1.29.2006

Spring Must be Coming

It’s the end of January, but this weekend seemed more like early spring. To celebrate the nice weather I did some hiking and geocaching this weekend. I also went to the rock gym to practice my climbing so that once it’s really spring I can do some outdoor climbing. I’m ready for winter to be over this year. I think the trip out to Whistler got me my snowboarding fix so now I need some warm weather so I can get swimming and camping fixes.

1.26.2006

Parable of the Tunneling Ants

Here is a link to a parable I wrote. Parable of the Tunneling Ants

1.22.2006

Robot update

I thought I'd put in a word for my robot site since a lot of updates have been done there since I last told you about it. Most of these changes are to a whole new section I've recently add, my components section.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Eric and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts today. It’s a very nice museum. They had some really nice exhibits; my favorite was probably the ancient Egyptian section. I’m a sucker for some good mummies. I really need to visit Egypt someday.

One other thing worth mentioning is that this place is huge. Eric and I didn’t dilly-dally much and it took us over 3 hours to cover most of the place. I could totally see spending days there if you could handle that much fine art. Personally three hours is about the perfect amount of time for me, much longer than that and the entertainment factor starts going done hill for this sort of thing for me.

1.19.2006

Give Blood

It was time for me to give blood again so I did. I encourage you to go sign up to donate at the Red Cross web site today.

The Streets of Boston

Just so there is no misunderstanding about my feelings, the streets of Boston suck! I remember reading a few articles about cities in the US with the most confusing road systems and Boston is always near the top. When I came to Boston for the first time I had to drive from the Airport to a hotel in Marlboro. It should have been one hour driver, but I got so lost trying to get out of the city it took me three hours.

Today I took Carolyn to the airport early in the morning. It should be pretty easy to get to and out of the airport. I just take I90 to 93 and then the tunnel to the airport. However Boston felt it was time to close the last few miles of I90 which made getting there difficult and getting out a nightmare. I freaking hate Boston. I90 goes from Boston to Seattle. I was on I90 out in Seattle just last week and it’s doing fine there, but in Boston they closed the sucker down. It seems like they could just close down one of the lanes instead of shutting the whole interstate down. At the very least they need to put up some detour signage to get me out of the airport. I’d be willing to wager that this part of I90 in Boston is the only section of the 3000+ mile highway that is completely shut down.

Did I mention the streets of Boston are stupid? I'm fine now, my rant is over.

1.16.2006

Whistler/Seattle Trip

I'm back folks! I hope you didn't miss me too much. To try and make my long absence up to you, I'm going to make this extra long entry about my trip to Whistler and Seattle. Okay, I imagine most of you can see though that and are thinking that I would have make this a long post no matter what, and you're right. You guys are just too smart for me. See how I smoothly worked in that complement to my reader base? Maybe I'm the smart one here...

It all started with a long-long flight to Seattle, or should I say a long flight to Dallas followed by a long flight to Seattle. Don't ask me what kind of crack smoking monkey schedules a flight from Boston to Seattle with a layover in Dallas. What I do know is that monkeys under the influence of illegal chemical substances should stop making flights. Anyways after those flights, Eric and I drove up through Vancouver to Whistler. When we finely got to Whistler after our 19 hours of travel we slept. Boy howdy did we sleep.

We all woke up early the next day with a pleasant surprise. Four inches of fresh new snow! We were stoked and headed up the hill. After a series of chairlifts we got up to the very top of Blackcomb Mountain. The new snow created some awesome powder at the top of the mountain that we were plowing through and then Eric went down... When he got back up he pulled off his glove and I saw what was the most swollen thumb I've ever seen. We stopped at the ski patrol and bandaged up his thumb and then got to the bottom of the mountain. Eric went to the doctor. Newy and I decided to go back up the mountain since there wasn't much else we could do for Eric. Up on the mountain we had great snow conditions. Late in the afternoon we came down the mountain and checked on Eric. The doctor said he had torn some muscles in his hand and he probably shouldn't do any more snowboarding this week.

On the second day, Eric decided he would stay around town and take some pictures. Newy and I decided we'd go up the mountain for some riding in the 18 inches of snow we got during the night. This snow without a doubt was the best snow I'd ever snowboarded in and I do mean in not on. There were times when I was up to my chest in powder. I'd go off a little jump and come down in a trough where the snow was built up and there would be an explosion of white. A second or two later I'd be able to see again. It was truly an amazing day of snowboarding. I didn't want it to end, but eventually my muscles stopped working properly and I had to call it a day.

That night we ate at the Blackcomb Pizza Grill. After a hard day of snowboarding anything tastes good, and wood baked pizza tastes heavenly. Later that night Eric and I were soaking my soar muscles in the outdoor hot tub with snow falling on our head. Eric decided he needed to get in on these sick snow conditions. That night we figured out a way we could protect his thumb from further damaged. That night like every night I was in Whistler, it snowed.

