links for 2009-03-30
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"0.9 m of textual records and other material."
links for 2009-03-29
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"Women with income, no kids"
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Neat design blog
Comments(1)Alltop as a Lesson in How-To Motivate Folks
In an email to motivate people to sign up for their new feature I like how Alltop positions the situation:
One ramification of this is that people will grab “vanity” accounts like their names, companies, and products. We wanted to let you get the first shot at doing this before we open the floodgates.
Oh no, I might not get http://my.alltop.com/mattgoyer, I better sign up now! :)
EPIC Ski Day At Crystal Mountain
On Sunday Crystal Mountain got 17″ of new and we had an EPIC time. One of my top ski days EVER*.
Ming and I were on the road by 6:25 a.m. and were there before 8:30. We thought this would be early enough to catch a first chair but no! They fired up the chair early. We will need to wake up earlier next time :(.
Here’s a view from riding up Chinook:
Our first run down under Rex was actually quite bad. The snow was variable depth with a definitive crust hiding underneath (I also started with my boots too tight). And then at the bottom of Rex we encounter a massive line and I started questioning not going to Steven’s Pass.
After riding up Rex we headed to Green Valley where we encountered another massive line, fortunately at this point Northway opens up and we get a GREAT run in. We dropped into Northway Bowl into literally chest deep powder.
Being one of the of the first down Northway, since it opened late, we had an epic run. Second run down we encounter a massive line. I took two photos of the line. Here is looking towards the lift:
And here are all the folks waiting behind us:
Some folks skipped the line and headed down on their own (read how on the Crystal patroller blog).
After waiting in such a line you may think you should either go to lunch or ski somewhere else, and many did. We did not. On our third run down we encountered no line and in fact didn’t hit another line at Northway all day. This one traffic jam scared every one away ALL DAY. Which meant that even on our last run of the day (note, we skipped lunch!) we were still waist deep in fresh lines. It was incredible! Run after run it was face shot after face shot. We were drowning in snow (by the end of the day we were both soaking wet).
Here’s a photo from our second last run:
And here’s a video of me loving it!
And one of Ming:
Now all fun must come to an end… At ~2:30 we got to the bottom of Northway to discover they had shut it down because of wind (read more about wind holds at Crystal), along with almost all the other chairs on the mountain. Unfortunately the only way down from the bottom of Northway is to pull a McGarty and post hole out or option 2, which is what we did. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the parking lot and get shuttled back to the base for beers and a late lunch.
More videos and more photos. Someone else’s blog post about the day.
*Matt’s top ski days:
- Today!
- Heli-skiing with Rk Heli Ski in Panorama, BC
- Last Sunday at Steven’s Pass
- Cat-skiing at Steven’s Pass
- Bluebird-skip-work-type-powder day at Baker a year or two ago
Everyone Needs a Pair of Powder Skis
If you ski five or more days a season you need a pair of serious powder skis.
Because every season you have the opportunity to catch a few days which will be truly epic. Yes, you can suffer through with your every day all mountains but for it to be a truly epic day you need equipment to match the conditions and its worth every penny.
This season, my days were the 2nd of January, which was the day after they had closed the pass (photos from pass closure day & photos when it re-opened), and again this past Sunday when we got a big weekend dump. Other years its been skipping working to go skiing during the week after they’ve re-opened the hill after it has been closed due to heavy snowfalls. Or it’s heli-skiing in Panorama or cat-skiing in the Cascades.
Fortunately this Christmas I had bought a pair of Dynastar Huge Troubles (from my buddy JF of Gords) with Marker Baron bindings (from Evo) and it’s changed my skiing life. Both days I felt like I was skiing in a Warren Miller film and its all due to the skis. You can hit anything and have seemingly endless energy for hitting the pow because you’re floating on top and not fighting your way through like you would be on a pair of all mountains.
The other secret is to WAKE UP EARLY. Let me tell you, I did not want to wake up early on Sunday because it was daylight savings and we had gone drinking Saturday night. None-the-less, we woke up at 5:45 a.m. for a conference call on ski conditions and were on the road by 6:30 which put us in line just as the chair lift was winding up so we could get a good run of first tracks in the morning sun.
More photos. Note that we were too busy skiing to take any good photos of us riding knee deep snow :).
Twitter Killed This Blog
Twitter has nearly killed this blog! Just like it killed Eric’s, U-Zyn’s, Brent’s…
What’s Twitter? It’s a place to blog about what I’m up to but the posts are limited to 140 characters. It requires a lot less energy and I can post from my phone via text message.
You can see what I’m Twittering (or Tweeting) here: @mattgoyer. I Twitter about 3 times a day.
That said, I am going to try and blog more!
Matt’s Guide to Maui
Thanks to Chelsea we spent the last week in Maui.
Here’s my quick guide to Maui! Impatient? Check my photos, and Chelsea’s and my videos.
Get the Book!
