The Random Thoughts Review

So, another camper is for sale on eBay. It’s in Pennsylvania, about 500 miles from here. So, it would be some driving. Currently $830 with 2 days left. The last one went from $1,100 to $1,800 in the last two hours of the auction, so I’m not holding my breath… Anyway…

The description:


1990 truck camper for compact truck 7 feet, sleeps 4, water: 1-5 gallons.


This is a Jayco pop up truck camper for compact truck toyota, nissan ranger etc. can also be used on a full size .Has a furnace, 3way fridge ,stove also a water pump i installed with outside shower,and a power tv antennae and sink.very nice unit not been smoked in at all. Over winter did develope a leak in top left hand corner should be a easy fix .also has slight dent in metal on right hand corner no damage at all though . this is a well made unit just needs a lil spruceing up will make someone a great camper .The reason we are selling is because we bought a motor home last fall has a low reserve. thank you


In my typical fashion, I sent some questions (answers are in italics):

1. I’ve never had a truck camper before. I’ve got a toyota pickup. Will this include what I need to attach it to my truck? It will fit nicely on a toyota pick up we used it on one
2. Are the jacks and stuff like that included? it includes everything to attatch it tere the jacks go with it
3. I assume the furnace, fridge, and pumps all work? all the appliances work
4. If I hook it up to AC power, what equipment/lights does the AC power work for, and what does it need DC for? AC will work lights fridge furnace pump the DC converter is to work the stuff when on the road with no hook up availible
5. How does the water work? Is there a fresh H2O tank and a grey H2O tank, or what? there is a pump and holding tank for the water
6. What all is aftermarket? outside shower
7. What weather have you used the camper in? summer/winter, etc.. How did you keep cool in the summer? How long have you had the camper? we camped only in summer but the man before us used it in alaska i think wiuld be cold though we have a fan we use to cool off we have owned it maybe 10 yrs
8. How does the porta potty work? (do you take the whole thing out and dump it, or what?) i think the porta potty has a tank you take off and dump
9. Could you give more dimensions on the the thing? How long is it (bed length and overall) and how wide (bed and overall)? it is 37inches between the wheel wells 86 inches long
10. Is there a table? yes there is a table that makes into another bed
11. You said in a response to another question: ‘alos sating on canvas’. Could you explain what that means needs done? For the metal work, were you talking about the dent? How big is the dent? the dent is minor and does not leak does not need anything he a little staining on the canvas which can be cleaned i will try to do before it is sold just needs washed never been smoked in

This one looks interesting. If the price stays right, I’ll be bidding.

Update: The bidding has ended on the camper. It ended up going for $1,580. 3 minutes before bidding ended, the bid was $1,256. It was $890 2 hours before bidding ended.

I was in the mood to go skiing again this week (imagine that). I had thought about it all week long, and decided to actually do it on Thursday. The resorts “down south” (like Hidden Valley) have already closed. The resorts like the one I went to last week, Alpine Valley, were pretty well done.. I needed to go farther north. One of the reviews for Alpine Valley had mentioned that they thought that Alpine Valley was oriented more to beginners, and recommended Granite Peak, Cascade Mountain, or Devil’s Head for more interesting skiing. So, I did some research on the three of them as well as others in the area, and ended up deciding on Cascade Mountain. Granite Peak was an extra 100 miles north, which made it rough. Even the other two were an extra 40 minutes past Alpine Valley. So, Granite Peak was out because of the distance. Cascade and Devil’s Head are within a few miles of each other. From what I had read, Cascade was a little better for the more advanced skier. So, Cascade it was.

Once the locale had been determined, I had to worry about weather. Champaign was on the leading edge of a large amount of rain. Supposedly 3-5 inches over the course of a few days. And warm weather. Supposedly in the 50-60s on Thursday. Not good skiing conditions. A quick check of the weather in Portage, Wisconsin showed that they were expecting highs in the low-mid 40s on Thursday. About a quarter of an inch of rain Wednesday night, and a 30% chance of showers Thursday morning until the 10 o’clock hour. The resort opened at 10:00am. I didn’t want the rain to be delayed. Skiing in the rain doesn’t seem like it would be a fun thing.

So, I did the normal preparation thing the night before. I set the alarm for 5am, and ended up getting out of bed at 5:09am. I had to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to go. It would have been a lot easier to lay in bed. But, I ended up crawling out of bed and was thus committed. A check of weather.com showed that they were still expecting the showers to end at 10:00am.

