2011 Utah Ski: Day 2.5

This photo is included because we were in the lobby picking up some extra dishwasher detergent, and the guys suddenly discovered there was a whole gift-store section to the lobby and started browsing. To quote Ed: "Ooh - I wonder what else they have here ... "

Here, Eric discovered little jelly frogs which, when squeezed, light up with some internal LEDs. To say he was fascinated is an understatement; I think there had been some mention of getting one for his mother. Just look at that expression - now that's love.

But now, on to the good stuff! We had a pretty epic cooking-fest tonight - there were still some chicken legs which I marinated left over from last night, along with some porkchops which Ed marinated, and he fired up the grill to finish cooking them. I decided I really wanted some tomato sauce tonight (I sometimes crave cooked tomatoes) so I broke out the can of Italian-herb sauce, then cooked up some breakfast sausage and mushrooms to put in it. There was also some leftover rice which Ed wanted to finish, so I suggested we dump some of the leftover chicken marinade into it and let it steam again for some Chinese fried-rice style brown rice. Tracy even went so far as to set the table, so we actually looked like we had a proper dinner! (Click on a picture for details)



We were stuffed tonight, though I was surprised by how few leftovers we had. The difference in having two guys at the table, I guess. On the right, I had stood up on the sofa behind Ed to take a picture of him taking a picture of the dinner spread, while Eric is standing at the opposite end doing the same thing - we were all surprised by how well it turned out!

But that doesn't even cover dessert ... !



I love pies, and ever since college, Tracy's indulged me at some point of the year. So she offered to make us a pie tonight, and everyone agreed on pumpkin as the filling - except, as you can see here, we were rather short of certain implements. In the absence of a rolling pin, she had taken a just-finished jar of Tostito salsa, put it into a large ziploc bag which had been turned inside out for sanitary purposes, and stuck it inside to roll out the dough. I was very impressed to say the least.

We were also missing some shallow pans (I believe the only one which could have served I had already used for the pasta), and so she used a pyrex mixing bowl instead. It turned the pie into a sort of deep-dish pizza-like thing, which took twice as long to cook ... but well worth the wait! Even if the first slice didn't look too pretty when I tried to dig it out ... but that's okay. It all ends up in the same place eventually - my stomach!

2011 Utah Ski: Day 2.0

How un-oddly, today's post involves a lot more food than snow. However, we have made advancements in the video-taking, so even though I have no clips to post yet, there will be a progress report below!

Yesterday's breakfast was a rushed affair. We had to catch a 9 am shuttle in front of another building and I woke up at 8 am. The boys weren't even out of their room yet, so I had pretty much finished making breakfast and getting lunch materials out before they were able to help hurry things along. We barely made it to the lobby in time - only to find out that the shuttle had been full and passed by the stop altogether, to return fifteen minutes later.

Today, we decided to drive instead of taking the shuttle, so we had a much more leisurely first meal - the makings of which had been stamped by Tracy's special brand of inestimable aid:

I was making a sort of thin-pancake/crepe thing which my mother had invented, and had asked Tracy to beat some eggs for me. Below, Eric was trying his hand at taking care of the bacon, for which I was wholly glad as 1) I have no idea what to do with raw bacon, and 2) I'm not even fond of eating bacon, which no doubts contribute to my lack of interest in figuring out how to cook it.

He certainly made it look good, though! First, a bit of breading with some flour and pepper, then he stuck them in the oven, turning them over once halfway through.

After breakfast, we fiddled with the helmet cam. After reviewing the videos from yesterday, we discovered that due to how my earpiece slants inward where the camera rests, the whole world was basically tilted 45 degrees counter-clockwise in the video. So, here is one of our makeshift efforts at padding the camera so that it is parallel to my head orientation:

Thanks to Tracy, we had a semi-workable, if dorky-looking solution. She had stripped an edge from a plastic bag and used it as twine to tie a thick wad of paper napkin to the bottom edge of the camera. This actually worked, for the most part, if imperfectly! However, it was negated halfway through the day when Eric, in fiddling with the device, discovered that the front lens area can be rotated completely around. What essentially happens is that the camera senses the position of this front ring, and angles what it records accordingly - so I could potentially have my head tilted all the way onto my left shoulder, and still record an "upright" video by rotating that ring until the horizontal is parallel with the horizon. (I got rid of the tape and paper and plastic post haste as soon as this was discovered.)

