Utah 2009

I’ve been here just over a week now and I’ve skied every day except one. The first two days weren’t the best snow-wise, but the weather was absolutely beautiful. It started snowing on Friday, though, and it hasn’t really stopped since. The past week has definitely been some of the best skiing of my life.

I’ve started a Flickr set where I’m going to post one photo a day from every day I ski, which is here, and I’m tracking all my days on the snow over on my user page on Mountain Reviews.

I’ve also gotten over the initial culture shock and general disorientation of living in Salt Lake. I have to say that the city isn’t really doing anything for me so far, but I’m going to give it a little more time to woo me before I make up my mind. It kind of reminds me on LA or Miami in the sense that you have to drive 30 minutes to get anywhere, and everything kind of looks the same. It doesn’t remind me at all of LA or Miami in the sense that it seems like everyone here is a white conservative couple, which I pretty much expected, but it’s still a bummer.

Overall, now that I’m a little bit in the groove of living here, I can say without a doubt that I am super glad I did this.

I got to Utah yesterday, and the drive out here was kind of epic. I’m glad I did it, but I have to admit that I will likely not be choosing 3-day drives as my preferred method of getting places 2,100 miles away in the future. Especially if I-80 or the midwest in general is involved.

The first day was pretty good. I drove for maybe 13 hours and made it halfway across Illinois, which was good for morale because (1) I knocked out a lot states, and (2) Chicago had been my unofficial “I need to get at least this far” point. What was bad for morale was staying in a really shitty (but cheap! $30!) motel. Ok, lesson learned: it’s worth an extra $20-$40 for a decent hotel.

Day 2 kind of ate my soul. Let me tell you, from the middle of Illinois all the way to Salt Lake City, there is NOTHING. There are corn fields, cows and truck stops. And Omaha. Omaha is seriously the most exciting thing in that 1,300 mile span. My mental low point occurred about 1/3 of the way through Nebraska at a truck stop selling Jesus t-shirts, Bibles, and trashy novels, filled with people wearing cowboy hats. Anyways, here’s what that whole part of the country looks like:

Now you never have to go there. You can thank me later.

Right, so on day 2 I made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming in about 13 hours, mostly because I refused to give Nebraska the satisfaction of me sleeping there. I stayed in a Sleep Inn that was properly heated and didn’t smell like smoke and had free wireless internets, and it was wonderful. Oh, the one thing about Nebraska that entertained me was that they had cattle auctions on the radio. You can’t make this stuff up.

Day 3 was nice and short — about 7 hours. Wyoming, while still having absolutely nothing in it, is at least kind of pretty at times. Also, within about 45 minutes of leaving Cheyenne I saw horses wearing sweaters, which was kind of awesome. My helpful “Cowboy State weather forecast” gave me rainfall and snowmelt amounts for all the watersheds in Wyoming. Sorry, southwestern Wyoming, you’re below average this year! Anyways, people in the midwest pretty much live on a different planet than I do in NYC.

Maybe 2/3 of the way through Wyoming I could finally see the mountains I was aiming for, and that was nice. The last two hours or so of the drive were really pretty and fun.

So on the way back I’m taking I-70, so I can at least stop in Denver and St. Louis, but I suspect that Kansas is going to be almost as bad as Nebraska. If any of you are interested in taking 4 days in late March to accompany me on my return adventure, that would be fantastic. With two people the whole thing really would be a very manageable amount of driving.

Holy shit guys, I’m leaving for Utah on Sunday.

I just paid my February and March rent for the room I’m renting in Utah! It would be creepy to post the actual address online, but suffice it to say that’s it’s just about 15 miles from Snowbird, Alta, Solitude and Brighton.

So I’m heading out to Utah for as much of February and March as possible. At first the whole thing seemed really abstract, but all the details are finally falling into place and I’m getting really excited for two amazing months of skiing.

Room: I’m renting a room in Cottonwood Heights and sending over the rent to lock it in on Monday.

Car: Still up in the air. Getting a car for two months is kind of a pain, as it turns out.

Pass: I’ll be getting a midweek pass at Snowbird and getting discount tickets to ski elsewhere maybe once a week. I think that’ll be the cheapest way to get ~6 weeks of lift tickets, and you really can’t complain about skiing Snowbird 3-5 days a week.

Still, it’s kind of hard to believe that as soon as 3 weeks from now I’ll be driving out to Utah and not coming back until April. This is going to be awesome.