Utah: snowy, a bit rainy, kinda creepy... "this is the place!" - Brigham Young

The noble Bigfoot used to roam the streets of Seattle with impunity, occasionally stealing a kid's lunch to keep himself going, not causing much trouble otherwise. But then, the warning signs went up:

Beware, Seattle!

This left the Bigfoot ill at ease - soon enough he had turned into a fugitive and had been forced to leave the easy-living streets of our emerald city and look for quieter places to roam (and to scare kids for lunch). After long and lonely months of prowling the plains he came upon a vision right out of Bigfoot heaven - a modern city (with inexplicably wide streets), surrounded by snow-capped mountains on all sides. "This is the place!" Bigfoot roared - little did he know that he was eerily mimicking the words uttered by a fever-stricken Brigham Young on the very same spot a hundred and sixty years ago. Soon enough, the Bigfoot learned all about his new Mormon neighbors, who inhabited this gorgeous place, and while he wasn't in any way excited about joining their religious cult, he did do some research and reasoning: the members of the Church were supposed to donate twenty percent of their annual income to the Church. This seemed like a significant downside... But the Bigfoot did not actually have an income, so twenty percent of zero didn't seem all that burdensome. And the Mormons did enjoy having rather large families, so there would never be a shortage of little kids to scare up in the mountains, then steal lunches from. This felt like an upside... even though the Bigfoot reasoned he might have to donate twenty percent of the stolen lunches to the Church. He stayed - this was the place!

In fact, he soon evolved into sort of a local celebrity on the slopes around the Great Salt Lake!

The Bigfoot wanted his buddies to come visit, so he started leaving these ice crop circles as reference markers

The place would really never be the same once the Devastator Ram showed up...

And that's the story of the Bigfoot of Utah... Look it up - it's bound to be on wikipedia by now! And following in Bigfoot's footsteps, Erica, Mara, Mark, and I headed for the scenic mountains and spectacular powder of Utah this past weekend.

View of the mountains encircling the city from the plane

The fog lifting leaves the mountains crystal clear everywhere in the city. I may not be a bed-ridden Mormon leader, but this is definitely the place!

Erica, myself, Mara, and Mark in Salt Lake City

Erica and I landed in Utah early Saturday afternoon and headed straight for Park City - the home of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Grabbing lunch at a Utah brewery was a not-to-be-missed cultural experience (Utah has finally given up on its ludicrous alcohol laws, which had previously mandated all beer brewed in the state to contain no more than 3.2% of alcohol by volume...), so we stopped for lunch at Squatters in Park City, then made it over to the slopes by about two in the afternoon. Two o'clock is normally an unacceptably late hour to start your day of snowboarding, but the Park City resorts will give you a free lift ticket if you show up bearing a boarding pass from the same day, so it was was still easily worth it. The resort is vast, featuring a maze of runs and chairlifts, and giving us an early glimpse of the Utah powder - unfortunately the advertised closing hour of 9PM failed to mention that only a single run had been equipped with lights for night skiing, so we left around six, not quite having explored the entire resort, but having witnessed a stunningly spectacular sunset over the mountain:

The skies lighting up a bright red over the peaks of Park City

Now, Utah is famous for the amazing, light, fluffy powder, covering the slopes of its mountains, and the following morning, I was excited to be introduced to a full day of said powder! Unfortunately, the weather fates intervened, and we got introduced to the Pineapple Express phenomenon instead - it rained!


Undaunted, we headed for Brighton, having picked up a tip from a local ski shop that Brighton was the highest altitude mountain in the area - fortunately staying in Salt Lake City puts you within a 45 minute drive of a dozen different ski resorts, so you are never short on options (This is the place!). The Pineapple Express bathed the road with sheets of rain on the way up (damn you, Seth Rogan!), but Brighton did prove to be just high enough, as the rain finally turned to snow right as we were entering the parking lot - hooray!

The Sun even peaked through in the middle of the day!

Eventually though, the rains caught up... We stuck with it for a while, locating some of the famed Utah powder in the higher reaches of the mountain - this was almost enough to make me forget about the wet slush down at the bottom, but by 4 o'clock, we were ready to cut our losses and get back to town (and dry off).

