2/15/08 – Travel the first day on vaca
I‘m in Vermont now. Good flight, a bit bumpy in the tiny plane but good. After successfully going 32 hours without sleep, then failing to fall asleep when finally given the opportunity twice, I am here blogging.
It‘s cold… as a Florida native this is definitely something I don‘t do. Temp currently is 3. A whopping 3. Even inside, its 59 degrees right now, brrrr.
2/16/08 – Snow Sledding and resting
This is my recovery day… after 32 consecutive hours of awakeness thanks to working a full 8 hours, then traveling for 10 hours etc, I had to SLEEP. I did manage to go snow sledding in some loose powder down a giant hill I identified in summer as perfect for sledding. It rocked… except for having to come back up the hill, that sucked.
The day‘s weather was cold! Using my handheld Kestrel 4500 NV, I read temps of 11 degrees with 15mph winds making a -9 degree wind chill. Now that was pretty freaking cold. Anyways, heres more choice pictures. The complete gallery can be found in my… well galleries.
2/17/08 – Jay Peak Snowboarding fun time adventure action
Wow… first time snowboarding and it is quite a workout. Used muscles I haven‘t used in awhile. It is much more difficult to learn than skiing is. I pretty much had my legs incapacitated for the rest of today as my muscled seized up on me so to speak. It was fun though, but I want to go skiing also, to have fun and go fast without worrying as much as I would on a snowboard.
Perfect weather, absolutely perfect. at the base of Jay Peak in the learning area, measured with my Kestrel 4500 again, it was 31 degrees with around 50% to 60% humidity under clear skies. As the afternoon approached it got gusty with higher humidity and even started with freezing rain in the evening. But for our snowboarding adventure, it was perfect.
2/18/08 – Snow Melt-a-thon in balmy 50 degree day
Today is kind of a slacking day. Can‘t really do a whole lot winter related outside as its 50 degrees and everything is melting real fast. All that melting water will freeze tonight as temps will dip below freezing again and stay that way for the duration of my trip. I went out to get some brunch then went picture taking again.
2/20/08 – Jay Peak – Skiing action
Now it has been at least 12 or 13 years since ive been skiing. It was harder than I thought it would be considering my previous ski experience. Though It was so much fun. I had an awesome time. It was another beautiful day out though quite a bit colder than my last trip to the mountain. Today temps measured with my Kestrel 4500 were bouncing between 11 and 20 degrees depending on if the sun was out or not. Wind chill was between 4 and 20. There wasn‘t too much wind or blowing snow today either which was good. The max wind gust I recorded was 9mph. One thing interesting happened, while skiing down the slope, an A-10 Warthog flew a few circles at sharp 90 degree turns around the mountain, then flew straight up into and over the clouds. That was awesome. Anyways… some of the better shots below. Sorry for the noise on the last four pictures. Had to turn up high ISO to get good shutter speed as car was traveling 45mph and the sun was setting.
2/20/08 – Total Lunar Eclipse under clear skies
The forecast called for mostly cloudy skies with chance of snow showers, however it was perfectly clear skies with no wind. What a beautiful night for taking pictures of an eclipse. Apparently my Pentax K10d with a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens isn‘t the best equipment to use when taking moon shots. However it still faired much better than previous cameras doing similar shots.
2/21/08 – Walking down the ritzy streets of Newport, VT
Another cold one up here, high around 20, lows somewhere in the single digits close to 3 degrees. So this made it a great day to go walking around outside! Actually it was quite beautiful and managed to get some outstanding pictures of the area. Also went to go see the movie Jumper, though nothing much interesting happened on that trip. Again, some pictures below! This time I took them with my Pentax K10D so image quality, color saturation, sharpness, all top notch!
