Holidays and absences [2]

Just back from the Galapagos! Need to sort out my videos and pictures tomorrow, but got to play with a sealion and some penguins in the water!!

Halfy - no, I haven't read Moby Dick. There are lots of stories about whaling here though so doesn't surprise me.

For anyone interested, just updated my page.

http://www.lancebloke.com/travel-blog.html

fantastic Lance it looks wonderful.

Beautiful pictures as always Lance!
This is a wonderful time of year to be seeing the Southern Hemisphere.
How's the weather been so far?

Cloudy in Quito. Hot on the galapagos... i have quite the sun burn going on!!

Lancebloke wrote: i have quite the sun burn going on!!

a little jealous here.

My dad, my brother, and I did our second day of skiing today, and are heading home tomorrow (it's about an 8.5 hour drive).  We asked someone to take a picture of us on one of the peaks.  It was taken on my dad's vintage iPhone, so the quality isn't great and you can't see the beautiful views that were in the background.  There had been freezing rain two nights ago and then like 4-5 inches over the preceding 24 hours, so everything was coated in snow, like a postcard.  It also made the skiing conditions phenomenal, particularly on the ungroomed trails and the designated ski-in-between-trees areas.



Speaking of the trees, I did get tossed around a bit and probably have a few bruises, but fortunately nothing serious (worst I've ever had is a sprain though so I can't really complain about skiing injuries).  I always have trouble with finding boots that fit since my feet are so wide, but it wasn't too much of an issue this year.  None of us are very good skiers, and I'm probably the worst in the family (of those who ski at all, which is only three of us), but the mountain we go to most often isn't Olympic-level like some of the ones up here, though it has a pleasant mix of difficulty levels.

Unfortunately we have to head up this far north to get decent skiing; all the places in Maryland and the mid-Atlantic have to use almost entirely artificial snow, and they ice over really easy since the stuff melts every day before refreezing at night. But the daytime temperatures for our first day of skiing hovered around -5 Fahrenheit (about -21 C). That was fairly miserable in its own right, though it sure beat seeing green grass underneath the ski lifts, which has happened on occasion further south. Today the temperature was about 20 F (-7 C), which was a lot nicer and made for some wonderful skiing conditions, especially with the light snowfall throughout the day.

Whoah Lance, Quito looks far cooler than I imagined! Great seal pic.

Mrs Figg wrote:

halfwise wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:I am at Bologna airport going to Hingerlandia might be offline for a while as Scott of the Antarctica once said or was it Captain Oates?. anyway famous last words.

Hingerlandia??

the H is silent.

That 'hint' still doesn't help.

Azriel - Thanks! You're correct,  I'm the one in the middle. My brother and I look nothing alike except for our eyes; he takes more after our mom's side.

Halfy - pretty sure she means England.

halfwise wrote:Whoah Lance,  Quito looks far cooler than I imagined!  Great seal pic.

Mrs Figg wrote:

halfwise wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:I am at Bologna airport going to Hingerlandia might be offline for a while as Scott of the Antarctica once said or was it Captain Oates?. anyway famous last words.

Hingerlandia??

the H is silent.

That 'hint' still doesn't help.

    Englandia-on-Freezing. Its snowing and I hate it. But I am going home tomorrow. Bloody Ryanair doesn't fly in Winter so I have to get British Airways and they are very expensive. Scandawegian airlines do a flight but it meant spending 4 hours in Copenhagen, and Turkish airlines meant spending 18 hours in a massage parlour in Amsterdam. I chose BA.

BA are much better than shitty Ryanair. I wouldn't give that bunch of bastards my money!!

Eldorion wrote:My dad, my brother, and I did our second day of skiing today, and are heading home tomorrow (it's about an 8.5 hour drive).  We asked someone to take a picture of us on one of the peaks.  It was taken on my dad's vintage iPhone, so the quality isn't great and you can't see the beautiful views that were in the background.  There had been freezing rain two nights ago and then like 4-5 inches over the preceding 24 hours, so everything was coated in snow, like a postcard.  It also made the skiing conditions phenomenal, particularly on the ungroomed trails and the designated ski-in-between-trees areas.



