Inside the Beltway

I have been working in Washington on some web based maps to display locations of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects for the USDA. I spent last week in meetings and presentations to define business requirements. It was a pretty big stretch for me as far as the level of people I was interacting with...they were mostly Department level rather than Agency level. So kind of a whole step up. Most of them were kind of your everyday reasonable folks. I felt comfortable in this environment and interacting people at this high level. I thought that I may sort of feel like a fish out of water but I didn't. It was definitely exciting to be part of the buzz of the new administration.
It seems like being reasonable and easy to work was much more important than asserting your opinion. Technical knowledge of the facts, how things work, the act, the databases, the system, your blackberry and email and organization is helpful to everybody and provides good leadership. Congressional Leadership Training. It is good to be home. I cant wait to come back to DC with Jill.

Slayin the Yellow Dragon

On Saturday Brandon hosted a great day of skiing, complete with VIP lift tickets, which meant "all you can ride" cat-skiing. I think this place is one of the biggest ski areas in Utah... but most of it doesn't have lifts. Its just wide open for exploring James, Sammy Brandon and I had a lot to explore and we probably only hit 10% of what is there. We lost one of these little chrome lift tickets that measures about an inch across, but oddly enough I found it again on the next run lying in the snow! Team Pine Cone north face search mission successful! That night Brandon had poker night, it was my first time playing and I won. I guess you can bluff pretty well when you don't even know you have good hand. What a great day! Thanks Brandon.

Rough Sawn

Snow Ghost

Brandon and I learned some lessons today:

• Drive up the canyon either before it closes or well after it opens.
  
• If it rained the day before, dry your gloves.
  
• Then put them with the rest of your ski stuff.
  
• If you see the chair switch from grid power to diesel, think twice about riding it because it may not run long enough to get you to the top.
  
• Always bring a lunch.
  
• Never set up the strobe exactly where you expect the skier to come though the shot.
  
• Always tighten the wireless trigger to the hotshoe.
• Tape the bag over the strobe.
• Drive down the Canyon either before it closes or well after it opens.
  

Shed a Little Light

The image above is one of my first ever with an off camera strobe and I think I'm gonna like it. Brandon and I went up to Wolverine Cirque on Sat to ski some chutes and play around with the strobe, but I couldn't get it to work.  We were in a steep shaded chute and I would place the flash, slip down a little and test... all good.  Then Brandon would drop in and I would release the shutter...no flash pop...huh...test again... it works...ski again... nothing.  It was difficult in this steep snowy place.  In the shot below the flash was supposed to fire, that's why it is so underexposed.

Here's another where the flash didn't fire....

It was supposed to be exposed the way this beautiful test shot was...

We did get some nice chute skiing in.  

Flashin' at the Dolla Bill Cafeteria

We had a blast on this hot mid winter day.  There was cold, inverted and smoggy air down in the valley so we headed up to kicker central with some friends new and some friends old and spent the day building jumps and roasting things on the bbq.  Brandon stomped both of his smooth spins.  I was not really jumping very well on this day.  I was like a backseat driver of my own skis.  I was still having trouble with my strobes which was a little frustrating but last night I think I fixed them.  It was super cool to have the radio, bbq, couch, cameras, jumps and friends all within a 100ft of each other.  We were all in heaven.