Just arrived home from a trip of about a week and a half to Disneyworld and the eastern beaches of Florida. Had a blast... including several firsts... first plane rides for Katie & Jay, first surfing for all 3 kiddies, first time to Florida (in memory) for all 3. We had had Donna there when she was about 18 mos. old but of course she doesn't remember that trip. Hopefully all 3 will remember this one!
The first (if I do say so myself) bright thing we did was to rent a house instead of staying right on Disney property. Yes, we had to forgo the ability to buy the Disney meal plan (at like $70/day/person), but it was quite a good trade off. Rented the house through Vacation Rentals By Owners (http://www.vrbo.com/2205), and the whole experience was absolutely awesome. Huge and spotlessly clean 4 BR home on a corner lot complete with plenty of bathrooms for everyone, 3-car garage, swimming pool, hot tub, TV's in every room. Kate & Jay each could've had their own room, but they both wanted the top bunk in the room with the bunk beds, so they alternated bunks each day.
The home was absolutely the way to go... after a day of walking 50 miles at Disney, it was a total joy to jump into that pool! We even took a day and did much of nothing... just stayed home and read and swam.
Got out to Cocoa Beach, where Donna took a surfing lesson and did quite well! I'm sure her focus was sharpened by the fact that her instructor was Sam the Surfer Dude... kolij kid on summer vacation teaching surfing (tough life, that). The next day we went to Cocoa again, and Donna taught Kate & Jay how to surf... so they all managed to get up & stay up... Woo Hoo!
One of the reasons for all the trips to Cocoa Beach area was that STS-127, the Endeavour shuttle was set to go off, and Cocoa is just a half hour or so south of NASA. So we went to the beach, then at the end of the day (liftoffs were scheduled for 7 p.m. ish, and moving earlier each day of no go) headed up to Titusville for the scheduled launch. Trip #1... no go due to weather. Trip #2... no go due to weather. Trip #3... a SPECTACULAR liftoff! We were at Spaceview Park in Titusville, about 12 miles away from launch pad 39A, and right across the causeway so we had a perfect, if distant, view of the shuttle from the get-go. No trees, buildings, or anything else but haze blocking the view of the launch pad.
At 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 LIFTOFF... the sound (delayed) was not as loud as I'd hoped (didn't have to plug our ears or anything) but there was, once it arrived once the shuttle was well up in the sky, a nice satisfying subwoofer feel to it. The thing that surprised me most was the BRIGHTness of the launch. Like a welding torch headed up and up... you couldn't look straight at it for more than a second or two. And of course the speed... that baby is 365 miles downrange before you know it, just incredible. Fortunately, our friends recorded the liftoff from HDNet so we'll be able to see it from that angle, too, the next time we get over there.
Back to Disney...
Had to totally marvel (as a sales/marketing-oriented geek myself) at the extreme skill and precision Disney uses to lift you by the ankles and shake every possible nickle out of your pockets. Every ride... gift shop at the end of the ride. Walk down the street... gift shop to the left of me, gift shop to the right of me. Disney pins for trading. Want a hot dog? That'll be $6.95.
Yes, they have to make a living, and make a living they do!
So we're back home now, much more tired than when we left. But isn't that what vacations are for?
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Week in UT... some snow, some not
Yo:
Figured I'd knock aht a quick note while in the skies over, oh, let's see, Nebraska.
Fline home from our annual trip to Salt Lake City after quite a mixed bag of a week. Of course they received tons of snow last week. Of course there are tons of snow in the forecast for next week. Amount of snow we received the week we were there? 6", all of it yesterday (and I
wasn't even on the mountain to enjoy it!). El Stinko. But I guess you've got to have years like this one to balance out the years like the last one, when we got 53" of snow in 2 days. That was one for the history books.
Arrived last Saturday 3/8, solo this time, as Karen stayed home with the kiddies. Nice to find that our haus was still in very good shape, always a pleasant sight to see. No repairs needed, no trips to Home Depot. Just focus on relaxing...
