Home!

Hey everyone!
At 8:30am yesterday (30/4), Josie and I touched down in Sydney - after 5 incredible months, our USA is at end! Even the flight (25 hours in glorious cattle class) was something of an adventure as Josie got hit with food poisoning and had to be taken off the plane in a wheelchair. She wasn't able to keep in liquids or food down, so she was pretty dehydrated. We ended up taking her to casualty where she was put on a drip for few hours. After a solid night of sleep she woke up feeling alot better - she is able to eat without bringing it back up again, although it might take her a few days to get back to 100%!

After 5 months it was inevitable we would accumulate some luggage and with the USA being such great place to pick up a bargain, we ended up with so much stuff we turned up to the airport with 7 (yes 7!) bags to check-in for our flight home which was to take us from Denver - LA - Auckland - Sydney. Just getting the 8 bags out of the car was an achievement. Luckily for us there was a huge ass trolley that could fit all of our bags!

We flew with Air New Zealand and they have this rule where all checked in bags must be less then 50 lbs (scabby bastards!) otherwise its $50 per bag over the 50 lbs! Thankfully we knew this before hand, plus we had some bathroom scales ($10 from Wal-mart!) we could use to weigh our bags before taking off to the airport. The scale certainly did the job - all of our bags ranged between 46.5 - 50.5 lbs (they were over with being 0.5 lbs over!). In the end we had to pay $300 for excess baggage ($100 per excess bag - which we expected after checking their policies online) but we avoided any overweight baggage fees. Still it beats posting it home which would have cost at least $500. A picture of the checking in adventure. My snowboard bag is on the scales and the rest of the bags are on the trolley...


As you can guess our trip was simply amazing - 5 months of not working and having the ability to do what we wanted the entire time was like a dream I could get used to! A huge thanks to Jeff and Dave who helped us so much - without you guys, this would not have been possible!
Also to everyone who came and visited us (Sean, Matt & Sonia, Claire & Rob, etc) , the people we met along the way (Shelby & Karl, Mike & Crystal, Troy & Tonya, etc), those that let us stay with them during our road trip (Kristen, Layla, Amy & Roger, Sue & Dave, Tanya - also thanks for the lift to the airport!!), those we caught up with (Nicola & Jim, Kirsten) everyone else I know I have missed - you all contributed in a big way to our unforgettable trip. I know that I will be dreaming and thinking our USA trip for a long time to come!

I guess now that I am home, this is the final entry in our holiday blog. Hopefully someone out there is reading this still. If not, I guess at least I can use it to bring back memories when I get too old :-)

Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS

Almost the end...

Hey everyone - well after 5 months, 65+ days of snowboarding, countless gym sessions, hiking, XC skiing, 8 days of mountain biking and other stuff, our trip around the USA is almost over. Currently Josie is madly packing and trying to figure out how we will not get slugged with excess or overweight baggage - she is rather good at this so its best I stay out of her way :-)

She just finished the packing adventure - hmm we have 7 bags to checkin....eekkk....check it out...



As you can guess it has been an incredible trip. I know it sounds like a cop out but if you ever get the chance to take time off work and travel, do a season (or both!) then go for it! Yes it does involve a crazy amount of planning, but when you wake up and your toughest decision is "which resort should I ride at today", you know its worthwhile.

We spent the last few days visiting some friends in LA and just relaxing in general. Having seen most of the LA before, we only did one touristy thing, namely Universal Studios. It was a full on day - we got there at 9am and didn't leave until 6pm. We actually needed all that time to see everything we wanted to check out. Our friends told us to upgrade our entry ticket to some "front of the line" pass, and we were glad we did - without it we would have spent the entire time in lines. Its great, you flash your pass an you get straight onto any ride, show, etc you want. Plus after some shows you get to meet some of the actors, take a few pics, ask questions......I reckon it's worth paying the extra $40 for that "VIP" feeling :-). A couple of pics below:



The Waterworld show was actually pretty good - yes the movie completely stank. but the live show was rather entertaining. Seeing a guy falling 35 feet whilst on fire was something I had never seen before! The explosions and fire were cool (or should I say hot?!).

