If you want to have a greater understanding and appreciation of vowels in the English language, just pick one at random and remove it from your keyboard. Then go ahead and type something, an email, a instant message, a post on your blog, and you'll have an epiphany, albeit a frustrating one, about the relative importance of AEIOU (and sometimes Y) in our odd language.

I for one have had this epiphany, because for the last few days, the O on my keyboard sticks so I have to jam down on the key to get it to work properly, and mind you, this is a new computer, and no, I haven't spilt a soda on it, and no, the kittens are not allowed to strut on it. I just had to do a complete restore because the factory settings on the computer were all fucked up. Prior to that, there was a problem with the K. Now it's the O. I don't want to do another restore only to lose functionality in another random key. I just want a computer that works. Is that too much to ask?

Posted by andrew at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The sun is shining, the snow is perfect and I have my lazy ass out of bed and at the base of lionshead 10 minutes before the lifts open. I just need to put my contacts in, my boots on and I'm out of here for a huge day of skiing all over the place amongst Vail's 5000+ skiable acres.

The plan is stay on the front side in the morning while the crowds are thin (the crowds will be thin all day, who am I kidding?) and have some pictures taken by my poor colleagues who have to work this fine day. Then I'm going to head over to the backside and to my favorite spot Blue Sky Basin where I'm going to have a picnic (I brought stuff to bbq on the complementary outdoor self-serve barbeques up at the top at Belle's Camp.

If my knees hold out and I have a bottle of Ibuprofun that says they will, this should be the best day of the year. The only thing that could make it better would be to have someone to share it with. Too bad the kittens ddon't ski.

Hope you're having fun wherever you are.

Posted by andrew at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you said "zero", you'd be correct. It was a first, and hopefully a last. It's hard to make money when you're on commission and you don't snap a single frame. So what happened? I finally decided to leave the store and head up to the mountain before 10AM. I got to the top of the run I was , Lost Boy (more like Lost Cause) and I stopped next to this women who, feeling the snow blasting into her face, said something like, this is ridiculous. I said, you want to hear ridiculous?, I'm supposed to be down there taking pictures of skiers. She just smiled. You couldn't see halfway down the slope, about 15 meters.

Instead of working, I did what any sane red ed skier would do when it's dumping snow, I skied. I went all over the front side of the mountain. I dipped for one run down The Slot into the backside, but the visibility was so poor, the wind so fierce and the snow dump so hard that I needed to get the hell out of there.

I brought lunch with me (roast beef and turkey rolled in a tortilla) but I needed something warm so I stopped at Two Elks Lodge on far eastern side of the mountain and had a plate of chili fries. These are not just any chili fries. For one thing they cost 5 bucks, but none of the food on the mountain is cheap. And then the chili wasn't your average, ordinary out of the can variety, this was homemade buffalo chili. Yum.

I made my was slowly back to the west side of the mountain where I work. Now, amazingly the sun out, the sky is blue and clouds are puffy white and I wish I was still out there ripping it up instead of sitting in the Vail library informing you about my day.

Hopefully I won't have to cool my heels in the store until 7, seeing as how I didn't take any pictures today, so I would surprised if I had any customers.

Posted by andrew at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You don't have to take my word for anything I say about Vail, whether it's the weather or the stunning views. You can look at the multiple webcams around the mountain here:

http://web.vail.net/local/livecams.cfm

Posted by andrew at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I woke up this morning, there was a solid two inches of snow on my windshield. The roads were icy and nasty. The snow continues to fall on the mountain here in Vail. We probably got about 5 inches last night from a slow but steady dump. The mountain desparately needed the snow, but it makes for horrible working conditions and I have exactly zero motivation right now which is why I'm writing this instead of getting ready to go into my zone to shoot skiers I can barely see through a thick veil of snow.

I don't even feel like skiing this morning. All I want to do is get back into bed and curl up with Fil and Mak, who is routinely getting me up at 4:30 in the morning so I can let him out. When he used to wake me up at 6:30, that was tolerable because I had to get up soon anyway, but this 430 shit has got to stop. Only I don't know what to do. The little shithead continues to ignore my most ardent pleas for sleep continuity.