Jumped right on the slopes Sunday. Beautiful day (if you call cloudless, infinite sky beautiful, a hotly debatable topic). We went to Solitude, ordinarily one of my favorites... but even Solitude couldn't cope with the relentless lack of snow the last few days, and conditions were not all that great by Utah standards. Probably "good" by Pocono standards, but when we're in Utah we want to be skiing with snorkels, and we weren't. So we stuck to the "groomers" (the trails where the grooming machines condition the snow like a farmer plows a field, leaving parallel lines like corduroy pants) and zoomed around for the day. Usually we're in the powder, in the trees, going slow and mostly avoiding running into the trees. Gave the ankles a workout... probably too much of a workout.
Sunday evening, we went to the Yurt at Solitude, a Mongolian-style tent stuck out in the woods somewhere. Jeff, Glenn, and I ( the brave (?) souls) opted for the cross-country skis; everybody else went for the snowshoe option. I learned a lot about XC skiing that night:
-- They don't go so good on ice
-- They don't stop so good on ice
Unlike regular downhill skis, there are no discernable edges on XC skis. You're skiing on just a slab of very long, very narrow fiberglass that mostly refuses to go where you point it. Uphill (to the Yurt) is not so bad so long as you stay in the railroad tracks left by XC skiers before
you. The bottom of the XC skis are fashioned with ridges, like fish scales, that sort of keep the things from sliding backward as you're going uphill. Jeff got the hang of it pretty quickly, and was off like Leif Ericksson in a race to be the first to map Greenland or something. (Remember this for later). Glenn is an awesome skier anyway, so he had no trouble. I slogged along, and did manage to survive the trip to the Yurt. It was uphill, and there were the tracks to keep the skis in.
Now, once you get to the Yurt (a trip of a kilometer or so, no big deal), the feast is on. There was a new chef this year, and he whipped up quite a feast - gour-met all the way. We had squab over mushrooms for an appetizer. Hot, spicy borscht (sp?), made with a veal stock that was awesome, and some of us had seconds. If you've had cold borscht, don't even try to compare... there is no comparison. The entrée was lamb shank that fell off the bone. Then homemade cinnamon ice cream and bread pudding for dessert. Not a dinner for the calorie-conscious, not at all.
Now it's time to return to the base. This is crunch time.
The skiers lead off. Glenn goes first, not a problem there. I'm next. I'm happy just to stay upright, left ski in the track, the other canted at 45 degrees, theoretically to maintain some control over speed. It works, a little. I sprain my ankle, a little. I slide doggedly on.
Jeff starts behind me at some distance. At first we're fine.
Halfway to the bottom, Jeff catches up - remember he's a man on a mission to conquer Greenland. Jeff has both skis in the frozen tracks. This, he realizes with a damp horror, means zero control over speed. There's Ed, dead ahead. Periscope up. Load torpedo bays. Target off
the nose,
range 15 meters. 10 meters. 5.
3.
Crushing disaster imminent, Jeff takes one for the team.
Unable to stop any other way, he falls to one side, BAM. BAM. It's crude but effective, collision avoided (other than his with the ground, of course). Jeff gets up, dusts himself off, and in a display of lesson-unlearned, starts again and hurtles past.
Watching him advance in the moonlit darkness, I'm able to see only a small, almost playful, puff as he goes down once again. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure his fall count stayed under 5 for the return trip.
Monday, with my ankle hurting a bit, just where the boot pounds into it, I took the day off. Donna (Fred's wife) and I went to the zoo. Pretty cool. We learned the difference between African and Asian elephants, fed birds out of my hand, talked with a bird, and watched a giraffe eat out of a bin 17 ft. off the ground. The rest of the gang went to Alta and had a good day of skiing. Went to the Mayan restaurant for dinner, where they serve Mexican food, and have a diving show every 1/2 hour.