By the time I write the next (and probably final blog), I should be back in Oz - we've had a ball!

CLS & JS

San Fran and LA!!

Hey everyone,
Well Josie and I are hitting the tail end of our trip right now - very soon we will be back in Oz and the USA will only be a memory. Mind you it will be a pretty amazing memory! We have had the most incredible time here - the snow, the mountain biking, the hiking, all of it has been unforgettable. This might sound obvious, but I *highly* recommend taking 6 months off and travelling! :-)

We left Vegas and had to endure a 9 hour drive to San Fran where we were staying with a friend. Our little 1997 Volkswagon Jetta made it the entire way without any problems - we were nightmares about it breaking down but thankfully nothing like that happened. We worked out we actually drove it about 1500 miles (2400 kms) without any major hassles. The only "minor" issue we had was the car "broke down" for about 15 minutes after we got it washed in Fruita (at the start of our road trip). I am guessing some water got in where it shouldn't have, but after letting it dry out the car was fine! A huge thanks to Jeff for the use of the Jetta - we actually forgot to take a photo of it when we got to San Fran but it will live on in our happy memories!

The 9 hour drive was LOOOOONG but thank god for ipods - we hooked the ipod up to the stereo so we had 80's music playing the entire time - 80's music rocks! Its always fun to sing along to classics from the likes of Rick Astley, The Village People, Duran Duran to name a few!

Our friend Layla played tour guide for the few days we were in San Fran so a huge thanks to Layla for spending the whole weekend with us :-). We ended up seeing the Golden Gate Bridge (very impressive - very similar to the Sydney Harbour Bridge in terms of tourists checking it out!), Lombard Street (super crooked street!), a few museums (it's not everyday you get to see million dollar Monet paintings), Pier 39 Seals (man that stink!) as well as Alcatraz which was SUPER COOL! If you are heading to San Fran, definately go and spend the $25 and check Alcatraz Island - the audio tour was so interesting! Tell you what, I would not have wanted to be a prisoner in that place - it looked like an absolute sh1thole to live in...A few pics of our little trip to San Fran...



We are currently in LA for a week or so before jetting home - it will be hard to get back into the swing of work! However we still have some more exploring to do before we head home - off to Universal Studios tomorrow which will be exciting!!

Hope everyone is well,
CLS & JS

Vegas Baby!

Hey everyone,
In my last post I mentioned Las Vegas without actually expanding on it so I think I had better "expand" - last week we spent 4 nights in Vegas - man a truly unique place! After our epic mountain biking days in Fruita, Moab and Zion, it was a bit of a culture shock going from amazing natural scenary to bright neon lights and the razzle dazzle of "The Strip". Breathing in that fresh mountain air was alot different to chocking on the second hand cigarette smoke - it seemed 90% of people were fagging way in Vegas! We wandered through most of the big hotel casinos - Circus Circus, Bellagio, Luxor, MGM, New York New York, Excalibur, Venetian, etc. Gotta

I was so shocked to see so many people gambling regardless of the time of day! We stayed in a dodgy hotel casino just off the strip and we would walk down at 7:30am and people would still be on the slot machines or playing blackjack....man do people sleep in this town?! The days were mostly spent wandering the strip and stores (the M&M store was rather cool!) and by night we took in a few shows. The Venetian had "Phantom of the Opera" and I can say it was truly fabulous. I last saw it in 1995 and watching it again bought all the great memories back - the music of Phantom is unbeatable! I could happily watch the show again and again.

Vegas also has 5 productions from Cirque De Soleil going and we ended up seeing "O" at the Bellagio - "O" has a water theme to it and given that the stage area had to be purpose built (the pool alon apparently cost $60 million!), thus couldn't be shown anywhere else, we had to see it. Like all Cirque De Soleil productions, it was amazing. The pool/stage had the ability to alter the depth of water level. Thus, sometimes the pool floor rode to floor level with no water showing, and other times the pool floor would be 10 metres deep (for the high diving stunts). It was pretty breathtaking (as was the ticket price, which cost more then our entire Vegas accomodation!)

