Skiing in Engelberg

Last Sunday I went to Engelberg for a day of skiing. There had been lots of snow during the week and Saturday night, meaning snow conditions were excellent for Sunday. More than excellent, amazing!!! (Is that better than excellent?)

Richard, Evan, Devon, Lindsey, Kevin, Mike and I took the train up early Sunday morning and were on the hill by 9:30ish. Tommy came too, but he made poor decisions and stayed out in Zurich late the night before, and didn't quite make the train the rest of us took. Shane and Adrienn were there too, they had boarded Saturday too and then renegade camped overnight near the hill. Kudos for being hardcore guys!

I skied with Richard and Lindsey all morning, and I'll add here that all pics are courtesy of Richard (thanks!) since I didn't bring my camera. We started out by going right up to the highest peak, which involved a series of gondola (aka, cable car...I just call them all gondolas) rides....European resorts really love their gondolas. The gondola to the very top was some fancy rotating one...the idea was that you could get a nice view, but I thought it was dumb since a) the windows were all frosted over and scratched so you couldn't see anything anyways, and b) only the floor rotated, so you couldn't lean yourself or skis against the wall and had to stand careful not to snag anything on a non-rotating part. Anyways, waste of money...sorry Adrienn ;) (she thought it was cool).






One of the gondola's to the top of the mountain (not the rotating one)














And so ends the gondola rant.....and so beings the wicked morning of powder skiing. I discovered quite quickly that I am severely lacking in the powder skiing mad skillz. My skillz are more moderately angry...or perhaps just a bit annoyed. Anyways, I was falling all over the place, which wasn't so bad since there was a thick cushion of snow to land on (and fill my jacket with). I slowly got the hang of things and by later in the morning I was tearing up some of the runs.



Look at that beautiful snow














Me and Lindsey at the top of the mountain












View from the top...there was an ocean of clouds below us that looked amazing












Another pic from the top...you really feel far away from the rest of the world














Me and Lindsey on the chair lift













Giving my legs a break












Beautiful...
















If you look carefully you can see Mike. It's hard because he's wearing a camouflage jacket.










We tried out a few different runs, and all were even better than the last. By the time it was time to meet for lunch I was feeling happily tired from the morning. We met up with Kevin, Devon and Adrienn (just by chance... I am amazed with how often that happens) and had lunch with them. Devon bought some new poles, since he had broken one during the morning, too bad.




Lindsey and Devon eating lunch. Past the railing is a giant vertical drop, it overlooks a glacier that we watched some (skilled) people ski













Adrienn, Richard and Lindsey at lunch. We're rocking the Nalgene's, lol.











I approve of Kevin's massive sandwich














This pic looks oddly posed...nice group shot though














I should add that the weather was amazing all day, nice clear skis. Every now and then there would be a random fog cloud, but they passed quickly. The only coldish spots were where the wind was gusting at the top of the mountain, but even that wasn't that bad.




Perfect day for skiing










After lunch we ran into Evan and Shane and the group of us (minus Adrienn) (and minus Mike and Tommy) started off on a run through some nice deep powder. The first mentionable event was when Evan dropped a big rock and bailed, losing his skis in the snow. We were looking through the snow, and eventually Shane found it waaay down from where we were looking. It was a pretty lucky find, wow, can you imagine how long we would have been looking for that?!?! (P. S. this is foreshadowing).

So we continued on the run, I was having a great time floating through the powder and then I made a bad turn and fell face-first into the snow. One ski fell off, which had been happening all day...it occurred to me that I haven't adjusted my bindings in years, and they were definiatly not tight enough for the snow were on that day. Only Richard and Lindsey were behind me, so I asked Richard to pass my my one ski which had fallen off....."sure, where is it?" he replied. Hmmm.....where DID that thing go?