Tuesday - ankle still hurt, so I took another day off. Figured I'd rather take it easy, since the skiing wasn't so good anyway. Fred was resting his knee (he's recovering from ACL surgery a few months ago) so he, Donna, and I went to ride "Nascarts" - these go-karts, but they
weren't open. Bummer. That would've been fun. Dinner that night we all went to the "Made in Brazil" restaurant, which is always a kickin' time if you're a carnivore. They have a salad bar, which is pretty good actually, but the main event is the meat that just keeps coming. Again
we dispensed with the whole concept of watching what we eat, this is vacation after all... They make fresh juice drinks - you want a mango drink, they're throwing mangoes in the blender. Kiwi? It's peeled and in it goes. Papaya? They've got it. Awesome. But as good as the
drinks are, the highlight is the meat. They cook meat on skewers, all different kinds of meat, and it keeps coming until you moan "Uncle" and flip over the little gizzy that's half red and half green to the red side up. Garlic steak, top sirloin, tenderloin, chicken, turkey, ham. Even pineapple, and believe me, that's the way to have pineapple. More sirloin, and tenderloin, and chicken. And more. And more. For the last few years, we've always gone to Made in Brazil at least once/trip,
especially since the regrettable closing of the Hungry Heifer. We can't remember the actual name of that restaurant, but they'd serve a bowl of chicken breasts as an appetizer for the table, to go along with your steak. Guess they figured they'd make it up in volume... and didn't.
Wednesday - Jeff had scheduled a shortened week, so he left Wed. morning, vowing to be back and conquer the Yurt next time. Lee and Nate decided to take the day off, and stayed home, I think. For ski destination, we had a divergence of opinion; Glenn and Bonnie (I work
with Glenn) wanted to go to Snowbird, as Glenn's parents (who were also in Salt Lake this week) had never been there. Fred's not so wild about "The Bird" and I hadn't skied Alta, so to Alta Fred and I went, first time for me, a return trip for him. Ankle was feeling better, but since
it was so warm we were concerned about conditions in the afternoon getting sticky. We bought a morning ticket, and skied hard until about 1 p.m., when the ticket ran out. It was getting a little sticky to be sure, and the ankle had had enough by then anyway. Conditions were
surprisingly good, though, high on the hill. If you've gotta live without fresh powder, then that's the kind of day you want - good skiing, good company, and ready for the hot tub at the end. Tried the Ruby River Steakhouse for dinner that night (keeping with a carnivore
theme, I guess). It was OK, but worth a return trip? Hmmmm.
The news ALL over the TV that night (and the next day, and the next) was that they'd found Elizabeth Smart in Sandy, about 10 minutes from our house. Talk about great news!
Thursday - Nate and Lee left today; Nate lucked out and got an earlier flight, Lee was stuck with his 10:30 p.m. departure, boo hoo for him. I guess a lot of people were bailing out of SLC because of the high temps/lack of snow anat. Anyway, how insane is this -- I'd scheduled a
sales call in Logan, UT, about 2 hrs. north of Salt Lake, and besides, temps in the valley were a record-breaking 72 degrees, so we figured the skiing would be "iffy" anyway. The good news is that the sales call was sorta near the Golden Spike Nat'l Historic Site, a place Fred wanted to
see at some point in this trip. Fred & Donna dropped me off and I made the call while they stopped in Border's Books in Logan. When I was done (mercifully brief call, and they're even
interested in some stuff, whaddya know) Fred and Donna picked me up and off to the Golden Spike site we went. Very interesting. This is where the Union Pacific RR (building from the east) met the Central Pacific RR (building from the west). When we got there I thought we'd be about it for the day, but surprisingly there were quite a number of people that followed us. Why surprising? This place is in the center, of the middle, of nowhere. If you want to check a map, it's near Promontory, UT. Good luck. Really gave us an appreciation for what those guys went
through, though, building the transcontinental railroad. Digging, by hand, tunnels through the mountains, making 8 inches / day of progress. Roasting heat. Vicious cold. Maintaining a maximum 2 degree slope to the tracks that meant (by hand, of course) digging & blasting trenches through hills in some places and (by hand, of course) filling in gullies in other places. Rarely did the topography cooperate, it seemed. We did a walking tour of about 1.5 miles that showed, among other things, where someone (a surveyor?) screwed up the location of a trench. Turns out the advance team was off by 75 feet, so this huge trench that they'd dug and blasted (by hand, of course) was a waste of time. Makes you want to cry. Saw the "big fill" where the Central Pacific filled in a 400 ft. ravine. By hand, of course. Built in the 1860's, it's still in
use today by ranchers for access to their farms.
