Hanging with the boss

Julie and I went with my cousin Sara to the Stein Eriksen Lodge at Deer Valley for the Sunday Brunch. We were dining at the table next to Stein himself. He was nice enough to take time and pose.



If you don't know Stein, he was a Gold and Silver Olympic ski medalist in 1952 and won several World Championship golds in 1954.

FINALLY!! The middle of the house is going in. You can see a few of the big trusses we have been waiting for, including one hanging from the crane. Yeah! Perhaps we can actually dry the house in now.

The big boy crane

This time they didn't mess around. To understand how big this is, look at the peak of the garage on the far right of the house. It is probably 25 feet tall. Gives you some idea of the crane's height and the size of the joists going in. They had to replace about five joists after the crane crushed them.

Sure, and would you like a crane with that?

While I was in Yellowstone, it appears I missed the excitement in home building. I have gone back and checked our architect's plans and I am certain there was no crane in the living room.

Either operator error or a jack malfunction occurred when lifting a very heavy truss in to support the living room's vaulted ceiling. Seems to have been a bit much. Fortunately, the crane operator and the four framers were all unharmed. It could have been much worse. It took two additional cranes and many hours to get everything back in place. Thank goodness Julie took pictures! She was outside playing with the dog when all this happened.






I think that this big crane boom would definitely ruin the view and mess up the deck.

Where's Waldog Part 2

This time it is a tiny bit harder.

Photographing Yellowstone in winter

I went to a week long photography seminar in Yellowstone. It was a lot of fun and a great way to improve your photography. You get new techniques and then practice them by shooting for 8 hours a day.

We had days that ranged from sunny and 25, to snowing and 0, to sunny again, but 35 below, and that is without wind chill. It was the coldest temperatures I have ever been in.

We stayed at the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel for part of the trip and the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful for the rest. The people were great. The animals were cooperative. The snow was soft and fluffy.

Click here for an album of my best Yellowstone pictures. I include a quick mix of the types of things we ran across.



Trees near geysers get a mix of very cold temperatures and a steam bath. This is the result.



Some rivers freeze over, but others flow a bit longer because the water is coming from thermal features.



A big bull elk digging for food.



Mama bear, baby bear and papa bear. OK, not really bears. Brrr....

Rose Bowl 2007

Julie and I decided to head to the Rose Bowl this year. Neither of us had been. Michigan had a great year with its only loss being a close game to Ohio State. The opponent, USC, was also a great team. We decided to invite Julie's uncle Tom, who in turn invited his grandson Micheal. All of us were part of the Michigan alumni tour.

The long weekend was wonderful with one obvious exception, USC beat Michigan. The weather was drop dead gorgeous. We got to see a lot in a short period of time. The Rose Bowl parade was as spectacular as you might imagine. We got to hook up with our friend Liz on several occasions although we never got to see her surfing.

It is painful uploading more than a handful of pictures to the blog, so I created a web album. Just click on the picture below and it will take you to the album. The easiest thing is to pick the
Slideshow option and then use the arrow keys to step through it.

Rose Bowl 2007

What a gorgeous morning!!

This morning is was clear and crisp. Crisp in Park City means the temperature is around zero. After it snowed about 15 inches a few days ago, we haven't had more snow but we have had some frost from the brrrrr cold. I brought the camera along as Jasper and I walked up the mountain behind our house. You should probably double-click on each picture to see a bigger version. Most of the beauty is in the detail.

I couldn't quite figure out how to best show the incredible lace of frost that was on almost all of the low branches. When you shoot the picture down, the detail gets lost in the snow below it. Finally I decided to lay in the snow and shoot up at the sky. Mostly worked!



The sunrise wasn't very pretty in the clouds but the lighting of the snow, ice and frost was wonderful.

Where's Waldog?

Can you find the dog in this picture?

A wee bit o' skiing

Haven't gotten out to do much skiing so far this year. The snow just hasn't been that good and I am definitely spoiled. On Friday, Bruce Kahn and I trekked over to Alta where the snow was better (than in Park City). As you can see, Alta has some gorgeous scenery.



Bruce, cruising down the hill.



One of my favorite things about living in Park City is getting to watch the inversions. In December and January we get high pressure systems that come into the area and camp out. In Park City, these are bad because they mean no new snow. In Salt Lake, Ogden, Logan, ... the inversions are much worse. There is no wind to speak of, so the cold air gets trapped in the valleys. All the polution from cars, fireplaces, and industry just settles in and stays. On the same day we had gorgeous blue skies up in the ski areas, this was the view over the Salt Lake valley. All the grey and brown you see should be a city and mountains in the distance. Yuck!