Using the camera really is a learning experience, particularly as there's no way to review the video until we get home and I can view it on my laptop. The one other major issue we've had is with the battery life - the first day, it died right after lunch time. I half suspected, however, that it was because it was ice-cold outside, and then I brought it indoors where it warmed up. Then I turned it on while it was still warm, and walked back outdoors - it then died not ten minutes later. However, at the end of the day after we returned home and it warmed back up, I was able to turn it on again.

Working on that premise, today, I didn't turn it back on after lunch until after we had been back out in the cold for a while. This time, it gratifyingly lasted a lot longer - except it still didn't last more than halfway through the afternoon. However, this time, it wasn't because the battery died - it's because, while fiddling with the recorder button with my fat gloves, I hadn't realized I'd accidentally pushed the battery cover upwards, thus disengaging it. So, the battery had not died, the device had simply shut itself off because it sensed that the cover was off. Sigh. Tomorrow, hopefully, we'll finally be over all of these hurdles!

Here we have Ed looking very statuesque against a nice backdrop. He'd stopped to take a few photos and looked off to the side for some reason - below, I was pushing the rest into the same view for a group shot. It wasn't easy for poor Eric!

(Yes, there had been some judicious use of Photoshop. There is no way that everyone wouldn't be anything less than silhouettes with the sun behind them like that!)

Tracy moved and ruined the shot (always ruining things for me!). She had been lying sprawled in the snow while we were waiting for Ed at the end of the day, but started rolling back up to her feet before I could catch her in the camera.

Ed had the misfortune of having one of the straps on his boot bindings break twice - he had one spare, but didn't anticipate needing another one so soon, and there had not been a single store within a one hour radius of us that sold what he needed. So he detoured by the lodge's ski rental area, hoping to find some sort of ad hoc replacement at about 3:30 pm, and we were waiting around until he was finished ... except that, when it hit 3:45 pm, we realized that we needed to get back to the parking lot before 4 pm, when the lift we needed to take to get there closed. Eric, Tracy, and I then promptly abandoned Ed and screamed down a run to the Timberline lift, took that up, then skied straight down another two runs to manage to squeak into line for the Hidden Lake Lift two minutes before it was slated to close for the day. Thus, we just managed to make it to the parking lot, then swung around in the car to pick up Ed at the lower lodge.

Dinner was an affair which I decided deserves its own post, so check out part two!

2011 Utah Ski: Day 1.0

We finally made it onto the snow today at Powder Mountain! And here is the first photograph to commemorate the moment:

If you look closely at the black parts of Eric's clothes, you can already see the snow falling. At 9 am, it pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day - which was a lot of snow, a lot of cold, a lot of wind, a lot of low visibility ... but also a lot of awesome. (I may post a video in the next day or two proving that depending on how well my laptop does at rendering HD video for upload. Even though today's videos were crooked because I didn't realize how much my helmet sloped on that side, there were still some really incredible off-piste tree-powder riding going on.)

Powder Mountain is relatively small in area - just four lifts serve it, only one of them being an express, and it serves only the upper half of the mountain rather than the entire height - but the aspens help break up the denser stands of evergreens, and so pretty much the entire area within the ski boundaries are ski-able, rather than only some designated portions being available.

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Here we have the boys looking pensive - I don't even remember what they were so intently squinting at. We had stopped for lunch around noon ... it seemed such an amazing thing that the lodge was a pretty small place and yet there were still tables available while it was the height of lunchtime. Even though it was a Saturday, we almost never encountered any lines that took longer than half a minute before it was our turn to load onto the lift.

The outer facade of the lodge where we had lunch. It's taken quite a beating from the winter!

I thought it was funny how the snow had congealed into ice on Eric's hair, and made it look like candy floss or something.

The grand finale - by the end of the day, visibility was down to ... well, if you squint real hard at where the lines converge, you might see the chair lift that was right ahead of us! The supporting lift poles were invisible until they were abruptly looming out of the snow and fog beside us - it was as if we were all just hovering in mid-air, the lines disappearing into infinity.

2011 Utah Ski: Day 0.5

Okay, I'm way behind in posting, because I've still got a good dozen posts in mind for the rest of the Israel trip when I've already moved on to the Utah one! But, in my defense, not only was I only sent back to the states on the last possible day in order to give me enough time to adjust my timezones, but the last four days in Israel had been absolute pot trying to get an internet connection working, which means I also got almost no work done at all. Thus, I spent the 3.5 days I was conscious enough to do work before Utah trying to catch up while also doing laundry and repacking/reprovisioning for the ski trip.

But here I am, and doesn't that look lovely! It was one of the small transit planes, with only two columns of seats on each side, and I was seated in the aisle. Here, I rudely stuck my camera past my seatmate to take the shot as we were coming over the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City for a landing. The most important item to note is the vast amount of snow currently blanketing the peaks.

