I had another hockey game last night, and guess what? We won again! That’s two in a row, which is now our longest winning streak of the season. With the win we moved to 5-13-0 (with two overtime loses) and actually moved out of last place. The team we beat is just ahead of us in the standings, but with 7 wins it may be hard to catch them. Currently we have 12 points, and they are tied with another team with 14 points. I’m hoping one of these teams loses next week during our bye week, and that we can continue our climb up the standings. We only have one more game before the playoffs, so it’s a good time for our team to get hot.

This past weekend was the best powder days we have seen so far this year. We headed up to the slopes early on Saturday morning with our friend Tracey who was visiting from Chicago. After a rather sketchy drive over Vail Pass we eventually made it over to Beaver Creek. There we met up with Tracey’s brother Jay who joined us last year in Steamboat. The snow never seemed to stop the entire time we were there, and the conditions were mostly ideal. There was some thick patchy fog at times, that really made it hard to see the terrain, but we had many great runs!

Originally we planned to drive back over the pass to Breckenridge after our day in Beaver Creek, but decided that might not be the best idea with all of the snow that was falling. So we opted to switch to a new hotel on the western side of the pass. One lesson we quickly learned as we pulled out of the parking lot was that there is a place called Eagle-Vail that is close to Beaver Creek and another place just called Eagle that is 20 miles further west. Unfortunately the hotel we booked was way out in Eagle and not in the nearby Eagle-Vail. I wonder if this is a common problem?

After an uneventful evening in Eagle, we woke up early Sunday morning to make the drive back closer to Denver with a stop for a day on the slopes at Keystone. We ran into a few traffic issues along the way, but eventually arrived around 9 am for an early start. On one of Tracey’s prior visits we took her out on the snowcat rides to the Outback Bowls, which she (and everyone else) wanted to do again. We immediately worked our way out there, and even though we discovered that the snowcat was not running, we decided to make the short uphill hike so we could drop down into the bowls anyway.

I was so glad we decided to hike, as the powder was incredible! I’d say at the top we were in close to a foot of fresh snow and later in the trees we found spots with at least a foot and a half! We had so much fun there we decided to take the lift and subsequent hike once again to do it all over. Unfortunately this run didn’t turn out to be as much fun for one in our group. Tracey snagged a rock on her way down, twisting her leg, ripping off her ski, and as we later found out breaking a bone in her ankle. We were as far out as you can possibly get and she couldn’t stand. Fortunately a nice local stopped and alerted ski patrol to her exact location. The remaining members of the group still managed to have a few more awesome runs on our way back to the parking lot, before we met up with Tracey at the medical center to receive the bad news. She was planning to come back out in a month for some more skiing, so let’s hope for a speedy recovery.

Despite the unfortunate accident, we had an amazing time. There was so much snow I’m not sure how you couldn’t have love it. And as they say, if there wasn’t a little danger involved than it wouldn’t be any fun. Here are some pictures Kim snapped throughout the weekend.

Beaver Creek on Dwellable

Keystone on Dwellable

Something strange happened last night, not only did my hockey team win but we beat the third place team in the league. For those of you not following along, my team is in last place and has been struggling the whole season. Even after the win, we are likely multiple games from moving up in the standings. I’d know for sure if they posted any of the scores from last night on the website. One thing that definitely helped was a sub we had on our team for the night, who was quite a hockey player. I guess he played at KU, which explains the talent, though I didn’t even know that there was a Jayhawk hockey team. Personally, I had a great game though I’m not sure I came away with any points.

As I mentioned at the beginning of last week, my brother came to town with seven on his friends for a weekend of skiing and snowboarding. Many of the group were the same members from the last time they came out this past March. The itinerary was nearly the same as the last time: out and about in Denver Thursday afternoon/night, followed by an early wake-up call Friday morning to drive up to Breckenridge and get some turns in on the slopes. After that, we checked into our condo (Pine Ridge) and immediately took a soak in the hot tub. Later in the evening we headed into town for some dinner and drinks, and then retired to the condo fairly early to get up energized for the following day.

Though we didn’t get any new snow while we were in town, we did have some beautiful weather both days with hardly a cloud in the sky and the temperature hovering around the freezing mark. The second day ended in a similar way as the first, a trip to the hot tub, followed by dinner (which we ordered in this time), and then from there down into town for drinks. My brother and his friends are notorious for taking advantage of bottle service at the bars, and this weekend was no exception to that rule. Having never been a part of this service, I found it to be highly overpriced (which I already knew), but I fully enjoyed the reserved table for the evening and no waiting in line. Kim and I headed out after the first bottle, but I’m told the evening didn’t end there for the rest of the group. I did get woken up when they returned to the condo, but at least I got to enjoy the late night pizza rolls.