I don't think I'll go back to Vegas in a hurry - given I am not much of a gambler it doesn't hold much appeal, however I would definately go back to see more of the Cirque De Soleil shows!
We did put $2 into a slot machine and when we "cashed out", the machine printed out a ticket which we could take to the cashier to get our winnings.....hmm given our winnings were exactly 1 cent we didn't bother - but here's proof of us winning 1 cent!



Out of the hotels, we liked New York New York the best - the skyline looks awesome, the roller coaster ride scared the hell out of Josie (I loved it!) and the interior was totally "New York. Check it out....


On a negative note I couldn't believe the number of absolute dero's and bums who roamed the streets and casinos - is there an easier way to lose money?! I guess the Asian gambling streak is not in me!

Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS

Zion and Vegas baby!

Hey everyone,
Even though we have left the snow season I am still in the habit of checking the snow report. Man it dumped 10 inches in Breckenridge last night! Oh well I guess we have moved on from the snow in the past few weeks. Having left Moab we drive 5 hours to a charming little town called Rockville (population 247!) which is minutes away from Zion National Park. We stayed with some friends Amy & Roger who are avid outdoors people - so it was a great to go with them and get shown some of the sights of their "local" National Park.

They took us on an easy hike up to Canyon Overlook which has some of the best view in Utah. At the other extreme we also did a hike up to an area called "Angel's Landing" - this hike was rated "Strenuous" and I can say it was pretty tough - there were some areas of the walk where you actually have to hang onto steel ropes as the way up was so narrow! There was only enough width for one person at a time to walk certain areas. I am pretty sure that hike wouldn't even be open if it was in Australia - it was pretty exposed. In the end we only got as far as an area called "Scouts Landing". There were so many hikers going up and down the steep sections we actually had to wait our turn - in the end we just abandoned the idea of reaching the top, otherwise it would have taken hours! Still the views from Scouts Landing were pretty speccy! From left to right: The view from Canyon Overview; Josie & I on Scouts Landing with Angels Landing in the background; The view from Scouts Landing



On our final day at Rockville/Zion, we couldn't resist the urge to go for another mountain bike ride :-) We went to the local bike store and they recommended a 24 mile/38km singletrack ride which we enthusiastically went for! As luck would have it, the temperature that day hit 30+ Celsius which made for a tough ride! We ended up riding about 4 hours - we actually got a bit lost along the way so ended up riding a few extra miles! I also got a bit sunburnt on the shoulders - you can also see a rather distinguished tanline on my legs :-) The ride itself was great fun - especially the last 8 miles which was pretty much all downhill singletrack - sweet!!!! We spoke to a few other riders along the way and they were saying there are a few more tracks we will need to try out - we will just have to come back again to ride it! We farewelled Amy and Roger the next day (thanks for everything guys!) to drive the few hours to make it to Vegas! More on that a bit later!

hope all is well!
CLS & JS

Arches National Park

Hey everyone,
One thing I didn't mention in my previous entry was whilst we were in Moab we also got a chance to check out Arches National Park - which is about 3 miles outside Moab. Given it was so close it would have been sacrilege not to have gone! We ended up spending a day and a half in Arches - after a fairly easy mountain bike ride we spent the rest of the afternoon checking out a small portion of the park and on our day off from mountain biking we did a 6 hour hike/wander to see as much as we could!

The highlight would have to be the hike around "Devil's Garden" - a long (5-6 hours) but fairly easy hike - its reward is the large number of arches on display. During that day we managed to see 11 arches as well as countless other natural structures. Over the day and a half, we saw a total of 16 arches - its fair to say we are now pretty much all arched out! Still it was on the "to see" list so I am super happy to have ticked it off! Its hard to appreciate how impressive they are in photos - you really have see it "in person" to get a real appreciation - still I gave it my best shot......here are a few....
From left to right:
me looking up at Balanced Rock; Double Arch; Landscape Arch; Josie checking out Black Arch Overlook; Josie dwarfed by Double O Arch


With amazing mountain biking and National Parks about, Moab is one of our favourite places in the USA - we will definately be back for more riding and hiking!