So, I was off! I left the house at about 5:40. I hit fog around Utica, and was in fog until I got to Cascade mountain. The view from the interstate looked pretty good. It looked like there were some good runs, but there was a lot of fog, so it was hard to tell. A nice view from an airplane is available on their website. Radio reports were saying that the fog should burn off by noon.

I got my ticket, which ended up being $42.20. The normal ticket was good from “open” until 4:30pm. I could have gotten a ticket for the entire day for two dollars more, but I figured that if I only went to 4:30 that would make sure that I left Wisconsin at a reasonable time. Since I didn’t get there until about 9:50am, I quickly changed into my ski clothes and hit the slopes. I didn’t want to waste any time, since I knew I only had until 4:30.

It was foggy! Did I mention that? As I headed up the Mountain Top Express lift (high speed detached quad) I could bairly see 2 chairs in front of me. BeforeI made it to the top of the hill the outside of my ski goggles had fogged up to the point that they really weren’t usable. So, the goggles were removed from the eyes. The sun certainly wasn’t causing me to need to use them, though. At the top of the hill, I could probably see 100 feet in any given direction. So, it made things interesting. I was on a hill that I had never been on, and didn’t have a clue as to where I was going. So, I pointed my skis downhill and slid. Cascade is quite a bit different than the other midwest resorts that I’ve been to. At Cascade I get the feeling that there was a forest there and they have carved out runs. The other midwest resorts feel much more manufactured. Almost as though they have a blank hill, put in the runs, and then a few trees in between the runs. Cascade has a lot more tree action. This makes it feel much bigger. I was confident that i could make it down any run there without killing myself, so that helped a lot in the fog. If I hadn’t been a new skier, that would have scared me to death.

I found myself on the Mogul Monster run. At the top of it, I noticed that it was moguls, but figured that I could: a) make my way through it, or b) go beside the moguls. Resorts typically have a non mogul area on the run next to the moguls. Well.. not Cascade. I headed into the moguls and promptly fell. This is probably the first time I’ve fallen in the actual act of skiing in a few years. But, it was moguls. So, I found myself trying to figure out a way out of that run. I spied a made-up path through the trees over to another run, and worked my way down to it and over to the last part of the North Wall run. From there I made it to the bottom of the lift and back up. Next, I decided go way out to the east end and took the Far Out trail. Far Out is a green trail, but there were a lot of black runs that led off from it. I knew then that the place had possibilities. From Far Out, I took the Cindy Pop lift back to the top (a slow lift) and started working my way through the black runs. My impressions: The Bridge Ridge run was a somewhat narrow trail through the trees that goes across a man-made bridge. From the Far Out run below the Bridge you can see a huge frozen stream that goes under the bridge. Next over is the Narrow Margin trail. Narrow Margin is pretty narrow. Both Bridge Ridge and Narrow Margin have signs at the top saying that they are narrow and for experts only. Narrow Margin has a pretty narrow chute at the bottom with a steep section right after the narrow chute. So, you can’t slow down a lot. You just have to hit it and go. This isn’t a problem, though. The steep section is short, so as long as you don’t panic, it isn’t a problem. Radical Rob is next over. It is unique because it has a nice conifer right in the middle of the trail at the top. P.W. and Screamin’ Steven follow those. Each run gets slightly steeper as it gets shorter. A couple of the runs bank to the left and have a few small bumps in them as well. The Cindy Pop run is right under the Cindy Pop lift, and has the steepest section of hill at the resort. It is steep enough that I was able to really work on paralleling to slow down. If the lift was just faster it would be a most excellent run.

The Anniversary run is somewhat unique because the bottom of it feeds to both Cindy Pop lift and Mountain Top Express. So, if you ski east of it you have to go to Cindy Pop, and if you ski west you go to Mountain Top, but it can feed to both. Next to Anniversary is North Wall, which has an excellent view of the resort buildings at the bottom and the Interstate. Each of these runs is flatter at the top with a steep section at the end. Very satisfying for midwest skiing. Mogul Monster is next, but I’ve already talked about it. A terrain park is next to that, with an actual half pipe, almost unheard of for the midwest. Apparently earlier in the year they have another half pipe at the top of the North Wall run, but that had been removed yesterday. Probably because of the snow melt. Skiers could gracefully go along the east edge of the terrain park, though, and that made a nice run. About halfway down you could veer right for Racer’s Edge, or just go straight down. Anyway, that completes all of the black runs.

