Mele Kalikimaka!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, I did! We ended up having a white Christmas here in Arkansas, and some might say that too many people wished for it... We got a foot of snow, yep you heard that right 12"! The bad part is that we had freezing rain before the snow and that caused the trees to be weighed down and that mixed with gusting winds caused the trees to fall and take out power lines. This morning the radio said about 250,000 homes in Arkansas were with out power. I was very lucky that I didn't lose power but my buddy did so he came over and we finished cooking his ribs at my place, and yes they broke da mouth!










Today I drove around just looking both the winter scenery as well as all the devastation from the falling trees.






Then I decided why not go for a hike as the state is basically shut down so that's what Brian and I did. First we took my generator over to another friends house to give him some power then we hiked Pinnacle and it was breath taking (and slippery!). I don't thing 10 people made it to the top today so it was pretty neat to see the untouched snow and ice covering the trees on top. I want to blame it on the snow but wow was I out of breath hiking to the top today... Oh well I guess I am getting a little older too, :)









Now I am back at home and relaxing and thought I should share this with everyone. Have a great rest of 2012 and know that I am doing well in Little Rock. Aloha!

A Beautiful Day

I know it' been a while and I don't have the time to write now but it's a beautiful day!

Snow???

OK this is what the weather channel is saying for today =)

A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM MDT TUESDAY.

SNOW WILL SPREAD OVER ALL OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING BY 8 AM AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH TONIGHT. THE SNOW WILL BE HEAVY AT TIMES TODAY AND EARLY TONIGHT. ACCUMULATIONS OF 12 TO 18 INCHES IN EAST CENTRAL WYOMING WITH UP TO 20 INCHES IN THE NORTHERN LARAMIE RANGE. FIVE TO 10 INCHES OF SNOW WILL ACCUMULATE OVER THE REST OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING BY SUNRISE TUESDAY.

ALSO...NORTH WINDS WILL BE GUSTING 45 TO 55 MPH WHICH WHEN COMBINED WITH THE HEAVY SNOW WILL CREATE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ACROSS THE AREA.

A BLIZZARD WARNING MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. FALLING AND BLOWING SNOW WITH STRONG WINDS AND POOR VISIBILITIES ARE LIKELY. THIS WILL LEAD TO WHITEOUT CONDITIONS...MAKING TRAVEL EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. DO NOT TRAVEL. IF YOU MUST...HAVE A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT WITH YOU. IF YOU GET STRANDED...STAY WITH YOUR VEHICLE. FOR SPECIFIC ROAD AND TRAVEL CONDITIONS IN WYOMING AND NEBRASKA...PLEASE DIAL 5 1 1.

So far it's starting to get windy but now blizzard, keep your fingers crossed as I would love to have a snow day. The only problem is that this is the one time when I really need to fly at work =( Oh well just like Dad says "Whether you are aware of it or not the universe is unfolding as it should."

I'll keep you updated, Aloha!

Steamboat

So what have I been doing with my free time… Well I put on some fancy fog/Off Road lights on my jeep, you will find out why this is important later. Here is what she looks like now:

Then today I went to Steamboat with Jared and Liz, it was a blast as the snow was perfect and the weather was bearable. I say bearable because the morning started off at 11 degrees and the wind was howling but the wind calmed down some and the temps were manageable even though we thought that the weather was supposed to be much nicer. On the plus side there was a nice few inches of powder and being a weekday the mountain was all ours. We never waited for a lift and never felt crowded as is normally the case at these fancy resorts during the weekend.

So yes the boarding was great and I had a blast playing in the trees and catching some air, yes I have witnesses but of course most of them will say that I landed on my head, but that was only once =) All in all I can’t complain one bit about the boarding and I would love to do it again and again.

Now I said I would talk about the new lights on the Jeep, well after our dinner (yes that bear tried to eat with us but I scared him off) I wanted to show off my new lights. So I had on the regular head lights, then the high beams, then my KC lights. Boy they were bright, so much so that I thought I could turn off my regular lights, I did and they were plenty bright. As any curious driver I decided that I should just drive with my normal lights when others were on the road. Well in the Jeep the lights are not on the staring wheel but rather a knob that you “pull out” from the dash… Well when I went to turn them back on I literally PULLED the knob OUT of the dash! Yep what are the odds but it just so happen that tonight all that gym time decided to show it’s presence and rip out the headlight switch in the Jeep. So now I have no way of turning on my normal headlights.