Hope everyone is well - we will be back in Oz in a few weeks!

CLS & JS

MTB'ing in Moab...

Hey everyone,
It's Friday now and Josie and I are physically drained - we have ridden for 5 days here in Moab, Utah, and although we are tired, we just loved it! We initially booked a 6 day camping and mountain biking tour, however that tour got cancelled due to a lack of numbers, so we just ended up doing days tours around the Moab area. It actually worked out really well because not only did it cost us less to do it ourselves, but we also got to do all the rides we were going to do on tour anyway :-)

We went through a mob called "Moab Cyclery" and they were awesome - we managed to check out 6 different rides in 5 days (did 2 in one day) which equated to about 140 miles/220kms of riding. Our legs are like pistons right now! Some pics of the rides below:

Josie & I posing on the Porcupine Rim Trail - Round Mountain in the background.










Ripping it up at the White Rim ride.


Josie and I riding up one of the hills at Slickrock


My favourite ride was definately Slickrock - its simply a place that is like nothing we have ever ridden - there are some steep sections but the rock is so grippy you can ride up almost anything - kind of ironic that slickrock is not actually slick (of course when it rains thats a different story!). Our ride at Slickrock was a bit of an adventure - one of the other riders (Wayne) with us had a crash and ended up dislocating a finger and chipping the bone - OUCH! So our guide (Tim) had to walk him, his bike and his own bike back to the car - at this stage we were about 9-10 kms out - so it would have been a LONG walk! Rather then walk, he just let us continue the ride which we were happy to do - at Slickrock you simply need to the follow the white lines on the rock - without them you would be hopelessly lost. Plus we were loving it! In the end we all got back to the car within 5 minutes of each other. After walking for about 30 minutes, Tim waved down a jeep on the trail and managed to put Wayne and his bike in the jeep. The jeep drove Wayne back to the car whilst Tim raced back also. By this time Josie & I were only a few minutes from the car also - so it was all good timing! :-)

Certainly one of the highlights was watching one the guides Merrick do a 15-20 foot drop. It was something we had never seen before "in person". Here are a couple of still shots of it - you won't catch me or Josie doing something like this...


Awesome! Also a huge thanks to guide Tim for showing us around Klondike Bluff & Slickrock - you guys rock! :-)

Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS

Breck and Beyond..

Hey everyone - sorry its been a while since I have written - I haven't been with a regular internet connection for a few days! Josie and I are currently in Fruita, Colorado where we have had 2 days of amazing mountain biking - we ended up riding about 40 miles/64kms so needless to say we are pretty shattered! However a bit of an update over the past week or so...

After a wonderful snow season, we have left our Breckenridge home - the final count was 63 days of snowboarding - given our season pass cost $439, it cost us an average $6.96 to ride each day - now THAT is a bargain! Given a lift ticket in Oz is around $100, I think we got our moneys worth here! Plus there were the days of backcountry riding, hiking and general outdoors stuff - Breckenridge has certainly left a lasting memory in our minds - their outdoor culture is incredily appealling! We will be back!

Packing up the place was a bit of an adventure - we have actually bought 2 more bags as we have accumulated so much stuff since we were here! A big thanks to Sean, Claire and Rob for taking some of our stuff home with them when they were here, otherwise god knows what we would have done. A few pics of our packing dramas:

We already had our snowboard bags and 1 suitcase in the car....

Filled to the brim!

After we left Breck, we flew to Indy for a few days to catch up with some friends of Josie's when she worked there a few years ago. Indy is not the tourist capital of the USA but its the people that really make a place and Josies friends were wonderful! So friendly and hospitable. We stayed with Josie's friend Kristin, who took a few days off work to drive us around which was great! There is some mega outlet shopping about in Indy so we wasted no time buying up a few more things - no idea how we will ship them home but we will worry about that later! Managed to find some super cool jeans and shoes - not exactly the best stuff to pack!

