The other day I was riding up a chairlift at Alta with a couple of guys who were having a discussion about life.  It is very cliché to say that the discussion was about living life to the fullest or living for the moment, but that was pretty much the jist of the discussion.  What struck me as interesting was the angle that they were looking at it from, not just live life to the fullest, more like live fore the here and now.  They talked about how so many people live life waiting for retirement.  Planning to do all the things that they wanted to do as soon as they retire.  I never really thought about it, but it does seem like there are many people who do have a similar mentality.

The point that the guy was trying to make was that there is little point int waiting until you retire to start doing the things that you want to do.  Sure, there may be obstacles in the way like work and family, but should you really put off doing the things that you want to do.  You may have less holding you back when you retire, but do we really need to let these things hold us back in general?  Do they actually hold us back at all?

I come from a family where we pretty much just do the things that we want to do.  My mother has done some very interesting adventures including a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  She also has a trip to somewhere in Africa planned in the coming months.  We have done various river rafting trips including a “Dad’s and Kids” trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  I get to do a whole bunch of skiing, and hopefully now that I am a certified SCUBA diver I will be able to work in some dive trips.

I am certainly not rolling in money, but I try to find the means to do the things that I want to do.  Sometimes that may just be getting tickets for me and Ruth to go to show and sometimes it is taking SCUBA classes so that I can go dive with her.  Sometimes it is doing things just for me, and sometimes it is doing things together.  It isn’t always easy to find the time and the means to go do everything when we want to do it, but we certainly try.  I don’t want to wait until I am 65 to start doing things that I want to do.

What would we really be if we waited to do the things that we want to do?  Can you even do everything you want to after you are 65?

Over a winter I get out and do a lot of skiing. Last season I had something like 50 ski days, and this year I am still working on my count. One might say that I am a regular ski bum, but I can be due to the fact that A lot of the work that I do at the theatre is in the evening. It is really a great life!

A good portion of the days that I go skiing, I go by myself. NOt many of my friends have as flexible a schedule as I do. One of the things that keeps me going through the day is having a song in my head. Having a song keeps my skiing rhythm going, and I think it must help keep me focused. The crazy thing is that the songs that get stuck for a ski day are often the most random.

The other day I found myself singing “You’re the top” from Anything Goes!. I would be cruising through the powder singing out loud, but sure as anything I was making pretty turns. I also commonly find myself humming the soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean as I make my way down the mountain.

I know that I am not the only one who gets a tune stuck in their head while skiing. My uncle does the same, though his repertoire is slightly smaller. For him, the runs that are cruisers are “Santa Baby Runs.” Personally I don’t find “Santa Baby” to be a particularly great song for skiing, but when you ski a lot around the christmas season it can be catchy.

Generally I feel like I have my own personal soundtrack playing in my head most of the time. I like to actually listen to music too. When I get in the car I love to put on what I call “Epic Driving Music” which usually consists of soundtracks from epic movies. It is just fun.

What music defines the soundtrack of your activities? Do you have music or songs that get stuck in your head when you go running or to the gym or hiking or biking?

For the Alta views of course!

Today was a bluebird day at Alta and I grabbed some nice photos.  I always ski with my little P&S camera in my pocket just in case, and today was a great day to have it.

First up, a three frame composite panorama.  I whipped this together really quickly, but in all I think it came out decent.  Still needs a little tweaking.  There is just such sheer beauty up at Alta, sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the amazing view!

Alta Panorama from #9 Express

The Second photo is from the top of Supreme looking down into Heber Valley.  Up here we are above the inversion which keeps the clouds down in the valley.  It is kinda pretty.  Makes you wish that you could go cloud surfing or something.

Heber Valley Clouds

I would have published this yesterday, but I was too darn tired to finish it and all that jazz.

So, yesterday I made my way up to Deer Valley to ski with my uncle. When I got up to park city I had driven into possibly the biggest snow storm we have had this season. Couple that with the fact that the Sundance Film Festival is in town and you get tons of traffic and amazingly lousy drivers. The mine road up to Sliver Lake Village was closed and driving up Royal Street was a little treacherous. I made it up fine, but there were plenty of people having issues. Hey, this is Utah, we get lots of snow, people should know how to drive in it, but that is neither here nor there.

My uncle had set up a ski demo for the day for me so I picked up my boots and caught a shuttle over to the ski shop to pick up a pair of Volkl Mantras. We had been in the shop the day before getting bindings for Natalie’s new skis, and we got to talking about skis with one of the guys from the shop and we figured that it would be worth trying them out.

The Mantra is one of Volkl’s freeride skis and it is a pretty wide beast compared to my Salomon X-Wing Tornados. With a 133-96-116 profile, these are probably the widest skis I have ever skied save for the Evolution Powder Boards that my uncle has. My ’07 Tornados are a 124-75-107. So it took a little getting used to, but after a couple runs I started to figure them out and I was having a great time.

Well, it seemed like I should ring in the new year on palindrome day (01022010) by starting up a new blog.  I don’t really know what that seemed like the thing to do, but it did.  Maybe it was just an excuse to finally buy my new domain, icewolf08.com.  I would really love to have icewolf.com, but it is taken already, and I have been using icewolf08 as a handle since the intertubes were new.  I suppose the other thing is that it gives me something to do (though I don’t really need it) during tech for the show.

Speaking of tech, we seem to be moving right along for this one.  Working with Phil is always a blast, but I have to work quick because he likes to make all his changes at the last second.  We also have hit the end of our pre-written cues so we are moving a little bit slower now.  We teched through the entire first act in five hours and I think we should finish the show before the end of the night tonight, our first 10/12 tech.