A Week In Baja California Sur, Mexico

Off to spend a week in San Jose Del Cabo, Todos Santos, and potentially some time in Los Barillos in Baja California.  I'm heading out at 4am or so tomorrow, and will be back in 7 days.  The picture above is from the road trip I took with a buddy of mine up the Baja Peninsula.  Its looking out across the sea of Cortez north of La Paz.

Snow Valley Vermont

I've spent the last two days hiking and skiing Snow Valley, an abandoned resort between Manchester and Stratton Vermont.  A friend of mine showed me the place and I see lots of opportunities for good skiing here in the next couple of months.  I think keeping on my feet hiking every day will put me in good shape to ski Tuckerman's Ravine this April (and maybe May), and have gotten back to doing outdoor sports every day.  Its a little lonely up here in VT, but not nearly as bad as I had anticipated.  I'm loving the time off, am putting in a lot of hours studying, and am going to be making trips to Burlington, Montreal, New York, and Boston starting this weekend.  I've also just started my second read of 2666, Roberto Bolano's massive tome about the human condition.  Should be some good beach reading!

Keep in touch,

- Jeff

jsh2h@virginia.edu

Snow Valley, VT pictures

Snow Valley Ski Resort has been abandoned for 25 - 30 years.  Where there used to be lines, there are now clumps of forest, instead of a functioning base lodge, there's decay, and after the lifts closed, the crowds went away.  What is left is a beautiful spread of open trails naturally covered in snow set in a quiet nook of the green mountains....

Happy 3/9!

Today, March 9th 2010 marks the one year anniversary of the stock market's bottom from the great recession of 2008 - 2009.





















I celebrated by skiing from 8:30 to 1 (like every day), going to LSAT class in Albany, and taking down a couple Long Trail IPAs. Cheers!

On Hiatus

I'm in Vermont studying for the LSAT and will be until the test comes around in June.  I've set up some good weekend trips to NYC, Montreal, Boston, Burlington, etc. but by and large am going to use the time to take 12 hours a week of class, plan where I'll be traveling after June, and organizing law school applications.

I'm going to put the blog on hiatus with potential monthly updates from now on.  Come back in June when I'll be heading out for some real travel, and will hopefully have an improved format.  Thanks for reading so far!

- Jeff

jsh2h@virginia.edu

The Great American Road Trip

A final statistical update:

Miles Driven:  3,919

Hours Driven: ~65

States Visited: 16 + DC

Speeding Tickets: $0

Parking Tickets: $320 ($0 paid)

Days to pack:  4

Days to unpack: 1.5

Weeks on the road: 2.5

Best City:  New Orleans

Worst City:  Albuquerque

Cups of coffee per day: ~6

If I had one big revelation or surprise about the whole trip, it was how big and diverse the United States is.  Flying over the whole thing really doesn't capture the size like I always assumed it did.  I drove from a densely packed bustling technology centered city by the Pacific into huge agribusiness driven fields, sparsely populated stops along Indian Reservations and into the thick morass of swamp across the Gulf Coast.  I felt familiar with the East Coast, but stopping along the way in small towns and cities, seeing parts of Virginia I'd never seen before, and making it up through New York into Vermont took on a whole different tone this time.  It was like listening to a great album in its entirety when before you'd only listened to a few familiar tracks.

America taken at large feels like a dozen countries packed into one, each one with a distinct immediately discernible flavor.  Though people say the spread of mass media and the highways have dulled down the differences and created a morass of monoculture, if it will ever take hold, it hasn't yet.

Taking a 2000 mile trip and turning it into a 4000 mile journey was one of the best things I've ever done, and I'm glad you all got to follow along with the blog.  I'm taking a big break from driving anywhere non-skiing related for a couple of days, and I'll be posting the new blog format once I'm settled into my new place in Vermont.  Thanks for reading, tune back in 3 months from now when the real journey starts.

In Vermont

Got home, skiied Stratton, getting ready to put this blog in hibernation for the next three months until the real journey begins.  I'll have a final road trip stats post, some info about what I'm up to for the next three months, and probably a post every now and again to pass the time.  I've been in close touch with some people I've worked with in Ghana and it looks like moving back to Cape Coast, Elmina, or Kakum could be happening in early July.  Emphasis on the word could, nothing is close to certain.

We got slammed with '31 inches of snow since I got in, and minus one awesome tumble on the road in front of a large truck towing a trailer, the driving has been fine, and the mountain has been open.  The skiing isn't Jackson Hole, but I had a great time today poking around.  Its sleeting here in town (Manchester), but snowing heavily up the hill at the mountain.  I think this week alone is going to prolong the season another 2 weeks.