On the third day Eric, Newy, and I headed out to play in our 10 new inches of snow. The conditions were even sicker than the day before. I took what is probably my favorite run of my life this day. It was off the top of Blackcomb Mountain and I cut across some steep rocky slopes into some undisturbed powder in the glades. It was an exquisite run where I weaved between trees through waist deep powder all the way down to the bottom of the chair lift. Eric's hand was fine, but his feet started to hurt too much to continue snowboarding. Newy and I were exhausted from all the snowboarding and skiing we had been doing for the last three days so we called it a day around lunch. After lunch Newy had to leave to go and catch his flight. That afternoon Eric and I hit a few geocaches in the area which was a nice way to keep our legs stretched out. Later that day we were in the hot tub again and were talking to some of the locals. They claimed this week was getting the best snow you ever see in Whistler and that you get a week like this once every five years or so.

The next day was our last day to go out. Eric and I were both showing the wear of the past three days of snowboarding. Eric rented some skis so his feet wouldn't hurt so much. I was surprised at how good my muscles were doing, but I had some bruises on my legs were the top of my boots meet my legs that hurt a fair amount. I talked to some of the workers at a snowboard shop and they said it was probably because I had my boots too tight these last three days. I loosened up my boots so the bruising wouldn't get any worse. Eric and I headed out for our 5 new inches of powder. It was a great last day of boarding. We even got to save a man who fell off a cliff. Well sort of... What happened is he skied off the side of the trail and fell nearly 15 feet straight down. Some people on a nearby chairlift shouted that there was a man down. Eric and I joined the down guy's friend to help pull him out which we accomplished just before the ski patrol people got there. If he hadn't hit that tree he would have fell another 15 feet into a river and I imagine things would have been much worst, but thanks to that tree everything turned out fine.

After a full day of snowboarding / skiing we went to a nearby tubing park. On my first run I had them "give me all the spin you can muster". I was fairly impressed with the amount of spin they managed to get into the tube I was on. Good stuff. On the last run Eric and I raced. I started out with a much quicker start and was celebrating my victory about half way down the hill, but he somehow edged out a victory at the line by a few inches. I suspect he had a bit more momentum at the bottom. Next time I go tubing I'm going to fill my pockets with lead.

The next day (Thursday the 19th) we drove back to Seattle. There I met up one of my best friends from my sabbatical at Glacier National Park. I was super excited to see Emily again, and from the story she told me about what she had to go through to get to me she was also excited to see me. First off you need to realize Emily doesn't have the most reliable car in the world. It's an electric blue 76 Plymouth Valiant. Luckily it did start so she was able to start her odyssey to me. She was hoping for no rain since her car leaks, but the odds of that were slim since it's been rained in Seattle for the last 28 days. Not only did the rain gods not listen to Emily's wish, they laughed at her. Actually I imagine they laughed so hard they must have been crying because during her drive over was some of the hardest rain we had while I was in Seattle. Because of this she had to turn the wipers to high speed. Evidently this mode doesn't get tested too often on her Valiant because shortly there after her passenger side wiper blade went flying off. Being deterred by neither the waterfall in her car, nor the missing wiper blade Emily continued onward and eventually made it. After updating each other on the past year, we headed to out to Freeport and saw the sights. The highlights were a giant troll under a bridge eating an old VW bug, and a statue of Lenin brought over from Russia.

The next few days we did some hiking, exploring of Seattle, geocaching, and general hanging out. The whole vacation was a blast.

I'll be posting a link to many more pictures for this trip in a few more days when I get all of the pictures from everyone gathered together. I hope you enjoyed the reading!

1.15.2006

Pictures

I'm flying back home late tonight so I should have a real post about this trip done sometime tomorrow, but I wanted to get the only bad news of the trip out of the way. There was an accident while reading my pictures so most of them got destroyed :( The good news is I have some of them from the first few days of the trip and other people did take a few pictures which I'm going to gather up. The picture coverage won't be the typical "Moe-crazy-amount-of-pictures" coverage, but there will enough pictures. Once I have everyone’s pictures from this trip I'll make a special website with all the surviving pictures for this trip and post a link to it on this blog.

1.06.2006

Exodus

The time of my exodus hath arrived. I shall venture forth on my flying chariot into the sky. When I cometh down it shall be in Settle, a distant land near the promised land of Whistler. I’ll let you all know exactly how rock’n this snowboarding trip was when I get back in 10 days.

1.01.2006

Happy New Year

Hope everyone out there had a good and safe new year's eve. I spent new year's eve eating pineapple and watching the ball drop with Carolyn.

2006 should be a great year!