We also caught up with another friend Suzannah who just had a baby (Sarah-Jane) about 4 weeks ago. She is still recovering but she was a trooper - she took us around town with baby in tow - I even had a chance to carry Sarah-Jane which was a bit scary at first, but after being shown how to hold a baby it was "easy street" :-) Don't ask me to change a nappy though ;-)

One memorable car trip had Josie driving the car, me in the back feeding Sarah-Jane (with a bottle) and Suzannah using some breast pump thing to "make" more milk - hehehe I bet you don't see that everyday! Its a pity I didn't had the camera with me at the time!

Given I love the zoo, we also managed to check out Indianapolis Zoo - it was only $7 to get in! Cop that Taronga! The zoo itself is pretty small and you can get around it is only a few hours, but the highlight was certainly the walrus. We went to check it out and there were all these people sniggering. We looked a bit closer and we noticed it was using its enormous flipper to "stroke" himself in, ahem, a rather certain area! At this stage we saw what it was stroking and let me say it looked like a bloody human forearm!! It was THAT big!! Given the water is just above freezing, he certainly wasn't sufferring from "shrinkage"!! I actually tried to take a picture of it but my bloody camera battery ran out!! Man my timing was off that day!

A few pics of Indy Below:

With Bob, Gina and Kristin at Buca De Beppos - Josie used with work with Gina on an Accenture project back in the day....

Down by the Canal in very cold and windy weather!

We left Indy a few days ago, flew back to Denver and have started our road trip across the USA - currently we are in Fruita to get out bike legs back for Moab Utah which is known as a mountain biking mecca. Mind you, the riding in Fruita is still pretty good! They are known for their killer single track and we got to experience it first hand! Its a new experience riding on the top of a ridge about 50cm wide and super steep drops on either side! No room for error so we really had to be on our game and concentrate!

Besides the single track some of the views are worth stopping for and taking a few pics...check it...



We leave Fruita tomorrow for a 2 hour drive to Moab tomorrow - once there we have 4 days of mountain biking planned, plus 1 day of hiking and 1 day of white water rafting - we have been warned that the water will be chilly!!

Hope all is well and will talk soon!

CLS & JS

Powder, Seaworld & Texas Wedding..

Hey everyone,
Its been a while since I wrote something in the blog - a combination of being extremely busy plus extreme laziness :-)

The day after I last wrote, Breckenridge and the other surrounding resorts got absolutely blasted with snow - We woke to 10 inches of fresh powder - just getting out of the driveway was a challenge! But our early start was once again rewarded with a tonne of powder - The peaks reported 13 inches so it was certainly an amazing day!

The next day we hit Keystone which got another 8 inches - we paid our $5 to catch the cat up to the "outback" bowls and saw endless amounts of the magic fresh stuff! It was easily the best couple of runs at the outback bowl this season (we ended up doing it twice!). We ended up riding all day in the powder - we figured it was the real snowstorm of the season so we had to make the most of it!

Below is a picture of Josie ripping up one section of the bowl:

Since then the snowfall has certainly slowed down - with the temperature reaching +10 it's no wonder! However we have been incredibly lucky this season with so much snowfall and so many powder days - I think our only regret is that we wish we took more photos of us enjoying it!

Last week we flew down to Texas for a few days to attend a friends wedding - I can honestly say I never would have imagined going to Texas except for a special occasion like a wedding :-) It was certainly a shock when we stepped off the plane to 25 degrees and sunny!

We arrived in Texas early to check out Seaworld San Antonio for a day - it was pretty cool (actually it was super hot that day!) but given it was spring break, there were so many kids!! It was like pram city near some of the rides and shows. One thing I realised very quickly is that Americans seems very patient when lining up for things - some of them will line up for 1 hour just to get on a ride that last 45 seconds - more patient then me I guess!

