March 29, 2008

I am back. My computer struggles continued for many more days. It was another classic example of chasing the wrong paths way too far. After loading my new hard drive, I started accepting security updates for Windows and adding some third party virus protection. When I went to load my website, I was frustrated when I couldn’t access it. I wondered if something changed on the server end, but since I still had my old hard drive, I was able to put it back in and confirm that it worked fine. I searched and found reference to Windows upgrades changing the way security settings worked with the router. I tried tweaking every imaginable setting in Windows. I tried tweaking my router settings. I tried loading a separate utility for managing my website. Nothing worked. I went back to the old hard drive for one last look. That is when I noticed the format of my user name. It wasn’t that I didn’t know my user name, I just didn’t know the format it needed to be entered. It was a long journey through the darker recesses of internet security settings only to find the answer was something simple.

The volcano has made life interesting. After weeks of sunny beautiful weather, we have locked ourselves into a cloudy weather pattern that has completely blocked our view of the volcano. The volcano keeps erupting, I keep carrying a large amount of photography equipment, but I haven’t had an opportunity yet.

It is weird to have a volcano exploding every day. It is disrupting travel plans for many. I know people who have had trouble getting out of town and I know people who have had trouble getting into town. The weather has kept the ash away from us until yesterday evening. As we were driving home from the ski resort, I noticed the weirdness of the sky with the sun shining above and below heavy clouds. As we drove into town, the cloud was closing in on us even though the sun had emerged. I drove up on the hillside to see if I could get a better view, but the cloud was closing quickly and simply too big to give me much of a view. We headed home and confirmed that the volcano had gone off. The cloud appeared to skirt around us to the west, dropping ash on the airport and downtown, but leaving nothing noticeable here. Then the volcano went off again. I went outside before going to bed. I didn’t notice any ash, but grabbed a handful of snow. As the snow melted in my hand, the grittiness became apparent. The ash is much finer than I expected, but I should have thought through how small a particle it takes to travel over a hundred miles.

This morning I went outside to assess the situation. As I put my boots on, I noticed how much ash was on them from last night. I went outside and noticed the dust on the door knob right away. The snow looked grey. I punched a hole in the snow to get down to the white stuff and the contrast was readily apparent. We didn’t get hit hard, but it is quite noticeable.

The US Nationals are at Alyeska this week, but they have been struggling to get in any racing. The weather has not been cooperating at all with heavy snow and poor visibility making high speed racing impossible. They ran an abbreviated downhill yesterday, starting from midmountain instead of the top. We watched a little and I snapped a few pictures, but it wasn’t as exciting as it was two years ago.

I skied Friday with a friend and yesterday with Kris, but didn’t really ski that much either day. The conditions were not too thrilling. The heavy wet snow that has fallen has turned the mountain into frozen snowballs. It is difficult skiing. I fell twice Friday in strange places. I fell once on a groomed run and realized that it has been years since I tried getting back up on groomed snow. The second time I fell in the lift line. The wet snow was holding my edges and I wasn’t aiming them in the right directions. Luckily, I was able to focus a bit better on steeper terrain, although I did take a short slide on Kitchen Wall yesterday when I crossed my skis. I’ll blame the conditions, but my skiing seemed to be a mix of high energy brilliance in difficult conditions and sloppy casualness on the easy stuff.