This sucks! And it was one of the better ski weekends we have had as well!
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That is too bad.
I never skied in WA or BC as a kid, but have heard good things. Some place in the Cascades, I assume? (Lol, where else; the Olympics are year-round rain).
Well, the skiing here is a mixed bag.
I usually ski at Snoqualmie Pass. Better known to the locals as "[audible resigned sigh] the pass."
Here's the good thing about the pass: it is so easy to get to! 55 miles from downtown Seattle, and the entire trip is on I-90, never less than 4 lanes. Because it is the main road between Western and Eastern Washington, the snow gets cleared fast. Some of our friends east of Lake Washington have a 30 minute drive to get there.
Here's the bad things about the pass: everything else. Facilities that remind one of a junior high school cafeteria. Runs that are short by left coast standards. Get in and get out early, because weekend afternoon lift lines can look like Disneyland on a weekend. And the snow! The term "Cascade Concrete" was invented to describe the snow at Snoqualmie Pass. Through some strange weather anomaly, Snoqualmie Pass manages to get snow that is actually heavier than water.
Crystal Mountain is far, far better. Better snow and, while not Telluride quality runs, was good enough for the US Alpine Championships in the 1960's. However, it more than doubles the drive time if one is lucky. If one isn't lucky, the roads can get way sketchier. One time, I spun out on some scary black ice and barely kept my vehicle on the road. From where I stopped, I could look down the embankment and see a woman who was much less fortunate than I. She was OK, but her car was going to need a winch to get out.
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So far, it was kind of chilly this spring.
"See? He can be a real sweetheart once you get to know him."-Fluttershy
Crystal Mountain sounds like the place to go then, provided it's with caution. My roommate last year was from Bellevue (maybe I already mentioned that); I think he mentioned Snoqualmie Pass as the most well-known skiing place too.
I refuse to admit to myself it's spring until it's actually here (that's always April 10th). My coping mechanism since the dreadful winter three years ago has been to deny it's winter at all from December to April (and continue to tell myself it's fall), until spring finally does arrive. Right now, it's still in the relative cold doldrums, but I've grown more patient about it; it will pass.
(In the meantime, I'm keeping myself busy with work and watching House of Cards, which I've actually enjoyed very much, in its own "TV noir" way. I'm starting to reconsider my stance on current TV series as there are in fact some pretty fine shows out there.)
Have you seen the original House of Cards trilogy?
It had much more of a Shakespeare vibe to it. Also, as nasty as Kevin Spacey's protagonist can be, he is actually warm and fuzzy compared to Ian Richardson's Francis Urquart.
And the ending... Don't think the US network is going to pull the trigger on that.
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No, I haven't seen the UK version (nor do I know who Ian Richardson is yet). I'll have to give it a look.
I think part of Spacey's effectiveness is indeed his character's warm and fuzzy image hiding his sinister and sociopathic ways; very Richard III or Iago (more than Macbeth, IMO; although Robin Wright's character is very Lady Macbeth-like). Perhaps it's hard to quite get past the Lester Burnham image from American Beauty when one is watching Spacey.
I've never been a big fan of the anti-hero TV show genre. I was never able to appreciate Breaking Bad, perhaps since I didn't bother watching it until it was ending. But also, once I skimmed through it, it seemed the protagonist got away with too much at the end. (Unlike Shakespeare's anti-heroes, who usually end up with nothing and have someone else arrive after their demise, tidy up the mess and take over).
I can't comment on other shows like Dexter, Mad Men, the Sopranos, the Wire, etc. since I never saw them (though I'd like to give the Wire a look, perhaps, at some point.) I gave Narcos a look the other day and found the Brazilian actor's (playing Escobar) accent in Spanish rather grating (along with the other non-Colombians).
A lot of House of Cards is far-fetched, but still, something about its DC setting (though it was filmed in Baltimore), clever dialogue and situations, Spacey's charismatic and dark sense of humor (and breaking the fourth wall), Wright's cold enigmatic elegance, etc. lured me in.
I just hope it does have an ending worthy of a Shakespearean anti-hero; that will make it more satisfying.
It's supposedly "fall cold" now here in Poland, though the real feel is freezing. It went from being a torrid summer straight into the depths of cloudy, rainy weather, some dank, grim, post-Soviet version of fall instead of crunchy leaves and crisp blue Central European skies.
Kraków has lots of parks and lakes in its suburbs; but the central city, other than the Old Town, gets full of grime from Nowa Huta's (an industrial suburb) and nearby Katowice's and even Ostrava's in the Czech Rep.'s pollution (as well as all the people burning wood and trash in their old-fashioned fire-places and stoves, as opposed to those who have gas heating installed). The dirty air settles into the Vistula river valley which is surrounded by hills, and stays here.
And I thought only towns with 24+ million people like Mexico City (or Tokyo and Beijing) had bad pollution, not those with less than 1 million inhabitants.
Is there a lot of coal being burned as well?
Old Soviet-era Eastern Europe was known not just for burning coal for everything, but really low-grade coal.
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