(These mountain ridges actually pretty much surround the entirety of Salt Lake City in a ring - I was told that this results in, occasionally, smog layers which rival Los Angeles'.)

My seatmate was pretty cool though - he was a visitor to my hometown on business, but not only gave some great tips on the local ski mountains but also told me to pay attention to the next few seconds, because we were fast approaching what he said were the largest copper mines in the world:

It was quite a sight, seeing all those terraces beneath a pristine snowy cap, and all of that beneath a soft cloudy blanket. I have another, portrait-oriented shot which includes an impossibly blue sky above which I love, but this one gives a better close-up of the mine itself.

Here I'm attempting to take a photo of myself with the new Contour HD helmet/goggle camera which I picked up yesterday. Most of today was spent on just driving to the resort in Eden, UT and then preparing for the upcoming week (which is why I'm only on Day 0.5). I spent a few minutes fiddling with how to attach it to all my headgear in preparation for tomorrow. I felt so outlandish with that thing on and so excited about what I'll be able to film in the next few days I couldn't resist documenting it.

Footing it to the north

My trip is nearly over! Tickets have been booked for a Monday departure, and my check-in bags have pretty much been packed. We're taking advantage of these last 2-3 days to explore the northern part of Israel, and hired a cab driver, Shuki (who came highly recommended by the guest relations manager, Marcel Salomon, at the Dan Panorama where we're staying), to take us touring.

More details later, but since it's been a while since I've updated this and I don't have much time before bed, I'll just mention a few funny things that happened tonight.

So, we've been pretty desperate for a few days now to pick up some hard drives, a) to back-up the gigs and gigs of photographs we've been taking, and b) to make a copy of all the wedding pictures and ship them to the relevant families. As it so happens, while heading from Haipha to Tiberias, I had spotted an Office Depot along the way, except we were in a hurry to get somewhere else at the time, and so skipped it.

Well, one thing I've discovered in Israel is that, a) if you miss a turn, it will be a (long) while before you'll have a chance to make the equivalent of a u-turn, and b) good luck in finding your way to any store you want to get you, even if its two foot tall glowing neon sign is right there centered in your windshield.

Here is how it went: we spend a few minutes going in the wrong direction trying to find a break in the center divider so that we can turn around. Then it's another 5-10 minutes going back in the right direction. We manage to turn into the plaza just fine, but even though there are glowing Office Depot signs on three different walls? All three of us (Louis, myself, and the driver) end up having to scout for its entrance and, in the end, didn't find it without help.

I went first, and ended up where it looked like Office Depot stored some of its back-stock. Louis and Shuki went next, and they found this dark looking "entrance" where a host of other people were standing around waiting:

The point of this is that it was about 6 pm Saturday evening. Shabbath, according to local custom, is observed from sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday. One is not supposed to work (thus, most stores/kosher restaurants/etc are closed during this time period), travel, touch money, etc. So, seeing all these people hanging about, we naturally assumed that they were would-be shoppers waiting to stampede the mall as soon as it opens. Louis even made the snark that 90% of those standing around are women awaiting the opening of the doors.

Well, as it so happened, this was an employee entrance, and when we tried to trail in after them, a lady kindly toldd us we weren't allowed. After explaining our confusion, she led us around to the real entrance to the mall - which ended up being on the total opposite end of the block, facing away from all streets leading to the plaza. Office Depot, when we finally found its official entrance, was only a small little front in one corner in the mall ... and was very, very closed. Until 7 pm, its sign said.

Unwilling to wait, we moved on to Tiberias, where the driver introduced us to a surprisingly fabulous Asian restaurant, The Pagoda, which I've written up here. However, just before that, we made one last effort to find a computer electronics store, and as it so happened, there was yet another Office Depot in the neighborhood.

Sadly, when we found it, it was also closed - the guess is that the owner did not feel it worth the effort to reopen it after Shabbath on Saturday. However, just a block before it was a Big Electronics or something or other - apparently, a big chain in Israel which carries appliances and computer equipment. Sometimes. Because when we finally figured our way to the store (it took 4 turns and 2 u-turns to find our way to its door even though it was on the block right before Office Depot and we could see its sign glowing right next to the road up on a slope), this particular branch only carried appliances and no computer equipment.