Farther west, the Ptarmigan, J.J. and Badger Bowl provided some blue runs. I would have been tempted to call Ptarmigan a black on their scale, though. I guess it wasn’t quite as steep, but still was more challenging than the other blues. Badger Bowl dropped into a surprisingly deep bowl (compared to what I was expecting) which was a nice surprise. The first time I went down it I just pointed my skis downhill and went, and found myself picking up more speed at the bottom than I had expected. Lighting conditions were horrible yesterday. With no sun at all it was very difficult to see conditions on the ground. Everything just blended together. The fog started burning off on the lower part of the mountain about 1pm, but didn’t burn off on the upper part until probably 3-3:30pm.

I had my second fall of the day on the next to the last run of the day. There was an upper terrain park that had smaller features than the one on down closer to the bottom of the hill, and it had a little jump on it. I’d guess that the build up to the edge was probably 2 feet or so. The first time I got up enough nerve to go over it, I was going very slowly, and when I got to the crest of the jump, my skis just fell over the edge and I slid down the other side. Each time I went down the hill, I tried to hit this jump. Each time I tried to go slightly faster. Towards the end of the day, I was getting some pretty good speed up. I’d guess that I was hitting the jump and probably landing 5 feet or so down the hill. There’s definite technique required for jumping. One unfortunate time I learned that you really need to lean forward. I found myself too far back and my skis were in front of me. I managed to maintain some semblance of order, though, and got up rather quickly. I was covered in snow, but otherwise unscathed. The next time I went down I leaned forward more, and the run worked out perfectly.

At 4:30 I quit. I hadn’t stopped all day long. I had packed a couple of granola bars in my coat, and literally didn’t stop at all for the entire day. No breaks. I wanted to maximize the time that I had available. I then took a couple of pictures with my real camera and checked out the pro-shop. They had clothing 50% off, but I didn’t see anything I liked.

The trip home was relatively uneventful. About 20 miles south of Cascade I hit rain, and it rained on me all the way back to Champaign. I stopped for gas in Madison, Wisconsin and drove straight through other than that.

So, that’s the descriptions.. Now.. my thoughts..

Crowds were nonexistent. I said that last week, but last week was busy compared to this place. There were probably 10 people there. I spent probably 45 minutes on the Cindy Pop lift one time and didn’t see a single other person. Not one. The main lift was busier. It generally always had at least one person on the lift somewhere, but it was still really really dead.

Each loop (lift and the run down) took about 5 minutes. Both lifts, actually. The Cindy Pop lift was slower, but didn’t go as high on the hill, so you could still do the run in about 5 minutes. I did a test at one point and did all of the runs mentioned above. 14 runs. It took me one hour and 10 minutes.

This resort was definitely more satisfying than Alpine Valley. Alpine Valley isn’t a bad resort. After last week’s visit I was relatively happy with it. However, this resort felt much larger and had a lot more variety for the more advanced skier. I wouldn’t hesistate to choose this as a destination over Alpine, even though it is 30 – 40 minutes farther away. It is also more expensive than Alpine Valley. Paying $42 for a lift ticket puts it at the high end of what I would want to pay for midwest resort, but you seem to get what you pay for. Seeing as how they only had 10 or 20 people there, it would have been nice to see an end-of-the-season discount price. But, that wasn’t meant to be. It would be great to go back sometime in January, though. It might be neat to take a mini vacation and spend a day at Cascade, a day at Devil’s Head, and a couple of days at Granite Peak.

eBay Motors: 1991 PICKUP SLIDE IN CAMPER SMALL TRUCK N/R (item 4619090992 end time Mar-12-06 08:34:18 PST)

Another truck camper for sale..

”
* 1991 Shadow Cruiser – Sky Cruiser Model
* 7 foot bed length – 12 foot total length
* Jacks and Pickup Brackets Included
* Electric Hookup
* Propane Gas Heat/Cooktop
* Porta Toilet
* Sink
* Refridgerator – Gas or Electric
* Skylight
* Roll-out Windows
* Storm Door
* Truck Camper Mirrors

This camper is a small truck camper that was used on 1991 Chevy S-10 long wheel base truck. The mattress will need to be replaced as well as one small sliding glass window.
”

It’s currently going for $886. Who knows how high it will go. I sent the seller some questions:

How much does the camper weigh?
I’ve never had one of these before.. How does the sink work? Is there a fresh water tank and then a grey water tank to hold the drain water? How is the sink powered?
Are there any leaks (now or water damage from past leaks)?
What all is aftermarket?
What weather have you used the camper in? summer/winter, etc.. How did you keep cool in the summer?
I have a toyota pickup. Would this include all that I needed to get it home?
Which window is broke? Has water leaked in as a result?
How does the porta potty work? (do you take the whole thing out and dump it, or what?)
Is that an air vent in the roof?
Is the fridge gas/110ac and 12dc, or just one of the last two?
Are the interior lights 12 volt?
Are the truck camper mirrors bolt on to the old pickup mirrors, or do they replace them?