Posted by andrew at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't want to write too much about my new digs now. Soak it up. Bask in it's white trash glory. Get an eyeful and try to imagine living with a guy who keeps a cool 30 pack of bud cans in the fridge and a season's worth of frozen elk, duck and god knows what else in the freezer. Many stories to come. I promise.

Posted by andrew at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It rained a little again last night and then snowed all day today. It was beautiful but a serious bitch to work in. I took about 600 shots in the blizzard and sold exactly none of them. If it weren't for a few kind souls who braved the weather and bought a few pics from days past, the day would have been a complete wash.

That said, we desparately needed the snow. The bottom of the mountain was looking like someone has a taken a massive shit and smeared it all over the place. I have some nice new gauges in the bottoms of my new skis from running over exposed rocks. The snow has been the texture of corn meal and the consisteny of a slurpee. It's nasty. It's great to ski when it's 40 plus degrees outside, but not if the snow is a complete disaster.

So now that will change, at least until the mercury rises again. Snow was still falling when I left Vail. Hopefully it will storm on th mountain all night and we can have a few nice days of skiing before the next front arrives, if the next front arirves.

Posted by andrew at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrew at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I would have pegged John Kerry as a skier, but perhaps he's more of a man of the people than I had suspected. He's even decent. Look at that form. Look at that edge he's on. And he's got a little snow flying off the board. Ok, so his ass might be sticking out a little far, but he's learning. Good for him.

A little recreation for the commander in chief is a good thing, just ask the surgeon general. As long as he doesn't spend a month a year in Sun Valley.

Posted by andrew at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It rained here in Vail last night. That is not a good thing. In fact, quite the opposite, it's a disaster. The season is supposed to go for another month, but already it's rain. Why is rain bad? Number one is that it's not snow. We need snow. You ski on snow. You can't ski on rain. Rain also wreaks havoc with poor coverage areas, creating mud, turning the remaining good snow into a chocolate brown mess. Rain alo freezes when it comes into contact with the snow turning an already poor surface into a sheet of ice that the New York Rangers would be happy with, but mot skiers in the world loathe.

The worst part about it was that the forecast had called for snow. Everyone as expecting some snow. We got rain. Oh, well. The mountain isn't going to close because rooms are booked and restaurant tables are reserved, but unless we get a significant dump of snow soon, the next month is going to be decidedly unpleasant.

Posted by andrew at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last weekend, the "celebrities" were town for some race event called the American Ski Classic. Only the celebrities were of a lower grade this season for some reason. There were ski legends like Billy Kidd and Klaus Obermeyer (pictured right), but no real stars of note unless you count Bobby Kennedy, jr. For whatever reason, the Classic is off the celebrity map this year.

Saying that, it was very cool to see Klaus Obermeyer ski. Mr. Obermeyer is a skiing pioneer (see the box below). I saw him and a few of his racing colleagues on Saturday morning when I played hooky from work to catch 45 minutes or so of the races at Golden Peak. I was right on the course taking picture. It was amazing to be that close to skiers going that fast. Some of the better racers, the ones ripping through all the gates, were skiing by so fast they would litterally blow by me. Mr. Obermeyer, being in 80s, didn't blow by anybody but he was still impressive and an inspiration to everyone in attendance. I'd like to be able to walk without assistance when I'm 80 not to mention strapping on a pair of skiis and be able to hold my own in a handicap race.

Bavarian born Klaus Obermeyer started skiing on homemade runners, made from a wooden citrus crate at age three. He became an engineer in automobile and aircraft manufacturing but escaped Nazi Germany in 1947 and came to America. He arrived in Aspen, via Sun Valley and through various travels with movie mogul Warren Miller, where he initially taught skiing for $10 per day for Friedl Pfeifer.

He soon discovered his students were uncomfortable with the quality of their clothing, sun glasses and lack of sunscreen, and quickly developed ski products such as the down parka and a line of revolutionary ski clothing that has remained at the top of the market for the past 50 years. His passion for quality and public relations has resulted in a multi-million dollar company, still under his leadership at 77 years of age.

He was awarded the distinguished Halva International Skiing Award in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to skiing.

from Colorado Ski Museum - Ski Hall of Fame