We were about to give it up when the driver spotted another store across the street (something which starts with a K but which name I can't remember now), and swears that they would have what we needed. Grasping at the last straw, we straggled in, and was met by the bewildering sight of a mobile-sized store hosting everything from knick-knacks and school supplies to, yes, a (very limited) selection of laptops, computer accessories, etc. Suffice to say, we found our external computer hard drives, and finally left with our prize.

Unfortunately, as we left, the rear wheel of the cab hit a curb and gave Louis a hard jostle; enough to bump his head and give him a bit of a stiff neck and a headache. I suggested he take a painkiller and that we find a cafe, as caffeine helps the brain take up painkillers, and so then the hunt began for some coffee.

A nice waitress at The Pagoda suggested the Greg Cafe, and gave our driver approximate directions - later, we learned that they were more or less something along the lines of "go to this road and take it all the way to the end, you'll see it on the side". Because we ended up on some (mostly isolated at this hour) winding mountain road for the better part of a quarter of an hour, and poor Shuki must have stopped at least half a dozen times to ask for directions (and one time we were nearly mobbed by three teenaged girls at a gas station looking for a cab ride - Louis was very disappointed that Shuki told them we had no room). In fact, when we finally did find the plaza in which it was located, we could see the signs of all the shops glowing out across a scraggly field half a block away - but it literally took us another five minutes of exploration, involving two u-turns and three left turns after finding the correct entrance through the field, to finally make our way over to the little strip mall. (Marcel had, earlier, made a big deal to Louis about visiting a particular city which he says had been "planned" from start to finish - I am beginning to get an idea as to how extraordinary such a feat is for Israel now, considering all our misadventures with respect to reaching merchants. They certainly don't make it easy for customers to give them their patronage and money!)

However, Shuki persevered, and we were richly rewarded. Not only did Greg Cafe serve Jamaican Blue Coffee, Louis' long-time favorite and which he special orders for all of our company meetings, but they also served a (what I had heretofore thought was a unique) thick, pudding-like "hot chocolate" ... two things which I had previously associated only with the Caffe del Doge. It was like a little slice of Palo Alto, CA had been transplanted into Israel, and it was beautiful. The decor and atmosphere would definitely not have been out of place in any American university town, and the wait-staff was incredible. Within two minutes Louis was demanding that we return for breakfast. Needless to say, he was a happy man tonight.

Oh yeah, and here's a cute little smiley Louis made in his Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee with the del Doge-like pudding hot chocolate, complete with Greg Cafe's logo on the side of the mug:

Partaaaay! (part 3)

Okay, back to the semi-regularly scheduled programming!

But, before finishing up with the evening, a slight detour ... after I pseudo-complained about the green running man exit sign in the Frankfurt Airport, my friend Tracy sent me this link along with a dig about my not reading Slate.com more often: The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man

It was a surprisingly long article, but an entertaining read! Definitely worth sitting through.

Now, back to the show ...

This post is a bunch of miscellaneous mish-mash still-lifes, portraits, and moments. Some of the colors are a little strange too, because not only were there wildly contrasting areas off dark and light that shifted all the time, but they were using disco lights too, so sometimes there were bright, random flashes of blue, green, and fuschia.

A glimpse of the bower/boudoir itself! I should have asked after the party began dispersing what significance all of these implements had, but I forgot to do so.

Here is the bride dancing with her sister! I don't know the significance of this at all, but they were in a "solo" for a little while, involving only them two in a circle of clapping bystanders. Then, even more bemusedly, I had wandered off for some other pictures before Louis corralled me and pushed me to dance with the bride-to-be - which she did with excellent humor - but with the inclusion of a black rope/belt, at least at the beginning.


I have no idea what the significance of any of this is, but hopefully some research later will shed some light on it.

Below is the father of the bride with his brother, I believe, and someone else I don't know in various costumes:

Haha, there's that crazy guy again! But this time, it's more the matron he's dancing with that led me to put up these pictures. Oh, she was wonderful - as Louis would fondly say, a real "babushka".

She was small and slight and bowed delicately like a leaf, but oh-so-animated. In the beginning of the party, she was one of the women who carried the platters of flowers and other stuffs over their heads as they danced over to the couple, and here as you can see, she's letting nothing get in her way as she shows off her stuff!

For those guests who didn't arrive prepared with their own Moroccan costumes, there was actually a whole rack of clothes ready and waiting. Here, a young man's getting caparisoned - I should have taken a photo of the rack of clothes themselves. It was pretty amusing seeing them there, as if this were the backstage of a play. Particularly with the "prop" of the boudoir setting there, it really did look like some sort of dress rehearsal!

