I have fled the country! (or: Spring ...

Apr 19 00:25 <Myke> http://www.jaypeakresort.com/en/jay_peak/conditions/ if you're thinking about what to do on Friday.....
Apr 19 09:03 <Devnull> 359 km (about 4 hours 6 mins) that's a long drive to get there early
Apr 19 09:21 <Devnull> I'm somewhat interested
Apr 19 09:21 <Devnull> But I'd be inclined to want to leave tonight
Apr 19 12:36 <Myke> good thing we have passports

And so began an hour of research, culminating with $99/night/person for room, breakfast, dinner and ski-pass deal in a hotel RIGHT at the base of the mountain. Even better: If paying with cash - they take Canadian dollars at par, not that that's such an amazing deal these days, but it still helps.

With our room reserved, I went to the bank to get some USD (for gas, food or emergency) and took the snow tires off the Element.

After encumbering Chris with my pager, Sean and I set off for Jay Peak at about 9PM. The drive was okay, until Google's Step #11 - The Road.

The Road
_{If you could call it that.}

The Road is not actually a road, it is just a slice across southern-Quebec that is roughly in line with our destination. It has a 70KM/H speed limit, and even a street-name; But. It. Is. Not. A. Road. It tried to kill us, swallow us in it's vast array of capacious, oubliette-esque potholes, sling us off the side with unmarked creeks that decided to come that way, it attempted to launch us off the cliffs into the very stars we watch at night. In short - it sucked. And as it turned out, if we've stayed on the highway for another exit, we could've bypassed the whole mess. The Element's suspension has yet to forgive me, or Google.

Shortly after conquering The Road, we reached the longest undefended border in the world... which seemed almost to be completely apt a title, until a little old lady flagged us over to her booth...

"Can I have your documents please?"
-hand over passports-
"Mr. Sean - Where do you live? What is your Occpation?"
"Ottawa, IT"
"Mr. Myke - Where do you live? What is your Occpation?"
"Ottawa, IT"
"And what brings you to the United States?"
"To go skiing at Jay Peak... and I hope we've gone the right way"
"Yes you have." (And she gave us a warm smile! These people do have souls!)
-pregnant pause as she looks at what the computer is saying-
"What do you have to put in your mouth?"
"Uh - What?"
"To eat, what do you have? Any meat? Fruits?"
"Oh - nothing to declare, just, uhm - some chips, chocolate bars, pop..."
"What do you have to chew?"
"err... some gum?"
"How does this door work?" (Looking at my suicide door, as I'd already had the front-door open)
-I open door-
"What's in these bags?"
"That's my skis, that's his snowboard."
"Can you pop the trunk?"
"Okay."
"What's in this bag?" (Sean's camera bag)
"Why do you need a camera?"
"......"
"This one?" (My CTi2s and X2Ks)
"This one?" (My clothes)
"This one?" (... Sean's camera bag again...)
"Well I don't think I've ever seen an Element before, is it new?"
"It's a couple years old, I like it a lot. Based on the CR-V"
"Very nice. Here's your passports and have fun skiing."
-exeunt-

A short way from there, we arrived!

(Well, it was 1AM when we got there, pretend it looks like night time.)

Check-in was easy, I logged on to the WiFi just fine.................................

The Hotel itself is nothing too remarkable; it's not a total dive, but by no means a 5-star resort either.

The Jay Hotel

We unpacked, settled in, geeked out for a bit, and then I crashed the Hotel's WiFi. (Yeah yeah, I know what people are saying.) With no Intarwebs, we turned in for the night.

---

We woke up. I tormented my loyal 'blog readers, and then we hit the slopes!

View from the summit, looking back towards the hotel over a ridge.

Montrealer looking towards Vermonter

The conditions weren't too bad, given that it's a few degrees above zero and very sunny, the 97cm of snow that fell over the last week was getting somewhat slushy. So once you started going, turning was very hard to turn as you weren't really carving, rather - shovelling the slush. We got tired very quickly. The 30 minutes we spent standing to get ride the tram to the peak wasn't exactly all that fun either.

We rode for about 2 hours, and decided to take a break to eat, afterwards, we dumped our jackets and just wore snow-pants and T-shirts, because that's all you needed!

Conditions were worsening in the afternoon as the sun made more water. The flat/straight sections were generally easy, but in some areas they'd change from firm-pack snow to hard-pack slush - making for a very subtle, but sudden slow down. Almost send me head-over-tips a few times.
At one point, we ended up taking a T-bar lift up a small section... I only once before had used a T-Bar, but after a 10-second lesson from the lifty, I managed to get it all worked out: skis in line with where you're headed, don't sit - just lean back on the bar, hold on tight!

Sean's knee was getting to him, and I was feeling pretty beat, so we decided to call it a day and headed back to our room. Showered and vegged for a little while. We'd made dinner reservations for 6, and since we had time to kill, we went for a walk to take photos, but realized that with the light and location - there wasn't much to shoot - so we went for a drive.

I loved how in less than 20 minutes, we went from the top of a mountain covered in snow, to the valley below that shows no signs of winter. Montgomery is a small town with lots of covered bridges - and two gas stations. We bought gas and beverages and headed back to the resort for dinner.

Dinner wasn't anything to write home about, but dessert was amusing - Ben & Jerry's Phish Food Ice Cream.

Since we were still pretty wiped, we just flopped. Sean watched some videos and played with driftnet (cough) and I wrote this 'blog entry and went through the day's photos.

Oh - and does anyone have the slightest idea what this thing is?

Mystery Device

It's next to a run of the mill weather station, but for the life of me, I've naught got a clue what it is. My guesses are lightning detector... avalanche-predictor-thing... UV meter... non-snow-or-wind thermometer...

Please promptly postulate perfectly presently!