The three of us started looking (everyone one else was up ahead, they didn't know what had happened). We dug all around where I fell and found nothing. After about 45min I insisted that they go and get a few runs in, no point in all 3 of us wasting our afternoon of skiing and I obviously had nothing better to do, lol. I started making the search a bit more systematic, starting about 8m down from where I fell and working my way up digging half a meter down sweeping back and forth. At least I had my ipod to keep me company with inspirational digging tunes, lol.

On ski-less hour later, I was happy to look up and see the other guys (Evan, Shane, Devon, Kevin) had come back. They couldn't believe my story that I had been there since the first run and...when we didn't end up at the lift with them they had assumed we had gone somewhere else (they felt bad about not returning right away, even though there was no way they could have known). Everyone spread out to help, and Evan and Shane broke out their shovels.....dig, dig....

Kevin was the hero of the day (though, everyone helped so they are all heroes, thanks guys!!!!), he uncovered my ski slightly further up from where we thought I fell. I was so happy, I had pretty much assumed by that point that it was gone and I would be forced to either find a way to afford new skis or sacrifice the rest of the season.

Only then did I realize how exhausted I was...during the digging I was motivated by the mission to find the ski, but once it was found all I wanted was to get off the mountain. Plus I was paranoid about falling again and ending up skiless again so I was taking things verrry easy. Everything was closing anyways, it was already 4:30 (woot for getting in 1 run after lunch....) so we just took a cruising run down to the base to collect our gear.




Where is my ski?!?!?!?!?!?!?!













Adrienn, me and Lindsey with everyone's gear













Dramatic pic of Richard











Anyways, the awesomeness of the morning almost made up for the crappyness of the afternoon, so I declare the day a success! No skiing next weekend becasue I'm going to Milan to see a football (soccer) game! The weekend after I'll be in Zermatt, so stay tuned for posts about both those things :)

Music Shows

Last weekend I got a chance to check out some live music in Baden and Zurich, it was pretty sweet. It's amazing how much more exciting and intense music is when you are watching the artist perform, you get way more involved in the whole show even if it's not a style of music that you would normally love.

On Friday a bunch of us headed down to a bar in Baden called Merkker, where there were 3 rock bands playing throughout the evening. They were all decent, but the acts definitly got better as the night went on (either that or we just got so drunk that they seemed to get better). The last band was really amazing, they put on a really great show. Here's a couple pics:




Richard, me, Vance and Lindsey rockin out to the music












Lindsey and ninja Devon. Hmm, did you buy that drink at the bar Lindsey?











On Saturday night, some of use went into Zurich to see a Lyrics Born concert. It was a hip hop show, and pretty similar in style to the De La Soul concertI saw in Baden back in September. First Mike Relm (the DJ who spun for Lyrics Born) did a set, it was really sweet. He had some video going along with his mixes and scratched that too for a really cool effect. After a short break, Lyrics Born came out and the energy really started flowing. What amazes me about hip hop concerts is how well the performers interact with the crowd to keep things really exciting. Even though I'm not usually a huge hip hop fan I totally appreciate the ability to put on a great show.

That's my overview of the night....I didn't bother writing more since Travis posted a really detailed description on his blog. There was no way I could outdo a passionate account of the concert by a dedicated Lyrics Born fan, so check out the link for pics as well as a way more indepth description/analysis of the show (nice post Travis)!

D&D Painting

We had our first 2006 D&D adventure last week, things are really starting to heat up! I will refrain from giving an exciting description of the progress of our mission, since most of you probably don't care anyways... Anyway, my character has reached level 4 so I get all sorts of new skills and spells and stuff. Hooray!

The real reason for this post: here's a pic that Warren created with a program called ArtRage. The picture shows us batteling some Ogres outside a cave (where we eventually fought and annihilated a Hydra, oooooo). It's pretty amazing, I think Warren missed his true calling of being an artist and is wasting his time getting a useful degree in Software Engineering.

