Ahhh, the Mountain.

There is nothing quite as nice as the first day of the season up on the mountain.

Timberline, Mt. Hood.

There was really only one lift running (Palmer). But it was a wonderful day.

Pucci was a mess, and they tricked us into thinking it would be better to ski down and take the lift up than walking to the mile. Not so. It was icy to the extreme, the snow was so hard packed. And there were rocks EVERYWHERE. It was so hard getting to the bottom of Pucci I wish I had just walked over to the mile. Riding up the mile was strange - as I was in ski clothes, had skis on my feet, and it was cold - but there was no snow. (Even more weird was riding the mile back down...).

Palmer was nice nice nice. Good snow considering. But it was windy and cold. Not too bad though.

After a short first day we called it quits as the biting wind and the long lines (with only one lift it got to be a big wait...) made it so that we felt it better not to push ourselves. Several long runs was enough to break in the new skis (which are way way way better than my old skis).

All in all - I love riding on the mountain. There is nothing quite as good as snow sports - even when they are kinda crummy they are good.

I hope the snow is good this year.

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Free Topographical Maps

The Libre Maps project has purchased and made available for free all of the USGS Topographical maps of the USA. All 50 states. The maps have always been free sort-of, there was just no where until now to actually GET them for free. The Libre Maps project raised enough funds to buy the many gigabytes of data and the Internet Archive is hosting them. These are great 24k scale topographical maps folks. The same types you pay for in sporting goods stores. And many applications on your computers can work directly with them and your GPS. You can get water and tear resistant paper and print them out.. All good stuff... For the lazy in the audience, here are Oregon's.

Not safer, just stupider.

The first definition of stupider is "Slow to learn or understand; obtuse." I think that there would be good cause to add to it "See American". Today, while passing through the security checkpoint at Portland International (PDX) I witnessed the TSA personnel sending people to the back of the line for not taking off their flip-flops. They shouted endlessly about removing liquids, regardless of size. And they generally treat every one of us like we were infants incapable of understanding simple instructions. But perhaps they might be on to something.

Every bit of plastic ever made still exists.

If you have ever crate trained a pet dog, you will have found that dogs will do everything within their power to not shit where they sleep. A dog will hold it until their face turns blue. Unless of course they are already blue, then they will just get a darker shade. And if you (and the dog) have had the misfortune of getting stuck a little to long, and the dog HAS had to go in their crate, the minute the poor canine makes eye contact with you - you know it. The dog will feel as though they have betrayed the universe by pooping in the crate. Well, humans are assholes. We could learn a thing or two from our dogs. We only have one earth. Only one. No "fall back" or "plan B" exists despite what you may see in the Star Trek movies or read in the Cristopher Stasheff or Orson Scott Card novels. I imagine that some day some poor wasted species - a distant relative to the Human - who has had to survive underground or in bubbles without being able to breathe ...

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