These three were a real treat - they looked so dignified and bemusedly indulgent. I know the matron in the middle at least was definitely a relative of the happy couple, but I'm not sure exactly how, and I don't know the other two at all.

Two more views of the love-nest ...

I love these little jeweled slippers. This was a setting placed just before the rack of clothes/costumes mentioned above, and that is the prospective bride and groom in the foreground on the left.

This is the room where the banquet buffet had been set out, though now that it's near the end of the party, most of the stuff has been cleared out. I really liked all the curving architecture, though; made particularly prominent by the wide angle shot!

Oh yeah! There was this guy again, during dinner:

Louis actually took this picture and I stole it from him. If you look closely, he has TWO plates stacked in one hand ... the bottom plate has a bunch of hard breads on it, which is helping to prop up the top plate full of meats, leaving one hand free to get more foods.

And that's finally it! After this were two days of voluntary tours that had been set up for the guests, the wedding itself on Thursday, and then a celebratory dinner on Friday evening. Things are just starting to heat up!

The Holy Sepulchre (part 3)

This post is, essentially, all eye candy. Everything was pretty much shot in the Catholicum using either the Nikkor 17-35mm or a Nikkor 16mm fisheye, pointed in various directions. They are dark, and purposely so - while it may make some details hard to discern (click on a photo to see an enlarged version!) I feel it's also important to capture the original atmosphere ... shadowy and almost womb-like.

I actually took the photos at two different times of the day, and while there are only a few small windows near the top which let in natural light, it's surprising how much of a difference they make in terms of lighting levels and the color temperature of the final photo. The first set of photos were taken when there were several tours still trampling through, so there were quite a few bodies in these. Louis had borrowed the fisheye, and so instead of messing around with my remaining 24-80mm lens, I simply stuck his staple 17-35mm onto my camera and started shooting away.

It's surprising what a bright sky blue the dome edges came out to be - I don't even remember them being any particular color when I was there in person! But between the cool shades of that and the gray of the stonework, they make a lovely contrast against the red and yellow glow of the fires and lights.

As you can see, I was quite fascinated for a while here by the back-lit silhouettes and the long stretches of shadows radiating from the entrance. The personal, cheery yellow glow really did make me think of Christmas - moreso than the much cooler shades of the vaulting ceilings.



The next set of photos came in the later part of the day, when the Catholicum was nearly abandoned other than odd wanderer who had ducked the rope. The place was pretty much cleared out when they were trying to make room for the ceremony mentioned in the previous post, though not intentionally. The service was only taking place in the rotunda in the space between the Catholicum entrance and the sepulchre, but because they didn't want foot traffic going in and out of the Catholicum interrupting things, they roped it off. People who were already inside were allowed to remain within, but you weren't allowed to go in and out freely until after they were done.

I don't know if they just forget to un-rope the area afterward, or if they really didn't want people going in and out, but every so often some people would duck under to enter the Catholicum (I am one of the guilty few). By this point, I had gotten the fisheye back, so now I reworked the place with its unique viewpoint. Since the fisheye is a 16mm and Louis' wide-angle was a 17mm, there wasn't that much difference in terms of how much area it captured, but it certainly produces a very singular perspective.

The first shot above was taken when facing directly the rear of the Catholicum, while the second one was taken while standing in the right hand corner of the room near the entrance.



The left photo is once again the rear of the Catholicum, and the right photo is a straight-on shot of the right-hand wall of the room.



Left photo: Standing in the right corner near the entrance, facing toward the left.
Right photo: Standing in the left corner near the entrance, facing toward the right.

It's amazing to me how the colors come out so differently - while I like both renditions, it reminds me one of these days that I have to start figuring out how the camera chooses its default color temperatures and how I can manually set that.

Just before I decided I'd had enough and was going to leave, a lone woman ducked in and knelt down before the three items set near the entrance. I don't know what they are, but I had seen plenty of people come in before just to lay hands on that first item, and get their pictures taken with it. This woman seemed particularly reverent, however, and she was perfectly positioned, facing the light, with her shadow stretching out long behind her, and so I took as many shots as I could while she presumably prayed, made the sign of the cross (caught mid-gesture int he second photograph), and then got up to leave.

One last amusement. As soon as I stepped out, I stopped on the top step in front of the entrance to see if I could find Louis. As I was peering over the heads of the crowds, I noticed that a couple were standing next to me, also looking over the mass of bodies. Then I happened to look down.

And I saw that they too were wearing Vibrams! So, there were three sets of five-fingered shoes arrayed on that top step. And, true to form, I once again didn't capture a picture. This time, it wasn't my lack of timing - I simply forgot. D'oh!