Speaking of the trees, I did get tossed around a bit and probably have a few bruises, but fortunately nothing serious (worst I've ever had is a sprain though so I can't really complain about skiing injuries).  I always have trouble with finding boots that fit since my feet are so wide, but it wasn't too much of an issue this year.  None of us are very good skiers, and I'm probably the worst in the family (of those who ski at all, which is only three of us), but the mountain we go to most often isn't Olympic-level like some of the ones up here, though it has a pleasant mix of difficulty levels.

Unfortunately we have to head up this far north to get decent skiing; all the places in Maryland and the mid-Atlantic have to use almost entirely artificial snow, and they ice over really easy since the stuff melts every day before refreezing at night.  But the daytime temperatures for our first day of skiing hovered around -5 Fahrenheit (about -21 C).  That was fairly miserable in its own right, though it sure beat seeing green grass underneath the ski lifts, which has happened on occasion further south.  Today the temperature was about 20 F (-7 C), which was a lot nicer and made for some wonderful skiing conditions, especially with the light snowfall throughout the day.

Ah, downhill skiing. I haven't done that for aaages. Sounds fun.

Well I just got back from a trip to southern California. Northern Californians tend to look down on those So-Cal types, and so I didn't have the highest expectations going in. The drive down was pretty good though. I had a head cold (I know! What timing!) so I slept most of the way down in the backseat.
The highlight of the drive down was when we passed through Palmdale and my niece picked out this song from her playlist. It felt incredibly apt.



Anyway, we stayed that first evening, night, and morning in Palm Springs. There were a ton of old people (ton[s] if we want to be literal). The weirdest thing was that although it was in the 80s every day there was still snow on the peaks of the highest nearby mountains.

After that we bought some groceries and drove over to Joshua Tree National Park. We tooled around for a while in the West Entrance: took a few short walks. And then we successfully got some really nice shots of the Joshua trees right at sunset. We camped on the North side of the park, in Indian Cove. There were, surprisingly, no Joshua trees on that side, but it was separated from the rest by some large-ish hills/small mountains.
The stars were lovely though! It was actually much harder to spot out the well-known constellations because of how many others stars there were filling up the sky that I had not seen in so long!

I was finally feeling a bit better by the last day, and so my elder sister and I tried out a little rock-climbing; quite amateur level, of course, but it was nevertheless quite fun. We only got halfway up the nearest rocky hill before we had to turn around because I had forgotten to bring water.

I quite like walking to the top of hills, there's something fo a finality and sense of achievement, however small, about reaching the top. And then a nice view as a bonus.

Sounds a fun trip, Forest. Apart from the cold.

That sounds like a fun trip, Forest. All of my visits to California have been to the Bay Area where my uncle used to live, so I would love to see more of the state, both Northern and Southern. Star gazing in parks is always great, too. There's a state park in Delaware where I really like to look at the sky because it's on the ocean and there aren't too many trees to block the view, although the lights from New Jersey to drown out anything too close to the horizon.

for a minute then I thought you had done some time travelling when you said it was the 80s every day. specially the Joshua Tree reference, and mullets.

Not quite time travel, no.

Bluebottle wrote:
Ah, downhill skiing. I haven't done that for aaages. Sounds fun.

I suppose there's a reason they call that boring flat skiing "Nordic".

Do they even have flat land in Norway? I thought it was like mostly mountains and fjords. Wouldn't that be ideal for downhill skiing? Although now that I think about it, they call that "alpine skiing", so maybe I should've taken a clue from the name.

In some places it's flat, in some places it's steep. Though I get what you're saying. Tis a hilly country.

I did do a bit of downhill skiing when I was younger, and it is fun, but I've come to prefer cross country with time. So, I mostly do that these days. But, yeah, both are very prevalent here. Though downhill skiing requiers going to a ski center with lifts and everything, while there are cross country skiing tracks just about everywhere in this country in winter.

halfwise wrote:

Bluebottle wrote:
Ah, downhill skiing. I haven't done that for aaages. Sounds fun.

I suppose there's a reason they call that boring flat skiing "Nordic".

Fair point about the required equipment. We have plenty of parks with running/jogging trails and it's fun to imagine them filled with skiers during the winter. Not that we'd have enough snow for it 99% of the time. We rely on snow machines to make downhill skiing possible in this part of the country.

We don't have many places to do cross country skiing, less than downhill even. So doing either one takes travel effort. And it you're gonna put in travel effort, may as well go all the way with lifts and such. Or so goes the thinking of most people here I wager.