight and I went straight to sleep, so I wasn't going to watch the movies anyway!

As good as that was, I had an even better experience in 2003 with Singapore Airlines when they sent me a voucher for $US100 when I had trouble with the movies on a flight from Singapore to Seoul - the difference was that I was flying economy and the total value of my ticket wouldn't have been more than $US400.

By contrast, the last three long haul flights I've done with Qantas I've failed to watch a complete movie due to problems with the in flight entertainment. What do they offer by way of compensation? Nothing, nada, zip. I have the highest tier status with Qantas which means that they treat me a lot better than the average passenger, but I don't even bother complaining. My experience is that Qantas customer service have a form letter that they use to respond to every complaint, which translated from airlinese into English basically says "the dog ate our homework".

Apart from venting (which is cathartic but otherwise unconstructive) I've actually been thinking about why the Qantas system is so unreliable. As best I can tell, their system is supplied by Panasonic. Enough said. Japanese consumer electronics firms are abysmal (on a good day) at software and user interfaces.

I also flew business class with South African Airways from Perth to Johannesburg back in February, and whilst I didn't have any technical problems, it's the only time I've not been able to find anything worth watching on a system with 50 or more channels on demand.