We managed to see a few of the shows - the seal, beluga & killer whale show - all of them were pretty amazing - the sheer size of the killer whale made it essential viewing! Although we sat in the "Splash Zone" we managed to stay dry! A few shots of the shows below:


We also found some Mexican entertainment poster - I think I looked very similar to the star :-)


The wedding we went to was for our friends Nicola & Jim - I used to go to uni with Nicola so we have known each other a long time! They are actually from England but were sent to Texas for a project with their work. Initially they were planning on having the wedding in the UK but logistically trying to organise that from the USA would have been complex so they they elected to do it in the States - good for us given we were in the country at the time! The wedding was in a charming little town called Boerne, 45 mins from San Antonio. It was awesome to catch up with Nic & Jim plus our another mutual friend Kirsten (another uni friend!) - even though we have been in the USA for 4 months we have had a number of Aussie friends come over to visit so we have certainly not been homesick! A few pics of the wedding below:


There was a bit of wind but Nicola & Jim didn't seem to mind :-)










Josie & I with the Nicola - she seems pretty happy!










The song happened to be "Kung Fu fighting" :-)












As you can tell, we had alot of fun at the wedding! Texas itself was alot different to Colorado - personally I much prefer being nearer to the mountains, but Texas is certainly a place to go for a top wedding!

It's actually our last few days in Breck - we actually take off on Thursday so we are madly packing up our stuff - it will be sad to leave but we are also excited to have a 4-5 weeks of jam-packed travel in there! Cannot wait to MTB in Moab thats for sure!!

Hope all is well!
CLS & JS

XC & Vandelay Industries!

Hey everyone - well the past few days have been rather non-snowy - so much so I haven't ridden in 5 days! Of course that doesn't mean we have been idle. We have picked up our pace at the gym by doing 2 sessions a day. Thing is the recovery time here is around double then at sea level! The next morning my legs are shattered! Then again I reckon its better then just sitting at home watching crap American TV :-)

There were some that never thought it would happen but a few days ago I actually went skiing! As a diehard snowboarder, I never thought I would try being a "wank on 2 planks" but given this was "Cross Country" style I haven't totally crossed to the dark side - now if I went alpine skiing that would be different! And I am not going to do that!

We took a lesson to learn how to get our technique right then we took off around the course. The course was actually a golf course that morphs into a XC skiing area in the winter - not a bad idea to make some more cash in the "off season"! XC skiing is quite fun - certainly a good workout, although my legs were pretty sore at the end of the day! We'll definately do it again before we go! A few pics below.....



We were shopping in Breck the other day and we came across this awesome t-shirt......if anyone watches Seinfeld, you will know what I am talking about - Vandelay Industries rocks!

(and yes I am getting a haircut next week!)

We finally got a weather advisory alert this morning. Apparently Vail is set to get smashed with 10 inches tonight - looks like an early start tomorrow to chase the powder!

We actually have a wedding to attend next week in Texas - so hopefully it doesn't snow whilst we are away! :)

Hope all is well,
CLS & JS

snowmobiling is fun!

Hey everyone,
One of the fabulous things about Breckenridge is that there are so many things besides snowboarding. A few days ago we went snowmobiling - think motorcross on the snow :-). It was SO MUCH FUN! Josie was considering just being a passenger on my snowmobile, but in the end we convinced her to drive one by herself and she ended up loving it! We ended up doing a 2 hour tour around the Summit County backcountry which involved cruising around some singletrack before we were let loose on a flat field where we could go flat out. I ended up getting the machine up to top speed of just under 100 km/h which is a bit of a buzz! A couple of shots of the day below...



We were also taken to a powder field where we quickly found out you had to keep the snowmobile revving lest the snowmobile sinking - unfortunately Josie didn't rev hard enough and the machine got bogged - I can assure you its hard work trying to pull a 100+kg machine out of thigh deep powder as shown below!


We are into our last 3 weeks in Breckenridge which is actually rather depressing! This hiliday has been goin so fast! However it also means we have 1 month of travelling around the USA. So far we are looking at going to Indianapolis (to visit some friends), Moab (to mountain bike), Las Vegas, San Fran and San Diego - so we got some travelling to do just yet!

Hope all is well wherever you are!
CLS & JS