The seller just responded:

Weight will probably be around 1000lbs,
the water is supplied from hose connection from outside. That also looks like how the water for sink is emptied.
The window that is broke is one of the windows that is in front that would be in connection with sliding back glass of truck.
The electric vent that is on top has leaked alittle that is what caused the mattress to be stained. I temporarely fixed it with duct tape, it will need a new sheild should’nt be that much. That is the only water leak.
I have not used the camper I got it in a estate sale.
Fridge I believe is both.Mirrow are the clip on type I believe.
The hookups are in the camper
they somehow hook to the frame of truck I don’t see any cables that go with them.
Porta potty looks like you take part of it apart I really dont know have not used it. I can get a picture if you like maybe you can figure it out.

So, it sounds like the guy probably wouldn’t be much help when it comes to actually getting the thing in the back of my truck. That’s a definitely negative.

So, I decided to take off work yesterday and go skiing. Winter is quickly disappearing. We’ve had an extremely mild winter here in the midwest, so I’m guessing that the midwest resorts have had a tough time of it this year.

Anyway, I wanted to go skiing. Living in Champaign is a rough thing if you like skiing. The nearest slopes are about 3 hours away, and they are actually south of here. I’ve been to the one in St Louis (Hidden Valley) and Paoli Peaks in Indiana. They are both OK for the midwest. Perfect North is another one in Indiana that I have been wanting to try out, but haven’t had a chance. For yesterday, though, these three were all out of the picture. It is just too warm this far south. It was supposed to be 60 here yesterday, and I think they were predicting 70 degrees for St Louis. Not good skiing weather. So, I started to look north. weather.com has a handy ski resort finder where you can give it your zip code, and it gives a list of the closest resorts. Chestnut Mountain in Galena, Illinois seems to be a favorite that is about 5 hours drive time from Champaign. I also investigated a resort in lower Michigan called Bittersweet (about 4.5 hours drive time). The factors that I was looking at included drive time and vertical elevation drop. Other things, such as price and reviews were secondary. Chestnut Mountain has about 400 foot vertical. Bittersweet was 380 or so. Then I discovered Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. Supposedly only 3.5 to 4 hours drive time, with 488 foot vertical. The reviews seemed to indicate that it was acceptable. And, Wednesday happened to be Men’s day, with $22 lift tickets for guys. (more on that later)

So, with the decision made for Alpine Valley, additional work took place. Tuesday night I got everything packed, planned a bit on the food situation, and tried to go to bed early. I had the alarm set for 5:00am. The resort opened at 10am, so I figured I had my 4 hours to get there if I got out of the house by 6. I ended up rolling out of bed at 5:15, and was out the door at about 5:48. The trip up was pretty uneventful. Sunrise wasn’t even all that impressive. I didn’t run into any precipitation. The weather forecast the night before had predicted some freezing drizzle in the ski resort area from 8-10am, but when I checked the forecast before leaving the house they had removed that. They were predicting rain in the afternoon, though.

I got to the resort about 9:25. I got my lift ticket and walked around a little bit. The resort area consists of 4 or 5 buildings that look somewhat european. They have hotel rooms off to one side that might be interesting if you wanted to stay there for extended lengths of time. There is also a Pro shop (which was closed at the time) and a cafe.

I then took a few pictures and walked around some. By that time it was about 9:45, so I got changed into my ski clothes and prepared to hit the slopes!

