Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Ski Utah 2009

February 06, 2009, 10:12 pm

Our second major ski trip this year was to Salt Lake City, from Jan 28 to Feb 2. We were not spared weather delays.

Our flight left Toronto on Wed, at 5 pm. A snow storm appeared out of nowhere the night before, and flights started being canceled the next day, especially the ones to the northeast area (New York, Quebec, etc). We kept checking our flight all day and it was “on time”. So far so good. Plane arrived as scheduled, and we boarded fairly on time. So far so good. Then some idiot broke one of the overhead bin doors by trying to force it close over his over-sized luggage. So they had to call in a tech. Who, failing to fix it, tried to duct tape it close, and finally, just took the whole cover off altogether. The bags inside the bin had to be taken out and moved into storage under the plane. It was a good half hour at least before we could leave the gate, and then we got stuck in line being de-iced.

We really should have been more worried about our connecting flight, instead of being worried about whether we would be able to leave Toronto. We were flying to San Francisco to transfer to Salt Lake City, and there was only a one hour layover. We missed our flight by about a half hour, and there was no more flights out that night, as it was after 9. And to make matters worse, we got no compensation because the delay was weather related. We tried to argue that it was half mechanical due to the bin door, but apparently they go by what is filed at the control centre, and they did not mention anything about the door. So we will need to file a complaint later. Next time, I will definitely ask the flight crew to make sure mechanical issues are reported.

So they rescheduled our flight for the next day. A 5 am flight to Denver, with a two hour+ layover, to arrive at Salt Lake City around 1. So we opted for the direct flight at 1 to arrive at 4. We loose a day of skiing, but transferring from SFO to Denver to SLC is just stupid. Oh, and the Air Canada rep was unable to actually change our flight for us cause “their link went down at night”. WTF? Their reservation system can’t be like Jobmine. We ended up calling the 1-800 reservation number to get our flight changed over the phone. So useless.

Also, there was no free meal provided for the flight from Toronto to San Francisco. When did this happen?? It’s like a 5 hour flight! I don’t think people were expecting these, so they even ran out of the food they were selling.

Nearly 11 pm and we won’t need to be back at the airport until noon the next day. So we decided to crash at Glady’s and Echa’s place for the night. Had to rent a car. After looking into renting a car from Salt Lake City, renting a car at SFO is so bloody expensive in comparison. We went to each counter asking for the cheapest quote for noon the next day, and we either got $100, or no cars left. Apparently it cost $17 in “taxes” just for the skytrain ride itself from the terminal to the car rental centre. Our rental for the last day at SLC, cost $20 total! We ended up negotiating with the rep at Thrifty, who gave us $80 for full coverage of a Dodge Journey. That thing was massive, how is that a midsize car?

We got to meet Bobo, Echa’s bird. He took a real liking to Mike, something about liking deep manly voices and orange coloured shirts. Mike certainly seem to prefer a parrot over Tobey.

Oh, and it was like 18 degrees in SFO. Sigh, we miss Cali.

And being 18 degrees, no more flight problems and we finally arrived at Salt Lake City around 4. Luckily, our hotel let us shorten our stay without penalties, and our equipment rental as well. We rented a car to pick up our equipment and then drove to Park City to check it out. And of course, there had to be some sort of street concert/festival there, and we were not able to find ANY parking at all. It was ridiculous, so we just drove around and left.

We stayed at the Cliff Lodge for three days to ski at Snowbird. It was ridiculously sunny all weekend. It felt like spring skiing when we were at the bottom, but amazingly, the snow was not slushy at all. In fact, it was all rather chunky. We learned what “hard packed powder” means. Alas, we had no true powder, but it was good skiing nonetheless. I think we’ve been totally spoiled by Whistler though, as it would be hard to find another mountain out there comparable in size. I think we can ski Whistler for three days without once going down the same trail. Not so much at Snowbird.

Apparently there are only two resorts left in the US that are skiers only. One being Alta and the other being Deer Valley (both in Utah). Which is unfortunate, as Alta is right next to Snowbird (like you can ski from one to the other), and it would have nice to be able to do Alta for a day. Based on our abilities and the size of the resorts, I think you just need two days or less to check out every chair and area for the Salt Lake City area resorts. And by abilities, we draw the line at double blacks. And the ones where you hike up to the ridge and go down chutes and such.

And lastly, when we told people we are going to Utah, all everyone could think of was the Mormons. I’ve never personally associated Utah with Mormons, but we did visit Temple Square on the last day. We had a brief tour of the place, and my general impressions are that the temple is very impressive, and the tour guides are all very excessively cheerful and friendly. They would even smile and say hi on the street when they pass you. We also visited Capital Hill. Otherwise, Salt Lake City is really dead.

Next up, Mont Ste Anne!

Photos on Facebook:
- Journey to Salt Lake City
- Snowbird 2009

Tagged: Travels

Comments (2)

Jerry Hung | February 08, 2009, 1:50 am

Typo at “We missed out flight by about a half hour”

Hey, it’s another flight/winter story to share, it’s all good. 1 hour transfer is really too tight for anywhere, maybe domestic and small airport, not YYZ/SFO sucks to happen on a free flight too