Friday - Temps were in the 60's, and I just couldn't get inspired with skiing, and didn't want to stress the ankle, on the off chance that I'll still have to do the Ski Patrol gig back home once I return. Little did I know that this would be the one day this week we'd get snow (the
Weather Channel sure wasn't saying much about it)... and the gang at Alta got ~6" of new stuff, which made it a very good day indeed for skiing. Oh well. Donna and I did some souvenir shopping, then I made chili for the gang. Turned out pretty well, except I put the red and green
peppers in way too soon, and they ended up mushy. I'll know for next time. Made tarragon and basil sourdough bread, which came out much better.
So here we are Saturday, and ze plane is ready to start the descent. Totally uneventful flight so far, except for a half hour delay while they fixed one of the brakes, nice for us to have good brakes. V. psyched to be getting home. Will have a crowd at the haus tonight, as Karen went skiing with Donna (ours), one of her (our) friends from long ago, and her (very nice) kids. Kate and Jay spent the day in daycare with Miss Terry at the mountain. So it will be cool to see everyone when I get home at 6 or 6:30. Will send this sometime after that.
Until next year... thinking powder.
Cheers
Figured I'd knock aht a quick note while in the skies over, oh, let's see, Nebraska.
Fline home from our annual trip to Salt Lake City after quite a mixed bag of a week. Of course they received tons of snow last week. Of course there are tons of snow in the forecast for next week. Amount of snow we received the week we were there? 6", all of it yesterday (and I
wasn't even on the mountain to enjoy it!). El Stinko. But I guess you've got to have years like this one to balance out the years like the last one, when we got 53" of snow in 2 days. That was one for the history books.
Arrived last Saturday 3/8, solo this time, as Karen stayed home with the kiddies. Nice to find that our haus was still in very good shape, always a pleasant sight to see. No repairs needed, no trips to Home Depot. Just focus on relaxing...
Jumped right on the slopes Sunday. Beautiful day (if you call cloudless, infinite sky beautiful, a hotly debatable topic). We went to Solitude, ordinarily one of my favorites... but even Solitude couldn't cope with the relentless lack of snow the last few days, and conditions were not all that great by Utah standards. Probably "good" by Pocono standards, but when we're in Utah we want to be skiing with snorkels, and we weren't. So we stuck to the "groomers" (the trails where the grooming machines condition the snow like a farmer plows a field, leaving parallel lines like corduroy pants) and zoomed around for the day. Usually we're in the powder, in the trees, going slow and mostly avoiding running into the trees. Gave the ankles a workout... probably too much of a workout.
Sunday evening, we went to the Yurt at Solitude, a Mongolian-style tent stuck out in the woods somewhere. Jeff, Glenn, and I ( the brave (?) souls) opted for the cross-country skis; everybody else went for the snowshoe option. I learned a lot about XC skiing that night:
-- They don't go so good on ice
-- They don't stop so good on ice
Unlike regular downhill skis, there are no discernable edges on XC skis. You're skiing on just a slab of very long, very narrow fiberglass that mostly refuses to go where you point it. Uphill (to the Yurt) is not so bad so long as you stay in the railroad tracks left by XC skiers before
you. The bottom of the XC skis are fashioned with ridges, like fish scales, that sort of keep the things from sliding backward as you're going uphill. Jeff got the hang of it pretty quickly, and was off like Leif Ericksson in a race to be the first to map Greenland or something. (Remember this for later). Glenn is an awesome skier anyway, so he had no trouble. I slogged along, and did manage to survive the trip to the Yurt. It was uphill, and there were the tracks to keep the skis in.