Three lifts were running: Valley Flyer, E-Z Rider (both high speed quads) and Mohawk chair (slower chair). Valley Flyer goes to the top of the “mountain”, and the other two go to points on either side of the top. Valley Flyer seemed to service Blacks, so I took that. First run of the day at a new resort.. Ya, I went with a Black. First run down was Lodge Express, followed by Big Thunder. I’d say that Big Thunder is the hardest run there. It’s steeper than the rest at the top. It was followed later by the rest of the runs there: E-Z Does It off of the E-Z Rider lift, Timber Gulch, Timber Trail, Valley View (a lot of poling! No lifts running near the bottom of it), E-Z Pass, First Chance, First Adventure, Broadway, Half Way, East Pass, Cut Throat, Sheltered Valley, Northwest Pass, and the Mohawk Terrain Park… The number of runs sounds more impressive than it actually is. For instance.. To get from the top of the hill to bottom, you could say that you completely ran East Pass, the top half of Mohawk Terrain Park, complete Northwest Pass, complete Cut Throat, complete Half Way, and the bottom half of Lodge Express. So, in normal terms, I’d say that there are about 8 ways down the hill. The rest are just little bits and pieces that jut off here and there.

Crowds were non existent. Lines were non existent. The resorts breaks the skiing up into two time slots. The first goes from 10am – 5:30pm, and the second from 3pm – 10pm. For the first part of the day I would literally say there were probably 30 people on the entire mountain. About 28 of them were men. Maybe 29. Thursdays are apparently Women’s day. It would be interesting to go there on a Thursday and see what the “crowds” look like. Later in the afternoon a few extra people showed up. Around 5:00 I started seeing a few school-aged kids. It was very dead. In most of my pictures you don’t see a single person on the runs. Very uncrowded. Probably 4 or 5 lift rides were with other people. The rest were all by myself.

And I took a lot of lift rides. I would estimate the loop time (lift plus ski run) was about 4-5 minutes. I took a couple of breaks during the course of the day. About 10:30 am I went back to the truck to get my better gloves. About 11:15 or so I went back to the truck and picked up my camera, and dropped it off back at the truck at 11:45. At that time I ate lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pringles, and some fruit). Going to the truck was a minor affair. I could literally go from slope to truck and back to slope in about 5 minutes. That’s the beauty of a midwest resort. You can park right next to the snow, which means you are parking mere feet from the ski lift.

The snow was good yesterday. I felt, once again, that I was able to work on my technique. The runs weren’t hard, but they were steep enough that I could work on my skills, which is great. The main complaint I guess I had was about the wind. The wind was blowing pretty good yesterday, particular at the top of the hill. I can’t really blame the resort for that, though.

While the sunrise was very uneventful, the sunset from the hill was really nice. It was cloudy most of the day, but the line of clouds stopped an inch or two over the horizon, so the sun had a chance to peek through around 5pm. The snow took on a beautiful golden glow and it was really nice to see. On my last run, the I started getting a few drops of rain on me. It was 5:30 at the time, so I decided it was time to go. I headed back to the truck and got changed out of my ski clothes and was leaving at about 5:45. I had to stop for gas about 30 minutes later, at which point I got a double cheeseburger extra value meal at McDonalds (I didn’t need it, but it tasted good). Then, I just drove back home. While the lift ticket cost me $22, I probably spent over twice that on the gasoline required to get there and back (and $2 toll for the section of I-39 around Rockford, Illinois.) So, that’s the way it goes, I suppose.

All things considered, a successful day. Alpine Valley would be a great resort for beginners. You could go there for a couple of days and be in good shape to tackle the greens in Colorado!

I’ve been to a couple of other Wisconsin resorts since then, including Cascade Mountain and Devil’s Head.

So, the parents came to visit a couple of days ago.

A few weeks ago, Mom had mentioned that she had some vacation time coming up in late February and that they might try to come up and visit. For Christmas, I had asked for (and received) a GPS to hook up to my laptop. When Mom saw the thing in action, she decided that she wanted one as well. She figured that this would make it easier to navigate the unfamiliar areas. So, I got her “hooked up” a couple of weeks ago and she had some time to play with the GPS and get it figured out.

Dad is a dairy farmer, and has been for pretty well all of my life. The main relevance of that to the current topic is that owning a dairy farm means that the cows have to be tended to morning and evening, 365 days a year. Period. No exceptions. This has had a definite impact on the vacations that the family has been able to take. You basically have to find someone to do the milking for you, and it has to be someone that you trust with your entire livelyhood. If the milking isn’t done correctly, the cows can be irreparably damaged, thus destroying your source of income. Not a good situation. So, it’s difficult to find someone that knows what they are doing, that is trustworthy, and that is able to do the milking twice a day while you are gone. So, Dad had pretty well decided that he wouldn’t be able to leave the farm.

