February 12, 2010

While much of the country was dealing with major snowstorms, we quietly added at least 8 inches a day at our resort.  It was a good stretch of snow. 

We resisted the temptation on Saturday since the visibility was reported as poor and the base temperature was above freezing.  We tried to ski on Sunday, but the crowds were unbearable.  We have been spoiled by weekday skiing.  We made a few runs and called it quits.  The snow was very nice, but not nice enough to fight the crowd.

Monday was a beautiful sunny day.  We ran into a friend of ours at the top of the mountain on our first run.  He had called in sick.  His decision paid off.   The snow was deep and soft and we made run after run finding fresh deep snow for almost every turn.  Tuesday was a little weird with gusting winds keeping most of the lifts closed.  They only ran Chair 1, the old double chair that they typically only use for night skiing now.  The windblown snow was dense and our legs tired quickly.  Wednesday continued the streak with more new and windblown snow at the top, although warmer temperatures were bringing rain to the bottom.  I had one of those rare great runs down North Face with smooth surfaces changing the typical controlled decent into more of a playful run.  Turn options seemed unlimited without any major bumps.  Today was more deep soft snow at the top, but visibility was poor.  We struggled through a half a dozen runs with a friend and called it quits.

Kris crashed on the run-out at the bottom of North Face on Wednesday.  As the temperature changed with the lower elevations, the snow consistency changed as well.  When we reached Autobahn, things were pretty slushy.  I went first and quickly noticed that if you left the skied up track down the middle, the smooth untracked surface was very sticky.  It felt like hitting the brakes hard.  As I headed down over the next roll, I realized that the skied up track was pretty narrow for this fast section that I normally make some wide turns on.  I fought the fear and focused on taking the straight line down, knowing that the speeds weren’t going to be that high anyway.  I didn’t even catch any air on the rollers on the next flat section.  I stopped and waited, fearing the worst.  Kris finally rounded the corner with a pointy clump of snow on top of her head.  I made fun of her snow-hawk hair style.  She didn’t even realize the snow was there.  She explained that she lost site of the skied up track and went off into the sticky stuff at high speed.  That had to hurt.

We let our legs rest Thursday.  We did cross country ski on our normal route.  We had about a ten minute delay waiting for a moose to move out of the way.

I installed a roof rack on Kris’ car.  I have had my roof rack on five different vehicles and have numerous attachment systems.  I could have purchased the specific clips for this car that work with my existing equipment, but I never liked how they interfere with the windows.  In this application, they would have the additional problem of putting the crossbars very close together, limiting their use for certain purposes like kayaks.  I investigated on the internet and found that the car has brackets under a trim strip for attaching a roof rack.  This gave me the commercial choices of buying Subaru/Saab racking or buying the clips for my existing rack system.

 I read about people modifying the clips from my system to attach to the factory brackets and even saw a car on the road that had apparently done that.  I debated my options and even modified some old clips that I had, but they were too long.  I decided I was going to go to the store to buy either two sets of clips to attach the system as designed, or two sets of clips to modify.  I took one last look and a few measurements and realized that I could make my own brackets and that they would be stronger.  I did some quick calculations and came up with better than a couple thousand pounds of holding force on each bracket.  I went to the hardware store and spent $6.32 on some flat stock and bolts instead of $60 on clips.

Then I realized that I don’t own the same expanse of tools that I once owned.  A vice and a drill press would have made life much easier.  Bending thick metal into shape took a little creativity.  I used a c-clamp to clamp the bracket material to the hitch on the van and then hammered it into the necessary shape.  The brackets didn’t need to be perfect as the system has an adjuster that can compensate for variation, but the brackets looked pretty good in spite of my crude workshop.  The roof rack feels more secure than any of the configurations that I have used in the past.

It did take me some time to design and fabricate these brackets.  If my old income is a fair measure of the value of my time, then I would have been far ahead to spend the money on the factory system and throw away my aftermarket rack.  At my current income level, it made sense to spend the time.  More importantly, I was reminded of the satisfaction of creating something.  It was fun.

We made some progress on organizing the condo.  We might have a house full of guests this weekend so we needed to clear some floor space in the office for the inflatable mattress and clean up the guest room.  It was surprisingly easy, although it did take some time.  We generated several bags of trash in the process.  Every bag of trash that goes out the door gives me hope of fitting all our possessions into the van.