Now, once you get to the Yurt (a trip of a kilometer or so, no big deal), the feast is on. There was a new chef this year, and he whipped up quite a feast - gour-met all the way. We had squab over mushrooms for an appetizer. Hot, spicy borscht (sp?), made with a veal stock that was awesome, and some of us had seconds. If you've had cold borscht, don't even try to compare... there is no comparison. The entrée was lamb shank that fell off the bone. Then homemade cinnamon ice cream and bread pudding for dessert. Not a dinner for the calorie-conscious, not at all.
Now it's time to return to the base. This is crunch time.
The skiers lead off. Glenn goes first, not a problem there. I'm next. I'm happy just to stay upright, left ski in the track, the other canted at 45 degrees, theoretically to maintain some control over speed. It works, a little. I sprain my ankle, a little. I slide doggedly on.
Jeff starts behind me at some distance. At first we're fine.
Halfway to the bottom, Jeff catches up - remember he's a man on a mission to conquer Greenland. Jeff has both skis in the frozen tracks. This, he realizes with a damp horror, means zero control over speed. There's Ed, dead ahead. Periscope up. Load torpedo bays. Target off
the nose,
range 15 meters. 10 meters. 5.
3.
Crushing disaster imminent, Jeff takes one for the team.
Unable to stop any other way, he falls to one side, BAM. BAM. It's crude but effective, collision avoided (other than his with the ground, of course). Jeff gets up, dusts himself off, and in a display of lesson-unlearned, starts again and hurtles past.
Watching him advance in the moonlit darkness, I'm able to see only a small, almost playful, puff as he goes down once again. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure his fall count stayed under 5 for the return trip.
Monday, with my ankle hurting a bit, just where the boot pounds into it, I took the day off. Donna (Fred's wife) and I went to the zoo. Pretty cool. We learned the difference between African and Asian elephants, fed birds out of my hand, talked with a bird, and watched a giraffe eat out of a bin 17 ft. off the ground. The rest of the gang went to Alta and had a good day of skiing. Went to the Mayan restaurant for dinner, where they serve Mexican food, and have a diving show every 1/2 hour.
Tuesday - ankle still hurt, so I took another day off. Figured I'd rather take it easy, since the skiing wasn't so good anyway. Fred was resting his knee (he's recovering from ACL surgery a few months ago) so he, Donna, and I went to ride "Nascarts" - these go-karts, but they
weren't open. Bummer. That would've been fun. Dinner that night we all went to the "Made in Brazil" restaurant, which is always a kickin' time if you're a carnivore. They have a salad bar, which is pretty good actually, but the main event is the meat that just keeps coming. Again
we dispensed with the whole concept of watching what we eat, this is vacation after all... They make fresh juice drinks - you want a mango drink, they're throwing mangoes in the blender. Kiwi? It's peeled and in it goes. Papaya? They've got it. Awesome. But as good as the
drinks are, the highlight is the meat. They cook meat on skewers, all different kinds of meat, and it keeps coming until you moan "Uncle" and flip over the little gizzy that's half red and half green to the red side up. Garlic steak, top sirloin, tenderloin, chicken, turkey, ham. Even pineapple, and believe me, that's the way to have pineapple. More sirloin, and tenderloin, and chicken. And more. And more. For the last few years, we've always gone to Made in Brazil at least once/trip,
especially since the regrettable closing of the Hungry Heifer. We can't remember the actual name of that restaurant, but they'd serve a bowl of chicken breasts as an appetizer for the table, to go along with your steak. Guess they figured they'd make it up in volume... and didn't.
