SLC: HPCA (day 2), conference excursion

This has to rate as one of the coolest conference excursions... bobsledding on an Olympic course!

Orientation/warning/waiver signing session.

Mandatory helmet.

They pack three riders in with a professional driver. They don't let you push the sled yourself as it's pretty hard to pack everyone into the sled while it's stationary.

Night shot of part of the course. A lot of the course is covered up to minimize exposure to the sun to maintain the ice conditions.

Entrance to the luge track. Obviously hadn't been used lately.

Off in the Olympic "Museum". Paraphernalia from the non-gold winning USA hockey team. We should have beat them to burying a $1 coin in the ice, but that probably wouldn't have helped us.

Curling stone.

SLC: HPCA (day 1)

Along the sides of the streets in SLC, they have these buckets of red/orange flags. The idea is that when you cross the road, you grab one of these flags so that drivers can more easily see you and stop to let you cross. Seems like a bit of an overkill to me, but maybe SLC drivers have poor night vision or something...

So we grabbed an unnecessarily large number of said flags just to be extra safe while crossing the street.

SLC: The Canyons

Back to the Park City side of things for our third day of snowboarding.

Brat for lunch... somewhat disappointing.

Starting to get a goggle tan...

Snickers satisfies!

SLC: Snowbird

Day 2, we went to Snowbird, which is in the little canyon where a lot of the other SLC resorts are (e.g., Brighton, Alta, etc.).

Hard to see in the picture, but there is one trail called "Bassackwards".

This is scary.

Random photo in downtown SLC.

SLC: Park City Resort

I had a conference in Salt Lake City, so the weekend before we headed out there to get some snowboarding in.

We took an early flight out of Atlanta, and we were on our first lift by 11:30 the same morning. Sweet.

Mullets!

The Atlanta Thrashers do a "Mullet Night" every year. Kind of funny to see everyone in the stands wearing fake mullets.

Happy New Year!

Went out for Dim Sum on the weekend right after the lunar New Year.

Cheesy lion dance... I don't think a single guy in the troupe was actually Asian.

Climbing up to capture the dangling red envelope.

After math of the hundreds, and likely thousands, of fireworks.

Ethiopian Dinner

We checked out this random Ethiopian restaurant that we had driving by for a long time. Food was quite tasty. The bread was funny because it comes rolled up, so it looks like a small basket of Ace Bandages (top left corner of the photo).

Coconut!

Fresh, young/green coconut. Knife and screwdriver are the tools I use to get into there. The juice is very good.

George's

Random dinner at George's around the corner from our place.

This is a hot dog! Well, somewhere underneath there, there does exist a hot dog and bun.

Corned beef reuben with onion rings.

Russian Dinner

Sasha had us over for a Russian dinner.

Some of the many pigs at Sasha's place (not counting me).

Nate checking out the salad.

My plate with assorted cold dishes. Multiple salads and a deviled egg with caviar.

Alex has too many mashed potatoes.

Look, it's Jon on his iPhone!