Though most of the group was looking a little rough come Sunday morning, I think they all had a great time. I know that I did and hope they all decide to visit again next year.

In honor of an extended weekend on the slopes starting tomorrow, I give you my Obamicon. This is an image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster. I’ve titled it “SLOPE” as it is a picture of me out snowboarding from last season. I think it turned out pretty cool despite the lack of much detail. I actually created two separate designs, one with the unedited photo (seen below) and another with the background removed as the directions indicated might produce better results. Follow this link to see the other image. Take your picture with a webcam or upload a photo, choose your own message, and submit to the gallery. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Our weekend events have slowed down recently now that we are fully into the ski/snowboarding season. I think we were in bed by eleven Friday night, so we could get up early Saturday and drive up to Breckenridge for yet another day on the slopes. This was our fifth day out so far this season, and with some overnight stays coming up shortly, that number will double very soon.

The past two weekends we met up with Ilona, who is married to a long-time friend of mine on OARfans.com. Her parents have a condo in Breck, and she enjoyed something like day days in a row on the slopes. It was nice to meet up with her since she knew where all of the good snow was, even though it had been a couple of days since some of the bigger storms had hit.

This coming weekend my brother and a group of his friends will be coming to town and we’ll be spending the majority of the weekend up in Breck. Should be a great time!

So I bit the bullet and joined the DU rec center that Kim joined over a month ago. We’ve really been getting into racquetball and are playing two or three times a week. We have definitely improved since the first few times, and can now play a regular match (best of three) in under an hour. We got some rackets, goggles, balls, and gloves as a Christmas gift that have been seeing a lot of use already. I’m still the overall leader, but Kim has been known to win a match or two from time to time.

I have my first hockey game in quite some time tonight. I’m hoping that I remember how to skate.

Happy New Year! Last night we headed downtown to Jackson’s to watch the Cincinnati Bearcats take on Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. For the few UC fans in the house, things started off great with a quick touchdown less than two minutes into the game. Unfortunately it was nothing but Hokie scores after that. Though the final score was 20-7, it was actually much closer than that. The end result boiled down to missed opportunities, including one missed field goal, VT stopping the rush on a fourth and goal, and four interceptions, one of which was in the offensive end zone. Had that one catch gone the other way, it could have been a completely different game. No reason to make excuses though, making their first ever BCS bowl appearance was quite an accomplishment for Cincinnati, and I look forward to the coming years.

Sunday we got in our third day of the season, once again at Breckenridge. The conditions were nice, a bit icy in spots, but I’m sure with the dumping that’s been going on yesterday into today that has changed. But we decided on Breckenridge not because of the snowfall, but because of the event taking place that day, the first stop of the Winter Dew Tour, a three stop skiing and snowboarding competition. It was a multi-day event, with Sunday being the last day and host to one of the biggest draws of the competition the finals in both mens and womens superpipe.

Somehow we missed the women, as I thought they didn’t start until 11. But when we arrived shortly after 11, we found out that the mens competition was about to start and that Gretchen Bleiler had already won. You may remember her from the 2006 Olympics, where she took home the silver behind fellow American Hannah Teter, who is also participating in the Winter Dew Tour. Anyway back to what we actually saw, the mens finals, where we got to watch snowboarding champions such as Shaun White and Danny Kass, winners of gold and silver respectively at the same 2006 Olympics. It was a thrill to see these guys pulling off some amazing tricks in the monstrous halfpipe. But this competition was anyone’s game, so it wasn’t too surprising that neither of these guys won, though Shaun White did get second after a great second run. The winner of this event was Danny Davis with a score of 94.75 after a run comprising of a switch backside 720, a backside 900, followed up with back-to-bak 1080s, and finally a frontside 900. Incredible.

Here’s a photo I shot from the bottom of the halfpipe, the only one I got before the camera batteries went dead. If you look on the right side, all the way at the top, you can see a small figure in the middle of a trick.

The winning streak continues for my hockey team, after we won last night 3-2 beating the fifth place team. We did lose last week, but since I missed that game I am not counting it. Personally I played pretty well and scored one of our three goals. Overall our record is now 3-10 but unfortunately we are still tied for last in the league. We have another game tomorrow night against the same team we beat a couple of weeks ago. When we win this one, we should finally move out of last place!

Kim and I have continued playing racquetball and are really enjoying it. We played Monday after work for almost an hour. Since our games go back and forth a bunch with no points being scored, after the first game we decided to play the others rally scoring like they now do in volleyball. I won the first and only real game, and we fit in three other rally scoring games with Kim winning two of those. We started a fifth game, but were not able to finish before our time was up, but I was winning that last game by a bunch. I think we are playing again tonight.