Last Thursday night I had called to find out what was going on with them coming up. I needed to ask off work if they were going to be around, and I needed at least a little bit of warning to be able to get away with that. They didn’t know. Friday, Saturday and Sunday came and went. Still no decisions. Monday morning rolled around and I was talking to my brother, and he mentioned that I could do something “when Mom and Dad got up here”. So, come to find out, my brother ended up being available and graciously offered to take on the milking duties while Dad got away. So, Mom and Dad were planning to be here about the time I got off work on Tuesday. I got home from work and did some house cleaning. The house was in pretty good shape, except for the bedroom where they were to sleep. I had to clean it up some. (which was fine.. needed done anyway)

Tuesday morning, this revised itself to them being in town around noon. Which ended up being fine. I was able to get off work, and had been waiting at the house for a few minutes when they arrived. I showed the outside of the house, the inside of the house, the cats (Scratch hammed it up; Stu disappeared), and got their stuff moved in. I even turned on the projector and let them see the glorious image.

Then we went to eat. The lunchtime meal was planned for Dos Reales, which has been voted the best mexican place in town several times. I think Mom and Dad were surprised at the size of the portions. Don’t think they were expecting quite that much. A good time was had by all. Mom was a bit worried that the food might be too hot, but it wasn’t, and I think they enjoyed it. Mom got the lunch chimichanga, and Dad and myself both got the Numero Dos, which is a burrito, beans, and rice.

After lunch, we went farther north on Prospect to the shopping area in town. We went by the various places that I shop from time to time, and we ended up at the Verizon store to try and find a replacement antenna for the cell phone that they had brought with them from home. The Verizon store didn’t have the antenna we were needing. Then we visited a used Game place next door and Mom browsed the used N64 games, but didn’t find anything she wanted to get. From the Verizon store, we grabbed some gas at Meier’s before it went up (it had already went up about 20 cents at several other stores around town). Then, a trip in front of Menards and down Neil street in front of mall got us into downtown Champaign. From there I showed them the library, and drove along the route that I walk when going from home to the library.

Once at the house, Mom wanted to work on the curtains. I had been wanting some darker curtains to help with the projector viewing, and just hadn’t gotten around to measuring everything that she needed. So, she had brought some fabric with her and a sewing machine, and was anxious to get to work on making the curtains. I wasn’t going to protest. This process actually ended up taking several hours. But, I now have excellent curtains that block out pretty well all of the light when closed. I can now view the projector anytime I want, day or night. For the winter, this really hasn’t been that big of a deal. When I got in from work of a night it was already dark, so there weren’t any issues with this, except on the weekends. But, with summer on the way, I knew that we’d soon reach a time where it would light until 9pm, which would cause problems of an evening. This is no longer an issue. I now have some nifty green curtains that look pretty good in the room.

Once the curtain issue was sewn up, it was time for supper. For supper, we went to the Texas Roadhouse. I had tried to call ahead, but didn’t find their phone number in the restaurant section of the yellow pages, so didn’t bother. I just hoped to myself that they wouldn’t be terribly busy. This was about 6:45pm or so. We got there, parked directly in front of the building, and didn’t have to wait in line. Perfect. Once there, we enjoyed the peanuts and fresh rolls with the cinnamon butter (yum!). Talk quickly turned to the amount of food we were eating, and this remained a staple of conversation for the entire time that they were here. We ate well. I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, Dad and myself both had a 6 ounce sirloin. I had salad and a baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar for my sides. Dad had salad and a baked sweet potato with caramel and marshmallows, and Mom just had a baked potato and salad. We ate well, and were quite stuffed when we got done there. As we were leaving, there was 40 seconds left in the Illini basketball game against Michigan. The Illini were down by 4. Come to find out, they lost by 8. Oh well.

From the Roadhouse we made our way back to the house, and watched a couple of Nature shows on TV. Everyone was getting tired at that point, and we retired. Mom and Dad slept in the bed that I normally sleep in, and I slept in the waterbed that I have in the spare bedroom. The waterbed is smaller, and not as well suited for multiple people, so it seems to work out well to give the guests the larger bed.

Yesterday morning arrived, and we got up a bit after 7 and got everything going. Mom wanted to work a little more on the curtains, so she reworked a couple of white curtains that I had and set it up so that I could push back the light-blocking curtains and use some the white curtains when I want to have light in the room. Good stuff.

After we had that ready to go, we went up on campus and I showed them the building where I work. Mom and Dad had the chance to meet the people who happened to be at work that early. This basically consisted of the secretaries, the secretary’s aide, a former office mate, and a couple of co workers. I then showed them my actual office, and went back to our 3d facility and showed them some of the software packages that our group works on. We then ran up to the 5th floor and looked around in the tower room and gave them a nice view of the campus and pointed out some of the buildings in town that you can see from there.