Monday arrived - our last day in Utah... the rains had ceased, and the overnight forecast had claimed 5-9 inches of fresh snow - we were all psyched up to get to the mountains. Mark and Mara chose Alta (a fancy-shmancy skiers only establishment), while Erica and I had our sites set on Snowbird - meeting up with Vidas, a fellow hockey player from back in Seattle, and setting off to experience what promised to be one of the best resorts around Salt Lake City. A quick study of the trail map left me feeling downright giddy - the trails were varied and plentiful, including a thorough selection of diamonds, with a nice variety of easier stuff mixed in. Most exciting of all, the mountain had a 'back-side,' and you got to ride on a magic carpet, through a long tunnel to get there! Unfortunately, the fates were back at it ... we got into the nearest lift line (an exceedingly long one at that) ... and soon discovered that this would essentially be the only lift open on this day. The winds at the top were gusting up to 60 mph, so none of the upper mountain lifts would be opening - the tunnel and the magic carpet remained firmly out of reach... On those slopes we could reach, the wind had blown any and all new snow away (the forecasted 5-9 inches had actually resulted in a slightly less awesome 2-3), leaving the trails hard and icy. No shortage of great views though:

Erica, carving up the icy slopes

Afternoon shot of the mountain, when we had located some better, less icy, snow

Sunset over Salt Lake City on the way back home

In the end, the astounding, spectacular Utah powder didn't really materialize over this weekend, which was a little disappointing. I got enough glimpses, that a return trip is easily warranted, but Park City on the first day probably had the best snow. Snowbird, I got to see enough of, that I'm certain, on a nice sunny powder day it shall be absolutely spectacular!

Back to our title - Utah had certainly proven itself to be very snowy and a bit rainy. As for a kinda creepy - Sunday morning we went to see the imposing Salt Lake Mormon Temple, holding a prominent position in the very heart of the city

Tell me the reflecting pool doesn't make it just a little extra creepy! Especially on a somewhat gloomy, gray day like this...

Ok, how about the statue of the kids prancing about on the lawn?

At the top of the Temple, sits the Golden Statue of the Angel Moroni, who had apparently visited Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon faith, on numerous occasions...

I hope that if there are any Mormons reading this, they know I only kid! But if you take the intersection of the Venn Diagram of the words 'Mormon' and 'Moroni,' you get 'Moron'... I'm just sayin'! The temple definitely creeps you out a little, as well as the imposing, gigantic, very somber LDS office building next door. And we won't even get into the stories of the nearby caves that supposedly contain detailed genealogy records for most of Americans... But, hey, the mountains are beautiful - Brigham Young and Bigfoot were right - this is the place!

After three days I needed a break from the cold and the snow though, so I headed South, arriving on the sunny beaches of San Diego to meet my parents just a few hours after Mark, Mara, and Erica had landed back home in Seattle

San Diego forecast: 81 and sunny - this is also the place!

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'!

Hello, blog, have you missed me? I haven't abandoned you, just a prolonged bit of neglect, while being busy not traveling for a month, but let's catch up! This is Tina, rolling down the hill on a powder-ful day at Crystal Mountain at the beginning of April:



And here's a Tina still in mid-roll. I proposed she use this one as her Facebook profile photo, but she continues to refuse to create a Facebook account...

A bit more from the day at the mountain

A rare [partly] sunny break in a day otherwise filled with lots of clouds, dumping lots of fresh snow

I returned to Seattle in the middle of March, but thanks to the unpredictable vagaries of the Pacific Northwest weather, did not end up missing the entire ski season. In fact, we had a record snow fall over Thanksgiving right before I left, followed that up with hardly any snow while I was gone, and the skies greeted my arrival back with a couple of unseasonably powdery weekends in late March and early April. Hooray for fresh snow! Only wish there'd been more of it during the winter months for everyone that was here.

What else have I been up to over the past month? Well, I've tried being an adult again and rented an apartment, that seemed a nice change from sleeping on a couch, both for me and the owners of said couch. Spring promptly showed up, bringing with it my personal favorite rite of spring - March Madness. When buying my return ticket back in November, I didn't really give a whole lot of thought to my precise return date, and yet my non-plan happened to work out surprisingly well: not only did March Madness (NCAA basketball tournament) commence on my second day back in the US, but March 17th, my actual return date, turned out to be St. Patrick's Day. I wasn't quite up for an all night affair with a bunch of Irish backpackers like the year before, but I was all for hanging out with friends at a party - thanks, Ann! Three weeks later, the basketball tournament concluded the way it always should - with Duke being crowned National Champions for the fourth time in school history, and everything was right with the world of college basketball once again! The past month in pictures:

Let's Go Duke! I welcome your hatred and envy, the rest of college basketball world!

