OK, now this is really not funny... quarter-of-five?!?

Can somebody please explain to me how it suddenly got so late?

The big disappointment of the trip is that Tussey Mountain didn't have their halfpipe cut the day that I got to ride over there. Surprisingly, they had decent snow on the mountain, and a very small crowd which made for a good day. The whole vacation thing was good and I had the time to see all of my family. There are lots of details, most of which I will not touch on right now... maybe down the road sometime. For now, I'm back in Denver and that feels good.

Too many stinkin' people are off of work these days. I went up to Arapahoe Basin after passing up Key(clusterf_ck)stone. A line of cars stretched back from their free lots for about half a mile. There didn't look like there were any open spaces, so those people were probably going to be sitting for some time looking for spaces. A-Basin wasn't overly crowded, although their lots threatened a swarm on the mountain. More terrain is open, but there's still a lot to cover and the winds today didn't help to keep the available snow on the mountain. There was just enough to make for a good day.

We need a storm. A big two-foot kind of storm.

So how do you bribe a friend to wake up at 5:00 am to drive you to the airport?

"The Punk Rock Bowling Tournament gonna be on Thursday, January 18th ... We encourage everyone (band, label, store, whatever) to participate and put a team together." -- courtesy Suburban Home Records.

Crap. A couple of the mountains got about half a foot last night. I should have been riding today. Instead, I was at the car dealership getting an oil change and service done on a parts recall. I shouldn't complain -- one of the mechanics left some sort of tool in my car that I'm debating on whether or not to return. It's not something I'm familiar with, but it sort of looks like something that you would use to pull weeds out of your lawn. My best guess is that it was used to change my wipers, but until I try to use it myself for that sort of task, I might never know.

If the dealership wasn't so far out of the way from my house, I would drop it off today.

A study published in JAMA announced that there is no definite correlation betwen short-term cell phone use and brain cancer. While that's a relief, there was no mention about the fact that people who use cell phones in public spaces, such as restaurants, look like assholes.

I bought a battery backup for our server last night. I was excited about the idea of it staying up while I'm out of town and the power goes out. All of that excitement quickly faded when I plugged it in and smoke started pouring out of the terminals. Wasn't planning on making another trip to the computer store so soon.

No one to ride with today, but I did a day at Keystone by myself. How is it that the meteorologists can be so off on a day like today. I nearly didn't make the hike today because there was a forecast for 80 mph gusts again. It's been windy as hell up there over the last 5 days. Instead of wind, we had a light (really light, like non-existant) breeze, clear skies, lots of sun, and it was probably in the mid-twenties. Beautiful. Almost so beautiful that I didn't notice that 25 minute line for the gondola at the bottom of the mountain this morning. Oh wait -- not that beautiful, but still beautiful in a 16 kind of way.

Les Savy Fav ... rockin' my garage. It'd be nice if they got their asses over here and toured the States a little this summer.

After finding myself overwhelmed with the notion of "sooner or later" getting through the 800 messages that have collected in my inbox from a mailing list to which I'm subscribed, I decided to blindly delete them without even reviewing the subjects for interesting entries. Feel like I'm not keeping up with my part of the deal. I know I'm going to have to do this when I return after the holiday.

ugh, it's really early. I'm headed out with Matt to see if we can catch some of the sweet stuff from the storm last night.

70 mph gusts while sitting on the chairlift today -- I think that I'm lucky that I didn't get blown away.

Yesterday makes 14. I hate counting and I swore I would never do it again, but the last two days have been phenomenal. Just how is it that 2-3 feet blows into the woods at Keystone and no one has touched it?

Tussey has a pipe dragon. That's just too strange for me to fathom, but according to their site it's true. I want to ride there when I am home... Don't ask me why.

I had planned on shipping my old deck to my parents' for the holidays and just leave it out there. I don't ride it anymore, but I could take it for a few runs out there. Little did I know it would cost about $100. Maybe I'll be carrying it after all.

Day 13 -- One might think it would turn out to be an unlucky one. I was a little worried about that myself, and tried not to think about it. As it turns out, there was only one unlucky bit to the entire day -- I planted my face in the snow in a bad landing, scraped my chin, and gave myself a fat lip. But it was a great air, and I was feeling it for the whole run. So who's to say it is bad? This was probably the best day I've had this season. The Copper Four-Pass is treating me right.

Just a few things to mention right now. First off, a link to the 5K site. This is a competition to build a web site using less than 5KB of total file size. Maybe I'll have my class do something along these lines -- might be a good project for them. So here's the URL... http://www.the5k.org/.

Next up, Don...

I went to see the halfpipe finals for the Van's Triple Crown (I should get search result listings for this!!!) at Breckenridge. I think this was the coolest professional sporting event that I've ever witnessed. I had a prime location, too, standing midway up the pipe right along the fenceline. These guys and girls were going off and they were literally flying 5 feet in front of me! I took a bunch of pictures of the whole thing, and they're being developed right now. Hopefully, I'll have something to show by tonight.

I'm liking the sound of this: "Snow accumulations 8 to 12 inches with locally heavier amounts above timberline."

From the "What could possibly be next" department: DreamCast runs Linux. I saw this on Slashdot tonight with links to screen shots. Here are two that I liked best: one, two.

"I make music to fill holes in my record collection and to try to communicate to other people who have similar holes in their record collections. I know those people exist, and they get us."

Travis Morrison, The Dismemberment Plan ... from The WestWord

I think I've finally discovered the source of the "phantom stench" in my fridge. It's been elluding me for months to the point where I can barely distinguish it. But people keep telling me it's terrible. We'll have to just wait and see if it goes away now.

I installed the new Opera 5 browser today to do some testing. I haven't gotten to actually running it yet, I just went through the installation. I don't often read the end-user agreements, but since this is ad-supported software, I thought I would give it a skim. Most of it was boring garbage, until I got to this section which made me consider how I might eventually need to use this software:

"YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN (I) ON-LINE CONTROL OF AIRCRAFT, AIR TRAFFIC, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR AIRCRAFT COMMUNICATIONS; OR (II) IN THE DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, OPERATION OR MAINTENANCE OF ANY NUCLEAR FACILITY. "

No, I think I'll be OK with this one.

It was day 11 today, and it was spent at A-Basin. They got about 5-6 inches in the Summit County resorts last night, but it wasn't enough to completely wipe out any ice that might be lingering underneath. That's why my ankle is sore as hell right now ... one bad spill for the day.

Call me a saint or something.

I did my good deed of the month tonight. I was at the car wash when I was approached by some guy from South Dakota who was out of luck at the bus stop. Apparently, he needed to get to the bus station downtown in Denver and was miles out where we met. Since the buses stopped running earlier in the evening, there was no way he was getting downtown. He offered me a fiver, and I took it. I wasn't really happy about driving downtown tonight, but he didn't seem to be in a good position for getting himself there. Winter nights can really suck standing around in the cold. So we hopped in and headed off.

He wasn't sure exactly were the bus station was, and admittedly, neither did I. We drove a couple of circles once we were in town, and eventually found it. I dropped him off and, here's the kicker, returned the five dollars he offered me for the ride.

I'm hoping these karma points will pay off sometime down the road.