From there, I headed back towards the house. I took them down Green Street so that they could see some of the students. Mom mentioned that she wanted to go to a Barnes & Noble and look for a book. I glanced at the clock, and it was 11am. I asked them if they were hungry; they said no. I thought that we could run to Barnes and Noble and then go to the lunch restaurant (Hickory River Smokehouse (formerly Longhorn!)). So, we headed towards Barnes & Noble. We stopped in to Champaign Surplus on the way, because I wanted to show them a Merino wool sweater that I had seen there before Christmas. But, I couldn’t find it. I can only surmise that they had sold out of them. They had some merino wool, but it didn’t feel like the one that I had seen before Christmas. So, that was a bummer. From there we went to Barnes and Noble, and they didn’t have the book that Mom was wanting. I mention that we could be at Borders in about 3 minutes, and so we went there. Borders had the book that Mom was wanting, but only in Hardcover. However, they had several other books by the same author that Mom hadn’t read, so she picked them up. Dad checked on some westerns, but they didn’t have the westerns that he was wanting. From there, Dad said that he wanted to go by Sams. So, we went to Sams. At Sams, he picked up some cappuccino mix and we grabbed various fruits. The oranges that we got ended up being really bad. Quite a few of them were almost rotten. Very disappointing. Along with oranges, we got nectarines, apples, and bananas. Fruit == good.

After that, we were ready for lunch. A quick jaunt on the interstate took us over to Hickory River. We each got the sliced beef sandwich. I got cornbread and corn as my sides. Mom and Dad both got apple sauce and cottage cheese. Dad really seemed to like the meat. He said a couple of times that it beat any steak he had ever had. They do have good food there. We had to wait in line a while to order, but it wasn’t bad. It was clear that the restaurant wasn’t having any trouble keeping customers.

From there we headed back to the house. Along the way we stopped at a different Verizon store and picked up the antenna that we had tried to get previously. All was good.

In the afternoon I showed them some more stuff on the big screen. Dad considered taking a nap a few times. They planned to leave early in the morning, so a late night wasn’t being planned.

We wanted to eat supper a bit early, so we headed for Biaggi’s (highly rated Italian food) before 6pm. In light of the recent spat of large meals, I had suggested that we might want to get a couple of entrees and just split them up. We got there and I told them that I liked the Chicken Parmesan. They could get whatever they wanted. Mom said that she would defer to Dad, and Dad said that he wanted the Chicken Parmesan. So, I ended up getting the Chilean Sea Bass. The meals came quickly. They brought extra plates for us, and a good meal was had by all. We all agreed that the Chicken Parmesan had a lot more flavor than the Sea Bass. But, having the multiple plates let us try out a little more than we would have otherwise done. Definitely a good idea. We then decided to get dessert. We ended up getting the Cannoli’s, and Bananas Foster. The Cannoli’s had ground pistachio’s on one end, and shaved chocolate on the other. They were good. The Bananas Foster was also good. Both plates looked nice and fancy. We left there satisfied, but not (in my opinion) overly stuffed.

We didn’t want to stay up too late, so I didn’t want to start a movie. We ended up just watching an episode of a TV show. Then it was time for bed. I finished up a book I was reading before turning in for the evening, but still probably laid down to sleep at 9:30 or so. Stu did a pretty good job of sleeping on the waterbed. Scratch was mostly a no-show. Kinda the opposite of the way it works on my normal bed.

Got up a bit before 5 this morning. They wanted to be gone around 5pm. Got everything loaded, and they actually left at 5:17. I ended up going a mile or so on the treadmill, got ready, and went into work at about 7.

The visit was a good one. This was the first time that they had seen my house, and it was nice for them to be able to see it. Hopefully the drive up won’t be as daunting next time, and hopefully they got to see enough of the town to realize that it isn’t a huge overwhelming town.

Went to Hidden Valley and did some skiing yesterday.

This was really a spur of the moment thing. I had sent some email earlier this past week to some friends saying “Hey, looks like Hidden Valley has advanced lessons on Sunday afternoon”, but no one bothered responding until Saturday. Bill was willing to drive up to St Louis, so we decided to meet and get in some skiing.