Spring commencing in bloom in Seattle

Spring is a time for new beginnings - this one for the mini, which is now in the capable hands of Gunnar, who is about to take the whole thing apart, then put it all back together, minus the parts that have rusted through (or been welded together by Mongolian mechanics). Good as new... some nine short months from now!

The new beginning did require a jump start, for which we attempted the Subaru and BMW batteries, but eventually had to call in AAA... My push starting skills just aren't what they used to be back in Mongolia

And in other new beginnings, the boat is back to life! After taking last summer off, wakeboarding is once again in the plans for this summer.

And the other thing I dedicated my time has, of course, been scheming for another trip. I really felt very much ready to just stop at this point actually, and am far less excited to be on the road again right now, than I had been at the start of the last two journeys, but Yael was getting married in Israel, Bailey wanted to go, and I've not yet made it to either the Middle East or Africa, so a plan was eventually hatched together. Helped quite a bit by a frequent flyer miles sponsored ticket to Europe. And while, I can't honestly purport a whole lot of excitement about the unique opportunity to spend more nights in hostels, I am nonetheless pretty excited to see Budapest, Jerusalem, Petra, the pyramids of Egypt, Carthage, Sicily, Pisa, and the Niagara Falls just to name a few of the places I'm aiming to see over the next three months. Plus, there's a lot of friends now in all those places along the way, so maybe I won't have to sleep in hostels quite so much!

And just to get things started, I took a quick trip down to San Diego to see family and friends just before taking off:

With friends in San Diego's Little Italy, getting a base for comparing Italian foods in Italy vs the ones in the States

Art on display - San Diego's Art Walk in Little Italy

And that evening, the Miss iTAN bikini contest at the Siren Lounge in San Diego's Sè Hotel, a very appropriately South Californian way to spend an evening. The brunette on the right clearly should have won, but was robbed by the judges... She was born in Hungary, so I'm currently on my way to Budapest to try and set things straight... Or I could just settle for meeting a few of her friends and beautiful country-women

And finally, from the fun and novel department, we get this tale about Iceland. No, it's got nothing to do with the volcano and the ensuing flight delays - Lynn and I were disappointed to have left Iceland without a single volcano erupting over the course of our stay there (eruptions are a regular occurrence there - most don't play havoc with airspaces over Europe), and the ash has dissipated enough by now to not be having any affect on my flight to Budapest. No, this is about the 8,000 Iceland Kronur I brought back from Iceland and promptly took to Bank of America to exchange and deposit, along with my remaining Thai Baht and British Pounds. After verifying the pictures of all three currencies in her 'big book of world currencies,' Brittney, my helpful bank clerk, processed my Baht and Pounds and moved on to the Kronur. Now, Iceland's economy has hit a bit of a rough patch lately - at one point the whole country was just about bought by Russia, and the currency has fallen enough for Iceland to make some budget travel destination lists - not because it's actually inexpensive, just because it's a whole lot cheaper than it used to be. So the currency has been a little volatile of late, but I knew my 8,000 Kroner were worth about $65 USD. Brittney, on the other hand, just as clearly did not know that, and she informed me that according to her computer, my Icelandic currency was worth $1951 USD... I wasn't quite ready for such news, so I duly pointed out that her exchange rate was off by a factor of, oh, 250. She called her manager over, conferred, and insisted that I take my two thousand dollars. I felt I had by now done my due diligence and left with a simple 'Thank you!'

I quickly transferred the money to a different account and wondered what would happen - eventually they'd have to discover the 'Bank error in your favor,' right? This isn't Monopoly after all... A week passed. And then Brittney called and very apologetically explained that their system was wrong (really!?) and she wasn't supposed to accept Icelandic currency at all, so she would need to take the money back out of my account. I pointed out that the money was no longer in the account. I got a few more apologies in response, but eventually, your bank account will be frozen (big deal, I've got others), and they'd send it to collections. I felt ruining my credit wasn't worth $2,000, so I put the money back. A few days later, I had my Kronur back, did not have my two thousand dollars anymore and was feeling a bit annoyed because that final, seemingly straightforward, exchange involved a lot more phone calls, waits, and trips to the bank than I felt it should have. I mentioned my dissatisfaction to dear Brittney, and was assured that a manager would be calling me back to 'set everything right.'