Skiing in Laax

(I'll add more pics to this post as soon as collect them from Devon)

Last weekend a group of us went skiing for 2 days in Laax: Me, Adrienn, Evan, Shane, Richard, Devon, Travis, Tommy and Lindsey (and Mike came for Sat). We all got ski & rail deals from SBB, which gives you a discounted price for the train and lift ticket. I was expecting that it wouldn't be a very good deal for me, since I have a GA (everywhere train pass), but I was still able to get a discouted lift ticket (go SBB!!!). 46CHF for a day of skiing? Not too crappy!

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and took the train/bus up to Laax, about a 2.5 hour journey. I was pretty tired, since the night before we had a rousing game of pictionary over at Kehl (wooooo!!!!). It was awesome, we had Team Girl (Adrienn, Lindsey and me), Team Asian (Richard, Henry, Bernard and ....Tyler (the honary asian) ), and team White Male (Vance, Travis, Warren and Kevin). Talk about non PC team division, lol. Team Girl won the first game, and Team Asian suprised everyone by winning the second game, a nice improvement from the first match. Humerous highlights: Vance misreading the card and drawing Hamlet instead of Helmet (though, he had a nice Shakspearian dude started in the time the rest of us had sucessfully guessed helmet), Adrienn being so excited that we guessed her eyes-closed drawing that she forgot to open them and hit her head on the couch, the realization that the 2-drawing of "seam" and tunnel" was a hilarious combination, *somebody* thinking that Mt. Everest is in Japan, Henry's unidentifiable drawing of Italy....and of course, every turn at least one person guessing "jackal, jackal, it's a jackal!!!".

So back to Laax....we arrived and decided to go by the hotel to drop off our bags. When we finally got there (we got off the bus too early and had to walk a bit) we discovered that the place wasn't even open yet.....Switzerland, you have let us down again. So we just got ready outside, locked our bags together and left them on the porch. By the time we had gotten the bus back to the gondola and picked our our lift passes, it was after 10...good thing we got up so early!!




Trekking to the hotel after we got off the bus a stop early













Travis, the human ski rack
















First impression of Swiss skiing: the terrain just goes on forever in all directions. Every time we would take a lift and ski to a new area, there was another lift waiting to take us further. We made it over to the highest peak at Laax, then went around exploring the rest of the mountains. I skiied mainly with Richard, Tommy and Lindsey, since they liked doing the same sort of stuff as me.




Hmmm, where should we go first?











Second impression of Swiss skiing: you hardly ever ski in the trees. Most of the runs are above the tree line, and when there are trees they are so dense that it's hard to find a good line. It was kinda strange, but also meant that we had an awesome view of the mountain (see pics below, I brought out my camera on the second day). We had really nice weather for the whole weekend, blue, cloudless sky, and not very cold.



Check out the beautiful Alps












That first day wasn't too exciting (this may have been partly due to the fact that there had been no new snow in the past while)...it was mostly spent checking out the hill and trying to find some good runs. I was a bit dissapointed to find that most of the runs are groomed, though, you can sometimes find mogals and other fun things on the sides (this combo is actually pretty good for skiing in a group of mixed ski levels). Towards the end of the day though, I began to find some fun runs, with a good mix of cruising, mogals and little jumps. My last run of the day was the best by far, always a nice way to end off the day.



On another gondola...this hill goes on forever!















Richard on one of many gondola rides












"This is awesome!!!"













"I agree, but am too cool to show it"











At one point Tommy, Richard and I emerged onto a face that was almost entirely lacking snow. We tried to get around it by skiing past into the trees, but the trees were so dense, and the snow so deep (and heavy, it was all melted from the sun) that it was really hard. At one point I was pretty much caught in 2 trees, trying desperatly not to fall between them since my skis were all stuck. Richard managed to lose a ski, and spent a good 20min looking for it before finally finding it. We vowed to never ever go down that run again, haha.