After taking apart the dash and freezing as I worked on the Jeep with the door open I realized that there was nothing that I could do until I got home. So I adjusted the KC lights down low and decided I would turn on my flashers when someone approached from behind as I had no running lights.

This all worked and I got us home with only one truck driver flashing his high beams at me. Now at least I have a project for tomorrow. And on that note I do believe it is bed time. Hope you enjoy the video and I will chat later, Aloha!

Winter Park

I went Snowboarding for the first time this season, it was great to get back in the cold! I went with Chris to Winter Park and we had fun playing on the mountain.


This was Chris’s first time on a snowboard so he was a little slow at first but was picking it up quickly.


I had fun getting the feel of the board back and I am just a little sad that this will be my only skiing till I get back in the end of Feb… Oh well.

First real snow

We got a lot of snow, so I got to shovel the driveway for the first/second/third time. I decided that I am not going to shovel it anymore as I think it will be just fine without my help. Any way just wanted to share some of the winter pictures.

This is after 2 times shoveling the whole driveway, I am getting lazy!

Snow

More Snow

Aloha

Utah - Powder Mountain

OK so this week was awesome!!!

First off Scott got back from Balad so I took the week off and he drove out to see me. Unfortunately I-80 was closed so he got to spend the night in his Tacoma.

We had fun in Cheyenne visiting a few parties and getting to shoot my guns! It had been way to long, I had not fired some of my guns after leaving AZ in 2000. It was a shock to learn that ammo prices had done nothing but shot sky high, but hey what can you do.

Then we decided to head to Utah to my buddies cabin in Eden, above Ogden. It was pretty funny because as we drove across I-80 (the same road that closed on Scott) the weather started to get bad. As luck would have it we ended up spending the night on I-80 because they closed it again, yea second night for Scott.

I-80 Closed

Once we got to Eden, my buddy Ricky met us at a store in town and said we had to hit Powder Mountain RIGHT NOW! So we had not even showered after sleeping on the floor of some dudes motel room. Yea it was way nice of him and his buddy that we met at a bar to let us share there warm room, sure beats the -5 it was outside! But like I was saying we headed straight to the mountain.

If you didn’t gather from the interstate being closed, there was a lot of snow! There was over a foot of fresh powder on the mountain. So any run would have been just fine by me but Ricky wants to take us to a part of the mountain where there are really no named runs, just a side of a mountain that you get to figure out how you want to get down. It was insane! First I have never snowboarded in so much powder, second I was now going down black diamonds that I would never have attempted and third this was insane!!!

I guess once you learned how to deal with the feet of powder it got better. It really was not that hard to go down double diamonds as the snow would slow you down and it did not hurt at all to fall. I was flipping head over bum and it did not hurt one bit, it was really a lot of fun.

So after 4pm we called it a day and went home to dig out the cabin. There was so much snow you had to cut stairs in the snow just to get inside. You can see that the patio was buried and there was snow up half way on the windows, this was crazy!




It snowed another foot the first night and the skiing was again just insane! Karyn a college buddy of ours made it down from Montana to join in the festivities.



It had been a few years sense I last saw Karyn and about 6 for Scott. We all had a great time catching up on stuff. Because Karyn is not a pro skier we hit the mountain that was walking distance of the cabin and still had a blast. As you could imagine there was another foot of fresh powder for us to play in.

Today was jumping day, Scott and myself were trying to catch air on anything we could find. Scott liked landing the jumps were as I really enjoyed the flying part and was not so concerned about the landing =) I will say that by the end of the day I was landing about 30-40% of the jumps that I attempted.


Scott showing off


Me wondering how I am going to land this????

After another day at the cabin we all drove to Boise for a college game that Scott’s uncle is the head coach for. It was a lot of fun and best yet was being with good friends.


Yes Boise won!

1500 miles in 5 days and I was back home and ready for another week of work. Ahh I need to take more vacations!!!