So, I tried to go to bed early on Saturday night (which, of course, is never successful without training). I knew that I was going to be getting up early on Sunday, so I tried anyway. Got up at 5:10 Sunday morning, was ready, had everything loaded, and was on the road right at 6am. My plan was to be at the resort approximately when they opened at 9am. When I’m spending $50-60 to drive somewhere, the longer I can be there, the better.

Most of the drive was uneventful, until I actually got to Eureka (which is the last few miles of the trip). It had snowed off and on for the entire trip down, but a few flurries wasn’t going to cause me all that much grief. At Eureka, though, the Interstate was a mess. In the last 2 or 3 miles before I got off the interstate I saw between 5 and 10 accidents. The flurries had built up to the point that the road was just slick. The trucks hadn’t been in yet to do the salting or calcium work, and it showed. Many fender benders (and worse). I managed to fish tail briefly a couple of times, but arrived at Hidden Valley unscathed around 9:35.

I went and purchased my lift ticket (no rental necessary!) and went back to the truck to get changed into my ski pants and boots, etc., when Bill walked by. He had arrived a bit earlier than he had planned. That worked out well, though. He got his ticket purchased, and we were ready to hit the slopes!

We started off by going to Skid Row to get to the bottom of the lift, and took it up to the top of the hill. From there, we quickly branched out and did all of the blues (Lauren’s Lane, Show Me, Eureka, Missi’s Wish, The Badlands, and Josh’s Jaunt). Then, we were onto the two blacks (Ice Man’s Ridge and The Outlaw). Hidden Valley has a “front side” and a “back side” The front side is easier, and the backside is more difficult. The front side has a couple of lifts, and the backside has a single lift. As the day wore on, the resort got busier. We basically shifted back and forth from the frontside to the backside so that we could escape most of the crowds. There was another, cheaper session that started at 3pm, and I think that a fair number of visitors came for that, which also made things busier.

I had a mini pizza for lunch, and we took that opportunity to call some other friends in St Louis (Brian and Brad) and arrange to meet them for supper. Then, we skied over the course of the afternoon. The snow really felt good. We didn’t even end up taking any of the classes that we had planned to take. I know that I seemed to be paralleling pretty well, and just didn’t see the need. We should have taken classes on the second day when we were out in Breckenridge a couple of weeks ago. Oh well. Next time.

We had planned to meet up for supper a bit before 6pm, so we quit skiing about 5, and got changed, called the friends to confirm, and then headed to an Applebee’s that Brad had recommended. Made it to the Applebee’s at about 5:45 and had a rather good House Sirloin.

Brian, Bill, and myself and went to Breck together, but we hadn’t seen Brad for a while, so it was nice to chat with him and find out what was new. We ended up leaving Applebee’s about 7:30, and I started my trip back to Champaign. I ran through snow flurries, and once or twice the roadway was starting to turn white, but it never did get very bad. I made it back home a little after 10:30. I was tired, but I had had a good day. Definitely better skiing than last year at Hidden Valley. Last year it was just too late in the year and the snow was in pretty pitiful shape. Next, I want to get to some of the other resorts around here. (by around here, I mean within a 3-5 hour drive).

Since then, I’ve been to several resorts up in Wisconsin, including Alpine Valley, Cascade Mountain, and Devil’s Head.

Fuel leak forces Fossett to scrub take-off plan

Apparently Steve Fossett isn’t quite ready to take off on his flight around 7/6th of the world.

This past summer, in Oshkosh, Steve Fossett also arrived in the Global Flyer, which Virgin Atlantic paid for. When Global Flyer landed, Steve and Richard Branson both gave a speech.

Global Flyer is a pretty amazing technological advancement. it’s very thin.As you can see in this picture,

At the time, they had said that they were going to make another attempt to fly around the world, and that they were going to go farther. There was a record that they hadn’t broken, and they wanted to do so. Can’t say I blame them. If you’ve got what it takes, you might as well do it.

When I went to the EAA AirVenture 2005 in Oshkosh (Pictures Here) Richard Branson (pic) and the Virgin Galactic crew announced that they were going to start flying people into space in a few years. Now, they’ve announced that they are going to build a $225 million spaceport in New Mexico. The spaceport is going to 25 miles south of the town named Truth or Consequences. I wonder what real estate is selling for around there. A quick check of realtor.com reveals that, right now, land is cheap. Houses starting at $30k. 3 bedroom, 1 bath houses for $66k. It would be nice to get several acres of land on the road south of there, leading towards the space port. Put in an airport or something. New Mexico might become everyone’s favorite earth destination in a few years. Time will tell.

News Article Here.