Adrienn, me, Tommy, Lindsey and Richard ready to break for lunch










We met up back at the hotel at the end of the day, to discover that it was freaking amazing. We each got our own rooms, there was a couple common areas with cozy chairs and a piano (yay!), rooms for skis and boots, it was really clean and the staff was friendly. Unfortunatly, the awesomeness was reflected in the price (60CHF eep!) but I think we'll just have to get used to that when staying in a ski resport area. We spent the evening hanging out, having a few drinks and playing cards. At one point we had planned to go into town to check out some bars, but since that would mean walking back (the busses don't run very late) nobody really had the energy. So we made the good decision of staying in, and ended up getting a decently long sleep (in the most awesome bed ever....I wish I could have brough it back to Kehl, haha).



Chilling at the hotel playing some cards














Playing an intense game of asshole










The next day we had an awesome breakfast provided by the hotel, including what Adrienn informed us was bread to dip in hot chocolate, it was strange.

My second day of skiing was way better than the first, mostly because by then we had figured out the hill and had an idea of where the good runs were. I skiied at the top of one of the peaks all morning (beautiful view), there was a nice steeper run that turned into a long straightaway with some wicked rollers. Tommy and I went on a bit of an adventure and tried out a run we saw from the lift, which was mostly not great, but we hit a patch of really nice snow at one point, yay.




Adrienn and Lindsey getting ready to start off the day













Taking a break on the hill













Lindsey, me and Tommy on the chair lift













Treeless...













Tommy being thoughtful













Lindsey on the chairlift (I'm sure she was being thoughtful too)













Tommy up on a peak













Hot air ballons! I love this picture.













Mwah ha ha, we went left














My hands are so cold...I took off my gloves to get out the camera








In the afternoon we tried out a run that was so filled with little jumps and bumps that I wanted to go back through to explore more. I ended up skiing this all afternoon on my own, since Tommy and Lindsey had dissapered (and were apparenly having a giant trek through the trees that would take them all afternoon, haha). It was really fun, but tiring. The highlight was when I tried out a kicker that somebody had built and didn't quite make the landing...causing everyone on the chair lift to laugh and yell at me, awwww, lol.



Me, Tommy and Lindsey about to try out the run













Not too shabby...













Shane, looking like he just stepped out of a snowboard ad










The journey home was fairly smooth in terms of train connections (we never had to wait!) but one of the trains was so full that we had to all squish on the stairs (which was actually pretty comfortable). Also, Richard somehow managed to lose his ticket and spent one of the trains skillfully dodging the ticket checker, haha.

What a wicked weekend! And it only cost me ~170CHF, including food and the hotel. Hopefully I'll be able to get lots more skiing in this year, I'd like to check out some of the other hills in Switzerland. Cross your fingers for lots of snow!!

White Trash Party

Ziegelhau had a White Trash party last week in honour of everyone being back in Baden. There were some awesome costumes....I think we pretty much covered all the differend forms of white trash. We started out the night by watching Fubar and then just gav'er. Here's some pics:

NEW: video of the fireworks incident





Who's the father Adrienn?











Oh ya, rocking the Fubar shirt. We thought we should return Ziegelhau's chair in an appropriate manner ;)



















Lookin good boys











Vance, are those pj's tied on your head?















Evan looking super classy















Me and Piotr! He was visiting for the week



















Nice belt Travis

















Keegan looking hardcore













Devon with his beer holder and XXX liquor


















I don't think anybody was happy about this picture being taken










"Tyler, I swear this is alright to drink"
















Tommy, Lindsey, Tyler and Travil rockin the white trash (and/or 50 cent) look













No party is complete without a rifle! (Don't worry, it's fake)













Check out the awesome Trogdor tatoo I gave Richard
















Yes to what?

Who let Devon have those?!?!?












Mmm, you know what goes well in oranges? Rye!!!













Shane (the pirate, wtf?!?!) doesn't agree













And the night winds down...