A Little Trip to San Francisco

This past week I travelled to San Francisco for a work planning/synch-up offsite attended by all the people in my group that work in the West Region (about 60 people). Our hotel/resort was in a little cove off of the bay right near one end of the Golden Gate Bridge. One of our fun activities was a team GPS treasure hunt in nearby Sausalito. My team came in third out of twelve teams. Yesterday after the formal event was over, a group of us went to Japan Town, and had sushi for lunch. The sushi was made fresh and the chef put servings on little colored plates and put the plates on little floating boats that go in a circle around the counter. You pay between $2 - $5 for each plate and the server counts the plates and notes their color and that is how you are charged. All of the sushi was really tasty; my favorite was the crab salad rolls and this sweet raw shrimp sushi, but I tried some of the other weird-looking stuff too; like this spicy octopus roll.

Grand Junction Getaway

This week I visited Mesa State College in Grand Junction, CO. It's a four-hour drive from Denver on Interstate 70. I invited Jane to come with me for a little get away. We left on Thursday and had snow from the Eisenhower Tunnel until Vail. With ski season nearing it's end I just had to stop and get in a few runs at Vail while I let Jane shop in Vail Village. It snowed the entire time and was foggy up on highest peaks. It turned out that one of our favorite places to ski hadn't been groomed for a long time because it had had a bunch of snow, and with very poor visibilty I dropped into the bowl into about two feet of powder snow, which I have no experience skiing in and really struggled with. At one point I fell and ejected both skis, both of which disappeared into the snow. One was barely sticking out, and the other I found digging down about a foot. In the first picture, last time I rode this lift (the "Orient Express" for those of you who know the "China Bowl" the dips and bumps were about 2-3 feet deep; here they are all covered up in fresh powder. After about three hours I was wiped out and came down the mountain and we finished the remaining 2 hour drive to Grand Junction. Friday afternoon Jane and I went for a drive; it was about 80 degrees and a nice change to drive around with the windows down. We thought our community of Highlands Ranch had some challenges when it comes to naming streets, because they reuse the same name about 5 times and just change the type of street ie: drive, way, road, street, avenue, circle, etc. Well Grand Junction has it even worse; or maybe they are just into math. We also saw this amazing tree house that trumps anything I've ever seen. Saturday, we drove home and stopped at Vail again for one last try; this time with beautiful sun. I had some great runs and an amazing wipeout (think yard sale) that didn't hurt. Jane really got into the shopping spirit as you can see in the last photo. Vail veterans will recognize the sculpture at Vail Village.