Glenn recommended and nicely gave us a copy of Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook. Get it! It was very helpful in terms of figuring out what to do, with what companies, where to eat, had great maps and everything.
Also, read it before you go! I didn’t and wish I had. That way we could have hit the ground running and had activities scheduled from the get go. Also I would have brought a few more things (bug spray, water-proof camera) instead of buying the over priced version there.
Where to Stay
We stayed at the Marriott Wailea the smaller of the two “large” tourist areas. While it didn’t have as many restaurants as Lahania, it still had a good number of nice ones. Our hotel was nice, had several pools (including a nice infinity one), we had a view of the ocean (though it wasn’t as ocean front as we would have liked), good cocktails ($10) and our room had a very comfortable bed. I think I slept 10-12 hours every night.
What Kind of Car to Rent
Definitely go convertible. We got a Mustang one from Budget. Next time we might get a Jeep since some of the roads we drove were pretty rough and there really aren’t any freeways to open up the Mustang on. Though I did hear others complaining about how hard it was to get the Jeep top down as compared to the Mustang’s.
Holy Whales!
There were whales (north pacific humpback) everywhere. You could see them from the hotel pool, when driving, when going scuba, sailing, etc.
Capturing a whale on film proved to be pretty elusive. Here’s the best photo I got of a baby whale:
Here’s a video of us waiting for whales:
Driving West Maui
Not thinking much of it, one afternoon we drove from Wailuku to Kahakuloa to Kapalua to Kanaapali to Lahaina (in other words, counter clockwise around West Maui). It’s not a long drive in terms of miles but it is a slow drive. Very winding road, one lane for many stretches and if you ever missed a turn it’d be a long tumble down to the ocean. Several times we had to back up to negotiate sections when another car was going the other direction.
Along the way we stopped at a blow hole. Here’s a video of it getting the best of me:
Driving Hana
We did the drive from Kahului to Hana and then kept going while most people turn around and go back the way they came after the seven sacred pools. On the way to Hana we took in the scenery and stopped at a few spots. The waterfalls were all kinda tame since it hadn’t rained recently.
We ate lunch in Hana. There really aren’t many food options so you may want to get a box lunch from 808 deli in Kihei before leaving. By the end of the day we were definitely starving and for the hours and hours of driving past Hana there was no where to get even a chocolate bar.
We did stop at the black sand beach:
And the seven sacred pools:
Powered Hang Gliding
To mix up our drive to Hana we went powered hang gliding with Armin. You can find some videos on YouTube from other folks to see what it’s like (we were too cheap to get the $70 video). I was expecting a serious hang gliding operation but we met Armin at the Hana airfield, a tiny airfield that he flew into with his Cessna. He’s got the one hanger there with the only powered hang glider.
Being afraid of heights, the whole thing scared the shit out of me but it was cool once I relaxed to see the same scenery that we were driving through from a completely different vantage point.
We opted for 45 minute flights. I’d recommend the hour flight and ask him to take you up to Haleakala.
Scuba Diving
I’ve never been scuba diving before and I was surprised to find it out it took three days to get certified so we opted for an introductory dive with Maui Dreams instead.
It was blast! Though we had to meet at the boat at 6:30 AM which is a little early for a vacation.
We also didn’t get to go to their dive location of choice since it was too windy. But we did get two dives in, about forty five minutes each and saw lots of little fish, some turtles, and at one point a huge power catamaran drove over top of us (fortunately we were 30 feet down).
Surfing
I took a group lesson with Goofy Foot Surf School. It was two hours and there were only three people in the group. I got up first try, wasn’t that hard. In two hours I rode about five waves. The paddling to catch the waves is exhausting.
Sailing
Given that it was crazy windy I really wanted to go sailing and was excited to learn that you could sail on America II, an America’s Cup contender! Unfortunately it was out of commission for the week with a broken engine. Oh the irony!
Instead we went on a champagne sunset cruise on Scotch Mist II, a Santa Cruz 50. It was pretty breezy so we didn’t do much sailing, they reefed the main and called it good.
Snorkeling
There’s lots of places to rent gear from so we rented gear for the week and whenever we felt like it pulled over and went snorkeling.
Eating
We had lots of great meals. Here are some of the favorites:
808 Deli had great sandwiches (good breakfast sandwiches too).
Nick’s Fish Market at the Fairmont had the best service, great fish too. And when we were too cold to walk back to our resort we found out they had a complimentary shuttle.
Pacific O was the best meal we ate.
IO by the same folks as Pacific O was pretty good too!
Moose’s was surprisingly good for a “chain” pub (okay there is only 3 locations and they’re all in Hawaii).
Cool Cat boasts the best burgers on Maui. Their Ahi sandwich was pretty good too.
Next Time…
Next time I’d like to get out and snorkel or scuba at Molokini, see a sunrise or sunset at Haleakala (we ran out of driving energy after our last two drives… plus you need to wake up at 3 AM to catch the sunrise) and go kiteboarding (it wasn’t windy enough the day I scheduled it).