Two more weeks passed. I had time to wonder what the bank's version of 'setting everything right' might end up being; it didn't seem like it would be sufficient. Yet, no apologetic word from the manager, or anyone else. Anger kept mounting, so I went to visit the the bank yet again to express my new feelings. Brittney was very, very, very sorry again, but unfortunately, the branch didn't have a manager right now (did the manager actually get fired over the Kronur thing? I suppose, I hope not...), and it would all be settled on Monday when the new manager was arriving. That evening, I got a message from the 'temporary manager,' apologizing some more, and assuring that they had put 'a gift' in the mail to make up for the inconvenience. Hearing about the gift helped upgrade from angry to furious.

So, Monday came, the day of reckoning - I wasn't expecting much, but the new manager was certainly going to hear all about how I felt on her first day on the job. She was actually there this time, apologized some more, invited me to her desk, and went off to collect some more documents and information. I contemplated my attack. But before I could launch my assault and demand, say, a hundred or so dollars for my troubles, she came back and matter of factly stated that they would put 'the money' back in to my account because that's the right thing to do. This took me by surprise...
- you mean, the $2,000? the entire two thousand dollars!?
- yes, that's the right thing to do, and what we should have done in the first place
- uhm, well, that is the right thing to do. I wasn't really expecting that, but thank you! Uhm, would you mind also writing me a letter stating that Bank of America will make no further attempts to retrieve this money?
- certainly

So, the next day, I delivered my 8,000 Icelandic Kronur back to Bank of America, and had $1951 deposited into my account in exchange. Along with a letter from the branch manager confirming that the money was mine to keep. And thank you for being a loyal customer! Now, I generally tend to have somewhat mixed feelings on Bank of America, but any bank that can make my trip to Iceland not only inexpensive, but downright profitable, is OK by me!

Today's Exchange Rate:
1.00 USD = 127.860 ISK
8,000 ISK = 62.5684 USD
1951 USD = 249,454.86 ISK(!)

Appreciate doing business with you! At the end of this current trip, I will actually be making a brief stopover in Iceland again (just for two hours to change planes this time), but I think I'm just too honest for my own good to try bringing any more Kronur back with me...

As for the current trip, me and my black eye (deflecting a hockey puck with your cheekbone [two days before departure] apparently leaves a mark... Don't worry, mom - nothing broken, I'm just going to look extra dashing for a week) are on the way to London for a few hours currently, and then on to Budapest by Friday evening. If you want to follow along, the website is back in operation and back to tracking my progress across seven continents - and this time, I plan to finally make it to Africa, that fabled 7th continent! No matter how much I keep hearing that 'real' Africa is the sub-Saharan stuff, Egypt and Tunisia will still, definitely, be enough to finish my continent count. And one day, one day, your day will come too sub-Saharan Africa! Anyway, the website, in case you'd forgotten: http://www.safety3rdblog.com.

One last picture, from London's Heathrow: a classic mini at an airport shop. British racing green, and a Union Jack on the roof - that's roughly what I'm aiming for with the one Gunnar's got at the moment

Sometimes I get bored...

So, I was in San Diego last week. I had my camera with me (because Whistler had found it after I had lost it). I also had a new camera, which was to be the replacement for the lost one. So now, I needed to send the new one back. $8 shipping seemed like a reasonable fine to pay for losing my camera, but since I had a few days, I figured I'd try San Diego craiglist to see if I can get rid of it without having to pay for shipping. So I posted and lo and behold, early the following morning, I had a response from an Angelina Mandy:

hi
i am intrested in your sale kindly mail me back if still available..........

Angelina sounded just a bit fishy, but, why not, I informed 'her' that yes, the camera was still available. Follow-up response:

Thanks for your response.I am located at Waco,tx but presently on Business trip abroad,i gat my cell phone stolen,if not would av rung you,This Item is a replica of what i want for my Brother who is in abroad at the mo. sorting out his project …I will add shipping charges confirm from http://www.usps.com for international shipping making it a total of $250.00 …….I will make the total payment if you’ll kindly help me handle the shipping.You can send me the paypal info and i’ll make the payment right away.

