Eight hours of flying, 6 hours in airports, five different security screenings and one long shuttle ride later; Mark and I collapsed inside of our front door. We’re home! Sorry about the lack of blogging, but it’s been an awesome week and I took over 700 photos. I don’t know where to start! :)

I saw a famous person in Las Vegas airport. I was looking at him and thinking… yeah… that is him, so I asked and got to meet…

I got to shake hands with Greg Proops from “Who’s line is it anyway”. This is the first time in the 10 years I’ve owned a cell phone that I wish it had a camera in it.

-Mark

We had some locally grown eggs today for breakfast. The yolks are quite orange. Tonight we’ll try some fresh pasta with them and then perhaps some cookies or other egg-based desert. I’m hoping to repost some findings as to how they are to cook with. So far, looking really good.

Ok, well, my forecast this morning BOMBED. BIG TIME.

I thought the chinook winds today were going to keep the skies clear and help the snow melt, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the storm moved east of us, and a little back-door cold-front brought another couple inches of snow to the Front Range.

I was angry at the snow this afternoon, so I took off for a little storm chasing. This shot was taken out north-east of Ault this evening. The windmills are actually in Wyoming, part of the Wyoming Wind Project. We are lucky to be able to pay a little more and buy wind power from the local electric utility. I think it’s interesting that many of these windmills weren’t running on a day like today when the wind was blowing at more than 50mph. Actually, when the wind blows too hard, the blades lock down for the safety of the machinery. Pretty cool deal.

Well, as much as the last post glorifies the mountain powder surrounding us, the hard-packed left over snow (that’s nearly a record-setting ground cover) that has been covering Fort Collins all winter has not been as much fun to play in. Today, I think we’re beginning to see the real end. Today, we have a real, serious, Chinook!

I’m not going to go into the dynamics of the whole situation, if you want to learn more about down-slope wind events, wikipedia has a nice entry. It’s enough to say, the winds are gusting at almost 70mph, the temperature rose 35 degrees over night, and the humidity is down to a nice, snow melting, 30%.

We’re supposed to have it all day long! I’ll update with more stats tonight.

So, one more post on the trip up to Lake Agnes last weekend. It’s so much fun to get out and explore the mountains and wild places near where we live, but it’s so much more fun to do it with good friends. My pictures from the day are up in the photo gallery.

Check out the shot of Mark, Ann and I attempting salamba sirsasana (supported headstand) on a frozen Lake Agnes. Well, we tried. Headstands in snowshoes are much harder than they look! Plus, Liv really wasn’t helping.

Dylan recently acquired a split board, and was anxious to get in some good “turns”. I’m still learning all of the ski/snowboard lingo, but I think the sport is fascinating. Dylan makes it look so fun and easy!!

The split board is a big snowboard that comes apart into two halves. The bindings rotate so that each half becomes a short, wide, backcountry ski! With a pair of skins, he can ski up any hill, on soft powdery snow, and then snowboard down! What a cool piece of gear! Wish I could ski or snowboard. I’d be on this one in a second! When we got up to the lake, Dylan headed out across the icy expanse to quickly climb a beautiful, pristine slope on the far side, and had a ball snowboarding back down.

In the end, a great day was had by all. I hope we get to do it again soon!

On Sunday, we finally got back out into the mountains. Dylan, Ann, Mark and I all snow shoe’d all the way up to Lake Agnes and back that day. The trail is supposed to only be 0.8 miles long, but the campground you normally drive through was gated and we parked on the side of CO 14. From there, it was about 2.5 miles up!

It was still a great day. The powder was a great consistency to make the snow shoeing interesting, but not impossible. It was an intense (and desperately needed) work out in an incredibly beautiful place. Even with clouds and snow throughout the day, the views were incredible.

I’ll have more pictures up, and stories about Dylan’s split board in a day or so. For now, this is somebody we met at the actual trailhead (still well over a mile from our car). After some egging on from his buddies, he climbed up on top of this house and snowboarded off!

Lots of great photos from the trip can be found in the gallery!

Mark and I bought the tickets, and last weekend we found ourselves boarding an airplane for New York City. It was good to get some time in back in the stratosphere, because the last time Mark and I flew, it was a really rough ride, with a long scary, rolling, and eventually aborted landing into the airport. It was nice to remember that most flights in big planes are no big deal. Especially since we are due for eight hours in the air on the way to Kauai in just over a week.

We arrived in Manhattan at around 10pm their time Friday night. I remembered the wrong address for the hotel, and we ended up having the cab drop us off with all of our luggage on a random corner of Broadway. The first adventure of the weekend was wandering through Times Square with our luggage over our shoulders on a Friday Night!

We found the hotel after only a few blocks of walking. We were staying at the Amsterdam Court Hotel, which is a smaller, older building, with a great atmosphere. The elevator was tiny, and moved slowly and jerkily as if it had been retrofitted with the auto-driver. The main staircase had marble stairs with deep, smooth grooves worn into them as people had been walking up and down these for 200 years. Our room was tiny, but decorated in a simple, modern style that I really liked.

Saturday morning we got up late, and headed out to see some city sights before we were due for our dinner reservations. We checked out the classic spots in mid-town, Rockefeller center, shopping on Fifth Ave, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, FAO Schwartz, and even a bit of Central Park.

Saturday evening was the big event. Beginning with dinner at Sardi’s at 6:30p. The menu was adventurous and delicious. I had fois gras for the first time, and I decided it really does taste like tortured-goose liver. I didn’t eat much of it. The show started at 8p, and we made it without much issue. Watching Les Miserables for the first time, I realized that there were a lot of adult jokes and snipes that I never got from just listening to the CDs. I enjoyed it; Mark felt the second act was pretty slow.

On Sunday, we hopped on the subway and headed up to the American Museum of Natural History. This was a cool place, but we ended up in many of the “animals of [insert part of North America here]” exhibits. These were interesting, but Mark and I have actually visited many of these places and seen these animals. It was weird walking through exhibits describing all of the wonders of the Rocky Mountains, when we would be heading back there in a few hours.

I did really enjoy all of the fossils and skeletons on the top floor. I had no idea that animals like these actually existed! There were tortoises bigger than me, moose-like animals with racks of antlers so huge it looked like they couldn’t hold their heads up, and giant scary fish with huge teeth and claws on their feet/fins!

That evening we made it to our gate at the airport a full three hours before our flight left, and there was another plane to Denver getting ready to take off. The awesome United guy managed to get our luggage moved over and let us take the earlier flight home. What a great weekend and an excellent adventure!