Red and White game

The NC State spring football game was held today. I went with Tony Hudson and his son Jackson. It was either a fairly slow game or a good defensive showing. It was nice to see a few guys make some star plays but it is hard to judge the team based on such a controlled game.



The spring game was played in the honor of Kay Yow, NCSU's long time coach of women's basketball. She recently lost her battle with breast cancer. You can see the pink breast cancer ribbon on the field. The crowd was asked to make donations to the Breast Cancer fund on the way into the game. We had a great turnout and they raised over $28,000.



At the end of the game, the players stayed around to talk to people and pose for pictures. Lots and lots took advantage of the opportunity.



I like what coach Tom O'Brian is doing with this team. They show some promise. My biggest hope is that we can avoid so injuries to so many key players this year.

The flowers are flowering

It's nice coming back to Raleigh in the spring. While Park City is snowy and muddy, Raleigh is just blooming everywhere. These are just a few quick shots of some of the color in the yard.









By the way, Park City had 31 inches of snow in the past two days. Alta closes on Sunday, but they still have a base of 170 inches (about 14 feet). Seems like they could build a huge snow man for the end of the year.

Sergei Rachmaninoff plays live

OK, so he died in 1943. That wasn't really much of a problem. My good friend and ex-business partner John Q. Walker started a company called Zenph. The company takes old piano recordings and analyzes them to figure out exactly how they were played. They play them back on very high-end player pianos and record the results. What you get is a famous recording with perfect audio, instead of the 78 recording done in the 1920s. Sony has a contract with Zenph to keep cranking out these reperformances.



Last night Zenph put on a "live" performance by Sergei Rachmaninoff. They had recorded a new CD for Sony the night before. It was a great performance, both the choice of music and the quality. My favorite was the incredible speed of Flight of the Bumble Bee. The instrument was a rebuilt 1909 Steinway concert grand with the automation added. It is one of only two Steinway grands in the world with the high-resolution playback automation and is one of the prettiest pieces of furniture you will ever lay eyes on.

We went with Anne and Tom Schick and ran across some ex-Ganymede employees including Susan Pearsall, Chris Lombardo and Kim Mayton. Nice to get to see people.

You can hear and buy the first two albums Zenph reperformed at Amazon:

• Art Tatum
• Glenn Gould
  

Yep, still bad at golf

I went out on Saturday for a round of golf with John Steigerwald and Darrell Baber. We played over at John's home course, Lochmere. It is a fairly easy course, but you wouldn't know by the way I played it. Chalk up another 101 score. Yuck!

Running lessons

Now that I am back from Raleigh, I have to start taking my running seriously. Here are some lessons I quickly learned:

• Taking five months off from running is bad
• Returning to sea level from 7400 feet is good. Yeah oxygen!
  
• Worn out joints and tight muscles and tendons don't seem to care about being at sea level. That's bad.
• Putting on seven pounds during the winter is bad.
• Pollen floating everywhere and coating your lungs as you gasp for air is bad.

So, looks like the "bads" have it so far.

End of the season

A mishmash of things at the end of the ski season....

As we prepare to head back to Raleigh, we wanted to get together with a bunch of friends. We had everyone over for the final four basketball games. Loris Benson brought a wonderful salad. We decided it was worth a photo, but she refused to pose with her creation. Bruce, with no hesitation, decided the salad was pretty enough for him to pose with.

Now we head into a Michigan State versus UNC game tonight. Should be a good one.



On our very last day of skiing, we hooked up with Bill and Loris Benson and my mountain host locker mate Russ. Russ was selected as the "host of the year" so I am hoping some amount of that rubs off. Bill was working so he is wearing his ugly orange host outfit.



And finally we returned home to hang the skis up for the summer. After all the injuries going on around us, we were very happy to have stayed healthy.

Yes, it does look like we have more than two skiers in the house. In Park City you build what is known as a "quiver of skis", a ski for every occasion. I guess it would be unreasonable to have a pair for every type of snow the Eskimos bothered to name. Here we have seven pairs of skis, three pairs of snow shoes, and a box of dog toys on the floor.

Winter is over. It's time to move on.

One last snow comment, I promise

Two days ago I detailed the enormous amount of snow that the Alta ski resort had lately. Today is sunny and gorgeous. In the two days in between, Alta had another 49 inches of snow. That puts them at 15 feet in 15 days.

We head back to Raleigh on Tuesday. After quite a few days in the 70s, they are calling for a high of 49 for our arrival. Perhaps we are bringing it with us?