Now we know it's a scam, of course, and, these days, I get amused by scammers. I'm not actually sure exactly how this one works, but Paypal does generally operate on the 'protect the buyer, screw the seller' ethos, and craigslist specifically warns not to give out your PayPal info on its scams page, even though I'm not actually sure what our 'angelina' would be able to do with the email address that my PayPal account is registered under, however I didn't want to find that out, but, as I said, I was feeling a little bored, so late the following evening I replied:

That sounds wonderful, unfortunately, I do not have a PayPal account - but, instead, you can just send me your bank account number, and I will authorize my bank to transfer the $250 from your account.

Additionally, I've checked a little with my intelligence contacts, and you have been recommended to me as a very trustworthy person, so I hope you will be willing to help us, as I've been placed in charge of dispersing the funds of the deposed royal family of Myanmar. So, once you send me your bank account number, I have been authorized to deposit an additional sum of 1,000,000 US dollars in your account. The money is perfectly legal, and this is simply a way of preventing the military dictatorship, currently in charge of the country, from illegitimately stealing the royal family's funds. In exchange for your assistance in holding the money in your account for a period of 30 days, you will be rewarded with 10% of the total sum, or $100,000 US dollars.

Look forward to hearing from you,
Alex.

PS. I had a good laugh at your message, hopefully you have one too, before you fuck off.

I was feeling pretty good about my composition skills, and felt 'angie' could learn something for her future scams about not always having the inheritance money come from Africa. Sadly, however, my angelina was apparently too busy managing other scams out of the Lagos, Nigeria (I presume) central office, to play along, so the only response I got said:

its a serious buyer....ok

Ahh, 'angie', you are ruining all of my entertainment... Oh well, fortunately, I now have Japan's Pachinko parlor Enjoy Spaces to keep me entertained - I just added a few pictures to the last post about Tokyo, which will enlighten you on Enjoy Spaces, Tommy Lee Jones' adventures in Japan, and Buddhist temples, among other things...

Home Sweet, Tokyo!? Home

I'm back in Tokyo! The city of pachinko machines, unnecessarily complicated subways, and home of Sakura hostel, where I stayed before and am staying now. So Tokyo is still much too weird to actually feel like home, but it does feel fairly familiar, even a little comfortable perhaps.

The trip over here was started with damn near torrential downpours in LA and San Diego (an event that the American Airlines ground crews are entirely unprepared for judging by the fact that my checked bag arrived still wet, twelve hours later in Tokyo). And, of course, I got to re-confirm that 12 hour flights still suck, even if JAL makes it a bit less intolerable than the AA alternative.

Random things I've found/remembered in my first few hours in Tokyo:
- it's true, the Japanese are wholly paranoid about germs. I saw plenty of face masks last year, there's even more of them now, in the face of Avian/swine/etc. flus. Including the guy that was sitting next to me on the flight.
- on the subway, I was reminded of the fact that the people here are either sleep deprived, or just really like to nap in positions I would find wholly uncomfortable while on the subway. Young, old, men, women, everybody's taking naps on the train.
- the iPhones are coming! the iPhones are coming! This one is particularly painful as I left mine behind in San Diego, but it is nice to see some iPhones supplementing the wholly ubiquitous Japanese phones. Not sure if iPhone 3G was even out yet when I was here a year ago, but I certainly didn't see any.

I'll come up with a few more witty observations before I leave Japan, I'm sure, in the mean time, I'm only here for a few days - three nights in Tokyo, two more in Nagoya (meeting up with friends in both places), then making my way down to Osaka for a flight down to Manila, and the tropical warm archipelago that is the Philippines. Started reading the Philippines guide book on the flight over - I wish I had more than 10 days to see the place! Looks like it'll just take it's rightful place along all the other countries that I would like to come back to eventually.

A few pictures:

Sakura Hostel in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo

Asakusa is more famous for the huge temple dominating the neighborhood

The Pachniko parlors seem to be the major attraction for the locals though

The Sunshine Pachinko parlor - your 'Enjoy Space!' I love the Japanese attempts at English translations... People do seem to be ready to enjoy the space though as there was a line of some 20 people waiting outside at 9:45. Presumably, this particular Enjoy Space opens its doors at 10AM

Lively or Apathetic? Well, I just don't know, it sounds more like one of those HSBC ads I see at airports the world over. Sidewalk art murals outside the hostel

Tommy Lee Jones looking very serious as he tries to sell you on Japanese soft drinks... Weird...