Wednesday - Jeff had scheduled a shortened week, so he left Wed. morning, vowing to be back and conquer the Yurt next time. Lee and Nate decided to take the day off, and stayed home, I think. For ski destination, we had a divergence of opinion; Glenn and Bonnie (I work
with Glenn) wanted to go to Snowbird, as Glenn's parents (who were also in Salt Lake this week) had never been there. Fred's not so wild about "The Bird" and I hadn't skied Alta, so to Alta Fred and I went, first time for me, a return trip for him. Ankle was feeling better, but since
it was so warm we were concerned about conditions in the afternoon getting sticky. We bought a morning ticket, and skied hard until about 1 p.m., when the ticket ran out. It was getting a little sticky to be sure, and the ankle had had enough by then anyway. Conditions were
surprisingly good, though, high on the hill. If you've gotta live without fresh powder, then that's the kind of day you want - good skiing, good company, and ready for the hot tub at the end. Tried the Ruby River Steakhouse for dinner that night (keeping with a carnivore
theme, I guess). It was OK, but worth a return trip? Hmmmm.
The news ALL over the TV that night (and the next day, and the next) was that they'd found Elizabeth Smart in Sandy, about 10 minutes from our house. Talk about great news!
Thursday - Nate and Lee left today; Nate lucked out and got an earlier flight, Lee was stuck with his 10:30 p.m. departure, boo hoo for him. I guess a lot of people were bailing out of SLC because of the high temps/lack of snow anat. Anyway, how insane is this -- I'd scheduled a
sales call in Logan, UT, about 2 hrs. north of Salt Lake, and besides, temps in the valley were a record-breaking 72 degrees, so we figured the skiing would be "iffy" anyway. The good news is that the sales call was sorta near the Golden Spike Nat'l Historic Site, a place Fred wanted to
see at some point in this trip. Fred & Donna dropped me off and I made the call while they stopped in Border's Books in Logan. When I was done (mercifully brief call, and they're even
interested in some stuff, whaddya know) Fred and Donna picked me up and off to the Golden Spike site we went. Very interesting. This is where the Union Pacific RR (building from the east) met the Central Pacific RR (building from the west). When we got there I thought we'd be about it for the day, but surprisingly there were quite a number of people that followed us. Why surprising? This place is in the center, of the middle, of nowhere. If you want to check a map, it's near Promontory, UT. Good luck. Really gave us an appreciation for what those guys went
through, though, building the transcontinental railroad. Digging, by hand, tunnels through the mountains, making 8 inches / day of progress. Roasting heat. Vicious cold. Maintaining a maximum 2 degree slope to the tracks that meant (by hand, of course) digging & blasting trenches through hills in some places and (by hand, of course) filling in gullies in other places. Rarely did the topography cooperate, it seemed. We did a walking tour of about 1.5 miles that showed, among other things, where someone (a surveyor?) screwed up the location of a trench. Turns out the advance team was off by 75 feet, so this huge trench that they'd dug and blasted (by hand, of course) was a waste of time. Makes you want to cry. Saw the "big fill" where the Central Pacific filled in a 400 ft. ravine. By hand, of course. Built in the 1860's, it's still in
use today by ranchers for access to their farms.
Friday - Temps were in the 60's, and I just couldn't get inspired with skiing, and didn't want to stress the ankle, on the off chance that I'll still have to do the Ski Patrol gig back home once I return. Little did I know that this would be the one day this week we'd get snow (the
Weather Channel sure wasn't saying much about it)... and the gang at Alta got ~6" of new stuff, which made it a very good day indeed for skiing. Oh well. Donna and I did some souvenir shopping, then I made chili for the gang. Turned out pretty well, except I put the red and green
peppers in way too soon, and they ended up mushy. I'll know for next time. Made tarragon and basil sourdough bread, which came out much better.
So here we are Saturday, and ze plane is ready to start the descent. Totally uneventful flight so far, except for a half hour delay while they fixed one of the brakes, nice for us to have good brakes. V. psyched to be getting home. Will have a crowd at the haus tonight, as Karen went skiing with Donna (ours), one of her (our) friends from long ago, and her (very nice) kids. Kate and Jay spent the day in daycare with Miss Terry at the mountain. So it will be cool to see everyone when I get home at 6 or 6:30. Will send this sometime after that.
Until next year... thinking powder.
Cheers
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- Ed Kmetz
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