New drinking laws in Utah

Utah has finally stepped into post-prohibition era by relaxing some of its bizarre drinking laws. Here are a few of the laws that have been changed in the past year:

• Mixed drinks can be made with a full jigger of alcohol (1.5 ounces) instead of 1.0 ounce. If you had weak drinks here, this could be why.
• Utah legalized home brewing beer. There are still four states where it is illegal (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma). I thought everyone in Kentucky had a still???
  
• No more of the "Private Club" idiocy. If you have ever walked into a Utah bar, you were probably asked "are you a member?" You were supposed to pay a $5 fee to join the club for a year. This was true even for a tourist who just wanted a single beer. This was the stupidest law to deal with.
  
• Bartenders are now allowed to serve drinks to people standing at bars. You would think this would make complete sense, but it was not the case. The "Zion Curtain" was a separation of bartenders and customers. You had to have a waiter or waitress bring the drink to you.

Just so you don't think Utah is too progressive, there are some things left:

• Beer sold in grocery stores is limited to 3.2% alcohol. This eliminates lots of better beers. The state sells the stronger beers in their ABC stores.
  
• Restaurants can't serve anything above 3.2% before noon. This isn't just Sundays, it's every day. So, stop for lunch at 11:30 and want a beer or a glass of wine? Dopey you. Find another state.
• A brand new stupidity: if you build a new restaurant (existing ones are grandfathered), you have to make sure those little Mormon children don't see drinks being mixed. Apparently, if children see drinks being made, they will become alcoholics. Now, the same children are allowed to see people drink the drinks, even at their table. That's OK. The new restaurants have to build a wall so that children can't see bartenders mixing drinks. ARGH!!!

Congrats to the Utah government for making some positive changes. Shame on them for letting the LDS church have such an active role in the legal process. Separation of church and state is something that Utah completely ignores. Ninety percent of the Utah legislature is Mormon and they openly, actively go to the church for input on bills.

Spring skiing in Park City

A few weeks ago, the temperatures here in Park City were in the 60s, even up in the mountains. The snow was slushy and melting fast. Everyone was convinced that the ski season would die a quick death. Then winter came back with a vengeance and it has been snowing fairly regularly ever since.

Last night we got yet another foot. Julie and I got over to Deer Valley not long after first chair.



It wasn't Utah's fluffy dry powder, but it sure wasn't spring snow either.



Notice the huge crowds as you look down a beautiful snow field. There was hardly anyone skiing!



Bruce Kahn joined us for some romps down the mountain.



I think this says it best. Bruce was recovering from heavy duty physical therapy to heal his calf. Julie had done a lot of lunges and other thigh exercises yesterday. I skied Tuesday and then did eight hours of mountain hosting on both Wednesday and Thursday. We were all dragging after a few runs.



For an ideal ski trip, people tend to like to see fresh snow every few days. Here are the snowfall reports from Alta for the past two weeks:

• March 22nd - 9"
  
• March 23rd - 18"
• March 24th - 9"
• March 25th - 19"
• March 26th - 11"
• March 27th - none
• March 28th - none
• March 29th - 21"
  
• March 30th - 10"
  
• March 31st - 6"
  
• April 1st - 14"
  
• April 2nd - 1"
  
• April 3rd - 13"
  

That's roughly 11 feet of snow in two weeks. Even the locals are shaking their heads in disbelief.

Clown Day at Park City

April 1st is "Clown Day" over at Park City Mountain Resort. I am sorry to have missed this event decades ago. It apparently involved dressing like clowns, skiing and having a monstrous party on the mountain. Kegs, liquor, and advanced pharma all played a part. While I can't confirm this as fact, I have been told that PCMR went so far to to print on the back of your lift ticket that "you are not allowed to dress as clowns".

Things have relaxed a good bit since then. People are dressing as clowns for skiing again, but things are much more restrained. I had to work today as a mountain host, but I was proud of our Wednesday team. Since the resort is 100% specific about how we dress, our only flexibility was wigs.



Dick met up with his wife, who works at the information desk. Dick chose to go with a lovely Victorian style.



Derrick is one of out two snowboarders. The rasta look was perfect.



Our team heading up early to put up all the signs. The two hot chicks on the left are guys, then Cindy, then two very patient team leaders.



... and of course, I had to strut my stuff. I started with this lovely blond wig but ended up wearing a Harpo Marx style gray afro.



I wish I had been able to take pictures of the numerous clowns, pirates, beer cans, ballet dancers and such, all of whom seemed to be having time out in the sunshine and fresh powder. (That is "whom", right?)