New Year's 2008

A belated Happy New Year to everyone. We spent the New Year’s weekend visiting Matt and Beth in Vermont. Once again we took the train and stayed with matt and Beth in Essex Junction. Elizabeth continued to build up her snowboarding skills during the two days we snowbaorded at Bolton Valley and Stowe. We also spent a day driving around northern/central Vermont and stopped by the Ben & Jerry’s plant, a Cabot cheese outlet-type place, and a cider mill.

The day we rode at Stowe (with Matt as well), was a bit chilly and snowy, but with plenty of fluffy powder. We arrived at Stowe and ate one of the worst meals we have had in a long time at a small inn adjacent to the lower part of the mountain prior to riding that afternoon. We rode excellent but cold conditions for about 5 hours. As we hopped on the lift for our last ride of the day, Matt noted that the guy a couple of chairs ahead of us was his boss and inventor of snowboarding, Jake Burton Carpenter. At the top, we followed the route called, “Toll Road”, which is a meandering and incredibly fun 3.7 mile run that brought us back to where we started five hours earlier.

New Year’s eve was spent playing a video game “Rock Band” in Matt and Beth’s basement with a handful of their friends who came over to celebrate for the night. Pretty much anyone who has played Rock Band or Guitar Hero knows how addictive these games are – even for people like Elizabeth and I who are generally averse to video games.

This is a clip (about 2:15 in length) of Zib ripping up the bottom of the Toll Road at the end of our day at Stowe. We used our Canon digital camera’s video feature to make this short movie. And, because the temps were somewhere in the mid-teens (F not C) my hand was about to fall off from the cold. Enjoy!